Risks and Benefits of Fluoride

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Risks and Benefits of Fluoride Joy Bonspille-Bushey Com/155 January 15, 2012 Katherine Parr Risks and Benefits of Fluoride Fluoride: The History The year was 1901 when Frederick McKay first came to Colorado Springs. He noticed the mottled appearance of the local’s teeth, but also the decreased evidence of dental caries (tooth decay.) (1) Several years later, this prompted Trendley Dean to do research on this anomaly, and he found fluoride in the water supplies to be responsible for this. His earliest studies focused on how much fluoride could be ingested without causing the brown-stained appearance on teeth. Eventually in 1936 Dean and his staff reported that 1.0 part per million (ppm) in drinking water would not cause dental fluorosis, or mottling. This was good news for the Aluminum industry. Between the years of 1855 – 1918 the European Smelters were getting complaints and lawsuits because of fluorine emission and byproduct contaminations done to local crops, herds and neighbors which were poisoned, damaged and killed. The American Smelter industry took notice, and became concerned. Interestingly, it was Andrew Mellon, the 49th Secretary of Treasury of the United States, and founder of Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America), who helped fund Dean’s research on the effects of fluoridated water. (2) In the 1920s the U.S. Public Health Service was under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department. Mellon eventually had to step down in 1932 because of this conflict of interest of heading these departments and his involvement with Alcoa. (3) The Kettering Laboratory Publication “The Soundness of Fluoridation of Communal Water Supplies,” has been largely used as point of reference by the ADA for the benefits of adding fluoride to community water supplies. The Kettering Laboratory’s facilities, whose headquarters are at the University of Cincinnati,
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