Issues > September/October 2005 (#110) > Protecting Your Kids This Fall: Fluoride, Ozone and Mercury

Protecting Your Kids This Fall: Fluoride, Ozone and Mercury

We want our kids to go back to school with glowing smiles, healthy bodies and sound minds. New studies looking at fluoride, ozone and mercury suggest ways to protect our kids' health this fall.

How Safe Is Fluoride?

Fluoride helps protect your children's teeth, reducing decay in "baby" teeth by 60 percent and in permanent adult teeth by nearly 35 percent, according to the American Dental Association (ADA). But the key to good health is to make sure children are getting the proper amount.

Some kids get too much fluoride from combined sources such as sodas made in areas with fluoridated water and by swallowing fluoridated mouthwashes and toothpaste. Too much fluoride during childhood can cause a permanent brown mottling of the teeth known as fluorosis. And some studies of animals and humans have linked ingestion of fluoride in drinking water to an increased risk of a osteosarcoma, a bone cancer.

Cancer Controversy?

Dental-health professionals say that cancer fears are unfounded and that fluoride presents no health risk at the recommended level in drinking water, 0.7 to 1.2 parts per million (ppm). The studies linking fluoridated water to cancer failed to control for other cancer-related factors, such as increased industrialization, says Howard Pollick, B.D.S., M.P.H., a professor of dentistry at U.C. San Francisco.

Researchers at the Environmental Working Group argue that the cancer risk is real, and they've petitioned the government's National Toxicology Program to add fluoride to their list of carcinogens. The EWG also cites studies showing that fluoride accumulates in bone and damages human chromosomes. "It is the total package that they need to look at," says Richard Wiles, senior vice president of the EWG.

Pollick acknowledges that fluoride, like other minerals, migrates to the bone. He says, however, that numerous reviews have found insufficient evidence that fluoride causes chromosome damage at commonly encountered levels.

In an effort to settle the controversy, the National Academy of Sciences is reviewing the toxicity of fluoride in a report due out in 2006.

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