What is fluoride? Is is dangerous? Can it really be affecting our society? Many people say that adding fluoride to drinking water is harming our society, while many people say that we are getting better dental health from this? What are we supposed to believe?
Some people disapprove of adding fluoride to drinking water because, although there are many pros to adding fluoride to drinking water, people just believe the cons. One of the pros is that it prevents tooth decay and helps you have cleaner, healthier teeth. Some of the cons are that if you put to much of fluoride in drinking water, it can be quite harmful. To get the best effect from adding fluoride to drinking water, you need to add about 1 part per million(ppm). If you add just 2 parts of fluoride per million, it can cause your teeth to stain and if the amount of fluoride gets way too high, it can cause bone disorders and cancer. Lastly, another con to adding fluoride to drinking water is that since water already contains many other elements such as chlorine and aluminum sulphate, adding fluoride to the mixture could cause the elements to react differently. Even though adding fluoride to drinking water can be very helpful, there are many other dangers that can result from adding fluoride to drinking water.
In my opinion, adding fluoride to drinking water could be very harmful to our society. Even though there are many benefits of doing this, there are many things that could put our community in danger. The only major benefit to adding fluoride to drinking water is that in return we would get healthier and cleaner teeth. Since over two-thirds of the U.S. population drinks fluoridated water, we need to make sure that fluoridated drinking water is completely safe. One of the major dangers is that fluoride levels in drinking water affects brain functions in adults. It impairs the brains ability to perform signaling functions such as when the messages are passed along through the many pathways, they are liable to be incomplete or wrong. Studies also show that that exposure of fluoride in the womb and throughout early life, can lower intelligence. In my opinion, I think that fluoride should no longer be added to our drinking water.
Before fluoride could be widely used in toothpaste and mouthwashes they had to make sure that the fluoride could bond with a compatible abrasive. The Food and Drug Administration has produced three decay-preventing compouds, which are; stannous fluoride, sodium fluoride, and sodium monofluorophosphate. All of these decay-preventing compounds come from hydrofluoric acid. Today, sodium-fluoride is probably the leading dental fluoride. The first company to find a fluoride-abrasive combination that worked was Proctor and Gamble. They found this combination by combining stannous fluoride with calcium pyrophosphate. This formula is now the formula for Crest toothpaste, which is the main use of fluoride and is also known worldwide
The side effects of using fluoride in drinking water that are of most concern to me are the fact that when too much fluoride is added to drinking water, it can cause many dangers. Those dangers include bone defects and in some cases cancer. Even though we all want to have healthier teeth, would you rather have dull and unhealthy teeth or bone defects? In my opinion, I would rather have dull and unhealthy teeth because bone defects would affect you more in the long term. Also, tooth decay in our society is not caused by lack of fluoride but because of diets including junk food, mostly sugar. Some other side effects that concern me are that too much fluoride can cause staining of the teeth. This is a confusing point because fluoride is said to make your teeth healthier and cleaner, but if one of the side effects is staining then how can this be possible? This is because teeth with fluoride are said to have an abnormal, chalky appearance, which in adulthood this can lead to the staining of teeth. Some of the major side effects that concern me the most are that too much fluoride can cause cancer. In 1990, fluoride was found to be a cause of cancer by the National Cancer Institute Toxicology Program. Also, too much fluoride can cause brain damages because fluoride lowers the intelligence capacity of humans, especially children who are the most prone to these dangers. If we could all take these dangers in to consideration, maybe we could change how fluoride is shaping our society.
Sources:
http://www.fluorideinfo.org/
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/toxicchemicalsan/a/flouride.htm
http://www.fluoridedangers.blogspot.com/
http://www.mbschachter.com/dangers_of_fluoride_and_fluorida.htm
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/fluoride.htm
No Comments »
Filed under: Science
