Being the dental issue with undoubtedly the most controversy, I knew I would have to write my first post on the issue of fluoride. So where do I, as a Registered Dental Hygienist, yet advocate for holistic health and the Paleo diet,
Being the dental issue with undoubtedly the most controversy, I knew I would have to write my first post on the issue of fluoride. So where do I, as a Registered Dental Hygienist, yet advocate for holistic health and the Paleo diet, stand on the issue of fluoride? Well…that’s a loaded question…with a loaded answer…
Recently, I saw the above picture making the rounds on Facebook, and boy did it stir up some comments! However, nobody presented any solid evidence or explanations. I didn’t know what was true and what was false because, in school, we don’t cover this stuff; in fact, we really don’t cover much at all when it comes to fluoride during our dental education. I wanted to investigate all the claims made in that picture because, frankly, I was curious. So for this post, I have made it my mission to hopefully provide some education, information, and easy to understand answers to the whole misunderstood fluoride issue. (Or I could just be setting myself up for an endless stream of rants, ha!) I think it’s safe to say that this will be the most complete and comprehensive coverage of fluoride you have ever seen or read. I will warn you now, this is a bit lengthy, but I wanted to make sure I covered all my bases and made this information as complete and as easy to understand as possible. With that said, let’s dive in…
To begin covering this issue, it requires understanding some very basic chemistry. Don’t worry, if chemistry was not your favorite subject in school, I will attempt to make this as painless as possible. First off, let’s clarify the difference between fluorine and fluoride. Fluorine is the element listed within the periodic table of elements with the atomic symbol, F. It is a pale yellow-green, irritating gas with a sharp odor. It is so reactive that it rarely occurs naturally in an isolated elemental state. However, French chemist, Henri Moisson, won the 1906 Nobel Prize for isolating fluorine in its elemental form.
As I stated above, fluorine does not tend to occur on its own naturally; it is typically bonded with another element or elements to make a compound. It is when fluorine is bonded with another element or elements that it becomes a fluoride compound. There are seemingly endless fluoride compounds that can be constructed depending on what elements you bond with fluorine, and all of these different combinations of compounds can be called fluorides. This is where the anti-fluoride activists and conspiracy theorists take advantage of the definition of fluoride to support their claims that fluoride is a toxic poison. The answer is that some fluorides are indeed highly toxic and some are not; it all depends on the compound and what exactly is in that compound. To easily understand this, let’s look at the element chlorine. By itself, chlorine is a poisonous, yellowish-green gas. When bonded to another element or elements, we will get a chloride compound. When we bond it with sodium (Na), creating Sodium chloride (NaCl), we no longer have a poison, we have table salt. Chlorine bleach, used around the house or when you launder your whites, is NaOCl. Now, I will sprinkle table salt on my meal, but wouldn’t think of doing that with bleach. Despite chlorine on its own being highly toxic, this shows that the product you end up with and its toxicity are dependent on what the compound is. Some compounds will be toxic and some non-toxic, or some may only be toxic in very high quantities. With this first chemistry review completed, let’s get back to fluoride.
Within our dental hygiene curriculum, we were sung the praises of water fluoridation, fluoride supplements, fluoride toothpastes/rinses and in-office fluoride treatments. We’re told that The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers water fluoridation one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century. We even had a day of lecture dedicated to snuffing out “quackery” when it comes to misinformation regarding fluoride and that all the “propaganda” from those anti-fluoride websites just cannot be trusted. We were taught that fluoride is a naturally occurring element in the earth’s crust, rocks, coal, clay, and soil. What we were NOT taught was how to intelligently respond to a patient that proclaims, “Fluoride is toxic! I don’t want any fluoride! Don’t you know that fluoride is toxic waste that the government put in our water?!” If you are a concerned patient, a dental professional, or are somewhere in the middle and don’t know who to believe, I hope the following information clears some things up for you.
I think the best way to go about this is to tackle each claim on the above picture one by one. But first, let’s list which fluorides are most commonly used in dentistry, dental products and in public water fluoridation.
- Sodium fluoride (NaF) is predominantly used in dental office fluoride treatments, toothpastes and mouthwashes. Some toothpastes will instead use sodium monofluorophosphate (Na2PFO3), often abbreviated MFP on toothpaste packaging. This is most often used in toothpastes that contain calcium because calcium will bind with the fluoride in NaF2 during storage, rendering calcium fluoride (CaF2), which is less effective at preventing tooth decay. (Remember t