Fluorine Intoxication: A Clinical-Hygienic Study with a Review of the Literature and Some Experimental Investigations

Fluoride exposure and bone status in patients with chronic intestinal failure who are receiving home parenteral nutrition

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:  Metabolic bone disease is frequent in chronic intestinal failure. Because fluoride has a major effect on bones, the status of both fluoride and bone was studied in long-term home parenteral nutrition (HPN) patients. DESIGN:  We studied 31 adults aged (x +/- SD) 56.3 +/- 15.1 y, mainly

Contribution of fluoride in water and food to the prevalence of fluorosis in areas of Tamil Nadu in south India

Fluoride contents of water and food, collected from the subjects of five selected areas of Tamil Nadu in South India, were determined. Surveys were conducted to ascertain dental fluorosis prevalences among children of the areas, and dental and skeletal fluorosis prevalences in the adult populations. Dean's "Community Fluorosis Index" (CFI)

Excessive fluoride in water and bone chemistry; comparison of two cases

Analytic chemical studies of similar human skeletal tissues obtained at autopsy from two comparable women were conducted to determine the effect of a prolonged exposure to drinking water containing 8.0 ppm of fluoride on the chemistry of human bones. As a result of the prolonged .use of this fluoride drinking water,

Fluorosis in some tribal villages of Dungarpur district of Rajasthan, India

The prevalences of dental and skeletal fluorosis were observed in fifteen tribal villages of the Dungapur district of Rajasthan where the fluoride (F) concentration in drinking waters varies from 0.3 to 10.8 ppm. At 1.40 and 6.04 ppm mean F concentrations, 25.64% and 84.43% of school children (<16 years), and

Fluoride & Osteoarthritis

While the osteoarthritic effects that occurred from fluoride exposure were once considered to be limited to those with skeletal fluorosis, recent research shows that fluoride can cause osteoarthritis in the absence of traditionally defined fluorosis. Conventional methods used for detecting skeletal fluorosis, therefore, will fail to detect the full range of people suffering from fluoride-induced osteoarthritis.

"Pre-Skeletal" Fluorosis

As demonstrated by the studies below, skeletal fluorosis may produce adverse symptoms, including arthritic pains, clinical osteoarthritis, gastrointestinal disturbances, and bone fragility, before the classic bone change of fluorosis (i.e., osteosclerosis in the spine and pelvis) is detectable by x-ray. Relying on x-rays, therefore, to diagnosis skeletal fluorosis will invariably fail to protect those individuals who are suffering from the pre-skeletal phase of the disease. Moreover, some individuals with clinical skeletal fluorosis will not develop an increase in bone density, let alone osteosclerosis, of the spine. Thus, relying on unusual increases in spinal bone density will under-detect the rate of skeletal fluoride poisoning in a population.

Skeletal Fluorosis: The Misdiagnosis Problem

It is a virtual certainty that there are individuals in the general population unknowingly suffering from some form of skeletal fluorosis as a result of a doctor's failure to consider fluoride as a cause of their symptoms. Proof that this is the case can be found in the following case reports of skeletal fluorosis written by doctors in the U.S. and other western countries. As can be seen, a consistent feature of these reports is that fluorosis patients--even those with crippling skeletal fluorosis--are misdiagnosed for years by multiple teams of doctors who routinely fail to consider fluoride as a possible cause of their disease.

Fluoride & Rheumatoid Arthritis

The symptoms of skeletal fluorosis can closely resemble rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and thus individuals with fluorosis can "easily be mistaken" as having RA. In addition, clinical research on fluoride-treated osteoporosis patients has found that fluoride exposure can exacerbate pre-existing RA, and recent research shows that the levels of fluoride found in the blood of the general population (19-57 ppb) are sufficient to effect an enzyme (15-lipoxygenase) implicated in the inflammatory process of RA.

Skeletal Fluorosis Causes Bones to be Brittle & Prone to Fracture

It has been known since as the early as the 1930s that patients with skeletal fluorosis have bone that is more brittle and prone to fracture. More recently, however, researchers have found that fluoride can reduce bone strength before the onset of skeletal fluorosis. Included below are some of the