The Story of Fluoride

By A. Kamal, our dental hygienist

In 1901 Dr. Mckay opened a dental practice in Colorado spring. He was faced with a society that had lots of brown spots on their teeth that was known among dentists in community as Colorado brown stains, he surprisingly found out that the people with these brown stains has no cavities. He invited Dr. Green Vardiman Black to join him to start in this research. After years of research, they found that fluoride is a mineral present in rock, soil, air and water that is available in high amount in the town’s water source. After publishing their research, Dean was curious to start new research about adding fluoride to drinking water in order to fight with tooth decay. Grand Rapids, CO was the first city in the world to fluoridated its drinking water in 1945.

“Fluoride has been added to the Toronto drinking water supply since 1963. Studies of Toronto children 12 years after the introduction of water fluoridation and again in 2000 show that by 2000, there was a 77.4 per cent mean reduction in decayed, missing and filled baby teeth for five year-old children. There was also a 390 per cent increase in the percentage of children with no tooth decay when compared to rates reported prior to the addition of fluoride in 1963”. (www.Toronto.ca) Drinking from Toronto tap water is helping you and your family, reduce cavities.

Dietary source of fluoride are: Mackerel, salmon, shrimp, meat, potatoes, wheat, sardines.

Fluoride is also one of the anti-cavity ingredients in toothpastes, because there are some brands on the market which produce non-fluoride toothpaste, always make sure to choose toothpaste with fluoride.

In our office we offer fluoride rinse to our patients, after scaling and polishing appointment. For kids, we prefer fluoride varnish that is a flavored paint on fluorides, usually kids love it.

Afsoon Kamali, RDH