FLUORIDE, A LONG-TIME BLESSING, NOW A CURSE?

A debate follows a warning by the ADA about giving babies fluoridated water.

Few noticed in November when the American Dental Association alerted its members via e-mail of a possible problem with giving babies fluoridated water:

The ADA, long among fluoride's biggest advocates, wrote that parents of infants younger than a year old "should consider using water that has no or low levels of fluoride" when mixing baby formula.

Public health agencies in some states, like Vermont and New Hampshire, responded by issuing warnings through the media based on the ADA e-mail.

But it would be four months before Florida's Department of Health would relay the ADA's message on its Web site along with its own seemingly contradictory footnote: "Mixing formula with fluoridated water poses no known health risks."

Neither Hillsborough nor Pinellas counties' water utilities - both of which use fluoride additive - passed along the warning.

So is fluoridated water safe for infants? It depends on whom you ask.

Click Here To Read The Complete Article at the St Petersburg Times...

Many baby formulas already have inherent levels of Fluoride, so to add fluoridated water to the mix further increases the risk of side effects from this potentially toxic substance. Previous studies showed that adding fluoride to our town water decreases the rate of dental caries by 1.1 tooth per 8 year old child. Whereas another study found that topical applicaion reduced the dental caries rate by 1.2 teeth - Raises the question - why do we need to add fluoride to every ml of water that we use and ingest, when we only need it for our teeth, and can use it topically anyway?