Fluoride and bone: an unusual hypothesis.

Given the total body weight, the weight of the skeleton and the proportion of minerals in the skeleton, a simple formula can be used to estimate the accumulation of fluoride in the skeleton over periods of years. It would appear that daily intakes of fluoride considered beneficial to developing teeth may, if ingested throughout adult life, lead to skeletal fluorosis of varying degrees in a significant proportion of the population. To date, the accumulation of fluoride in the skeleton seems to have been ignored as a possible aetiological factor in certain metabolic bone disorders now common in the middle-aged and elderly. The unusual hypothesis put forward in this paper suggests that a daily intake of fluoride derived from a multiplicity of sources, and which is now generally considered as 'safe', may in fact be potentially harmful over long periods of time.