Sodium fluoride

---

Sodium fluoride makes you Dumb and can cause Cancer!

Does it and if it does, will you avoid Sodium fluoride? The active ingredient that makes your teeth shine and stand against tooth decay?

---

Dental Cavity. Suyash.dwivedi (2015) retrieved from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dental_Caries_Cavity_2.JPG

Sodium fluoride is the active ingredient in your toothpaste you always use or you use its other "evil" alternative Sodium monoflourophosphate, which often found in Colgate and Crest products. Rumors say, the fluoridation of water (adding Sodium fluoride in our drinking water) will make you Dumb and can cause Cancer. These claims were advocated by alternative medicine reactionaries, food enthusiast, religious groups, environmentalists and so on. It was unproven and based on anecdotal evidence.

So why, we fluoridate our water? to help prevent tooth decay to the large populations and there is already natural fluoride in our water supply anyways. Fluoridation just adjust the fluoride content of water supplies to a certain degree, making it optimal for tooth decay prevention [1]

"Even now it was hotly debated, whether it can cause Cancer and make you Dumb or is it just a dumb rumor made by dumb people?" 

Breakdown of Sodium fluoride

In order to appreciate what sodium fluoride really is - we need to go in molecular level. Sodium fluoride is colorless, odorless molecule bonded by an ionic bond between sodium ion and fluoride ion; the bond makes it stronger and linear making it more stable and suitable to stack to each other. These characteristics make it solid at room temperature, high melting point, and high boiling point. It is manufactured via the Neutralization reaction of a hydrofluoric acid with sodium bicarbonate (base) and the products are Sodium fluoride, carbon dioxide, and water. Basic chemistry tells us, Sodium fluoride is a salt.[2][3][4] 

Element Fluorine vs Fluorides

Fluorine behaves differently than Fluorides. For example, fluorine gas is highly toxic and reacts violently with other substances, while Fluorides are relatively inert and safe to ingest in a small amount.[1] This often was the spark of fluoridation controversies.

How much will it Kill me?

Lethal Dose Low (abbreviated as LDLo) in Human is 71mg/kg, which can result to tremor in parts of your body, brittleness of teeth and bones (often called flourosis). Ingesting about 1662 mg/kg can cause reduce gas exchange in lungs (called hypoventilation), vomiting and death. To put it in perspective, our daily intake of fluoride is 0.038 to 0.048mg/kg, which is relatively small. The lethal dose and its toxicity will only appear at many thousands of time greater than one receives from fluoride from food, water, and personal products. [5]

Will I still use it?

Retrivied from: http://s2.quickmeme.com/img
/32/3268aae928859fe1a958624b37b3e
b538b08877c965c35f40f24e4ab35c47cc2.jpg

Yes and no. Yes, because it prevents tooth decay by preventing the acids from bacteria metabolism (its poop) from degrading the enamel of your teeth and lead to tooth decay. Fluoride surrounds the tooth and absorbed into the surface protecting against the acid; the process called remineralization. No, means just don't used it excessively and don't chug a gallon of toothpaste it can result to fluorosis and death.

Does it cause cancer and make you dumb? No, it was anecdotal evidence and unproven claimed by fluoridation oppositions.

Reference

---

[1] University of Toronto. Faculty of Dentistry. Water Flouridatio, 2012  http://www.caphd.ca/sites/default/files/WaterFluoridationQA.pdf

[2] National Center for Biotechnology Information. PubChem Compound Database; CID=5235, https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/5235 (accessed Mar. 8, 2017).

[3] "Sodium Fluoride." In Chemical Compounds, edited by Neil Schlager, Jayne Weisblatt, and David E. Newton, 747-751. Vol. 3. Detroit: UXL, 2006. Gale Virtual Reference Library http://library.mtroyal.ca:2092/ps/i.do?p=GVRL&sw=w&u=mtroyalc&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX3441700187&asid=7dd19c355e338b776fdc9e86a67b49fa. (accessed March 8, 2017).

[4] Sodium Flouride. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search2/r?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+1766. (accessed March 8, 2017)

[5] ChemIDplus.  https://chem.nlm.nih.gov/chemidplus/rn/7681-49-4. (accessed March 8, 2017)