Coal Burning Linked to Fluoride Disease in China
Bones, teeth affected in unventilated homes
21 October 2010
Fluoride disease is blamed for an outbreak in China that blackened teeth, caused very brittle bones and bone deformation.
A cluster of villages in China's Guizhou province has been plagued by an outbreak of disease that damages teeth and bones. Now, a new study by Chinese and American researchers puts the blame on polluted coal burned in home fireplaces.
In small quantities, fluoride can prevent tooth decay. But too much fluoride can lead to a whole spectrum of symptoms, and that's what Chinese doctors were seeing, explains chemistry professor Joseph Gardella at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
"It runs from everything as simple as blackened teeth to these very brittle bones, bone deformation, so that leads to very debilitating disability," he said in a telephone interview. "And the rates of skeletal fluorosis in some of the villages are as high as 30 percent, although not all of those people who suffer are suffering the most extreme disability."
The most common source of fluoride disease is water pollution. But tests found no problem with the villages' water, so scientists started looking for another environmental source of fluoride.
Coal, which is burned for heating and cooking, was another suspect, but the coal itself wasn't polluted. However, advanced imaging techniques revealed that the culprit was another material burned with the coal.
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