Januari 04, 2017
in 1901, frederick mckay, a dental schoolgraduate left the east coast to open a dental practice in colorado springs.there he was astonished to see brown stains on teeth of people. they were so severe incolorado springs, that sometimes entire teeth were the color of chocolate candy.he tried to find the reason for those permanent stains, but this dental disease was not mentionedanywhere in the dental literature of those days.local residents blamed the problem on many number of strange factors, such as eatingtoo much pork, consuming inferior milk, drinking water and lots of other reasons.mckay decided to initiate the research himself on those brown colored stains. initially noone showed any interest, and it took time
for local practitioners to support the researchon the colorado brown stain. in 1909, dental researcher dr. g.v. blackagreed to come to colorado springs and collaborate with him.black wrote later after arriving the city that he found the disease was prominent inevery group of children. and later, colorado springs dental societyconducted a study showing that almost 90 percent of the city's locally born children had signsof the brown stains. mckay and black investigated on the case.and their findings were first, mottled enamel resulted from developmentalimperfections in children's teeth. this finding meant no risk of developing brown stains inalready calcified teeth without the stains.
second, they found that affected teeth weresurprisingly and strangely resistant to decay. mckay suspected that water could be the causeas residents told, but, black was skeptical. in1915, black was died after working on thecase for six years. in 1923, mckay trekked across the rocky mountainsto oakley, to meet with parents who had noticed peculiar brown stains on their children'steeth. the parents told mckay that the stains began appearing shortly after oakley constructeda communal water pipeline to a warm spring five miles away. mckay analyzed the water,but found nothing suspicious in it. but, he advised town leaders to abandon the pipelinealtogether and use another nearby spring as a water source.mckay's advice did work. within a few years,
the younger children of oakley were sproutinghealthy secondary teeth without any mottling. mckay now had his confirmation, but he stillhad no idea what could be wrong with the water in oakley, colorado springs, and other afflictedareas. dr. grover kempf traveled to bauxite to investigatereports of the brown stains. mckay met him and the two discovered thatthe mottled enamel disorder was prevalent among the children of bauxite, but nonexistentin another town only five miles away. again, mckay analyzed the bauxite water supply. again,the analysis provided no clues. mckay and dr. grover published a report ontheir findings, and that reached the desk of h. v. churchill. he was the chief chemistof alcoa which owned bauxite as a company
town. churchill, who had spent the past few yearsrefuting claims that aluminum cookware was poisonous, worried that this report mightprovide fresh fodder for alcoa's detractors. so, churchill asked an assistant to test thebauxite water sample using photo spectrographic analysis, a more sophisticated technologythan that used by mckay. after several days, the assistant reported that the town's waterhad high levels of fluoride. churchill asked his assistant to get anothersample and test. again, the results showed high levels of fluoride in town’s water. in 1931, churchill sent a letter to mckayon this new revelation and advised mckay to
collect water samples from other towns wherethis dental trouble has been experienced. mckay collected the samples. and, within months,he had the answer to his 30-year quest: high levels of water-borne fluoride indeed causedthe discoloration of tooth enamel. story didn’t end there.in 1931 dr. h. trendley dean and other scientists started investigating research on fluorideand its effects on tooth enamel, dean asked the help of dr. elias elvove to develop amore accurate method to measure fluoride levels in drinking water. and within two years elvovehad developed a state-of-the-art method to measure fluoride levels in water with an accuracyof 0.1 parts per million (ppm). by the late 1930s, using this new method,dean and his staff started comparing fluoride
levels in drinking water across the countryand had made a critical discovery that fluoride levels of up to 1.0 ppm in drinking waterdid not cause enamel fluorosis in most people. then, he recalled from reading mckay's andblack's studies on fluorosis that mottled tooth enamel is resistant to decay and wonderedwhether adding fluoride to drinking water at physically and cosmetically safe levelswould help fight tooth decay. in 1945, grand rapids added, fluoride to itspublic water supply and became the first city in the world to fluoridate its drinking waterand after 11 years, it was reported that the caries rate among grand rapids children bornafter fluoride was added to the water supply dropped more than 60 percent.
that’s how; tooth decay for the first timein history became a preventable disease for most people. today, almost every toothpaste in the marketcontains fluoride as its active ingredient. take home message of this storydetermination of mckay with the support of black, grover, churchill. then dean, helpedto transform dentistry into a prevention-oriented profession. don’t let that curiosity to die.
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