A survey of fluoride concentration in ground water of Sherborn, Massachusetts

PLEASE NOTE: This work is protected by copyright. Downloading is restricted to the BU community: please click Download and log in with a valid BU account to access. If you are the author of this work and would like to make it publicly available, please contact open-help@bu.edu.Thesis (M.Sc.D.)--Boston University, Henry M. Goldman School of Graduate Dentistry, 1990 (Pediatric Dentistry).Bibliography : leaves [46-58].Dental caries, as a result of years of advocating fluoridation and various other caries preventive measures [1] have been declining in the general population among the developed countries for the past 30 years. It is now very common for a dentist or a pediatrician to prescribe fluoride supplement for the patients. Yet, the most difficult problem associated with prescribing fluorides is the determination of the fluoride intake of domestic well users. Many practitioners assume that the fluoride content is very low or none [2,3]. It is attributed to insufficient knowledge about the natural-occurring fluoride. Nevertheless, the role of fluoride in groundwater can never be undermined. The objective here is to determine a compliance index of fluoride intake for domestic well users in Sherborn, Massachusetts, to help dentists and pediatricians in prescribing fluoride supplement, and to evaluate the availability of two different instruments for fluoride analysis as well