Drinking Water Fluoride and Child Dental Caries in Dashtestan, Iran

The aim of this study was to determine whether a relationship exists between the groundwater fluoride (F) concentration and dental caries in children living in the Dashtestan area of the Bushehr Province in Iran. Except for some very small villages, 14 villages in Dashtestan with only a groundwater source and essentially the same socio-economic living standards and nutritional conditions were surveyed. All of the children in each village in the ages 6–11 were sampled for a total of 2340 in all villages. F levels in the village drinking water measured by the SPADNS method ranged from 0.99 to 2.50 mg/L, while the number of decayed permanent (Dt) teeth per child ranged between 0.015 and 1.08 and the number of decayed deciduous (dt) teeth ranged between 0.02 and 1.18. Over this narrow concentration range there appeared to be no significant association between the F level in the drinking water and Dt and dt. However, when the village with the highest water F level and the lowest caries scores is omitted, linear regression analyses show weak increases of the Dt and dt scores with increasing water F levels, regardless of age, for both boys and girls in the remaining 13 villages.