Is the ingestion of fluoride an immunosuppressive practice?

In 1983, Wilkinson (5) acknowledged that: ‘If the claim presented in court was correct, then fluoride in water would present a hazard to health as those drinking the water would be at risk from bacterial infections.’ He studied the effect of NaF on the locomotion and chemotaxis of human neutrophils and monocytes, using a microphore filter assay and a time-lapse photographic assay, and found that there was total inhibition of neutrophil locomotion when the cells were exposed to NaF at 10-2 M. The dose-response curve of monocytes was similar to that of neutrophils. At concentrations greater than 10-4 M, NaF inhibited locomotion of both types of cell, but this was not seen if lower concentrations of NaF were used. He stated that: ‘Therefore, these experiments give no reason to believe that fluoride at levels used in drinking water supplies, or at levels likely to be found in the body fluids of individuals drinking fluoridated water, has any deleterious effect on the locomotor properties of the leucocytes involved in defense against infectious disease.’ That statement does not take into account the release of fluoride during the resorption of high-fluoride bone developed as a result of habitually drinking fluoridated water (1 mg/L). This practice greatly enhances the annual rate of increase of the fluoride concentration in ‘total’ bone from approximately 5 ppm to 26 ppm in women, and from 3 ppm to 18 ppm in men (3), resulting in a considerable accumulation of fluoride in their bones.