Earl Baldwin of Bewdleyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Why the latest edition of Department of Health Report 41 on Dietary Reference Values for Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom (revised 1996), under 36.7 at p. 188, continues to quote 20–80 mg/d over 10–20 years as an excessive intake of fluoride leading to skeletal fluorosis, given that that figure was corrected by its original author in 1979 (Harold Hodge, in Continuing evaluation of the uses of fluoride, American Association for the Advancement of Science Symposium, Westview Press, 1979, p. 255) and given that the United States National Research Council's report, Health effects of ingested fluoride, cited in the Written Answer by the Baroness Jay of Paddington on 12 November 1997 (WA 35), gives on p. 59 the correct figure of 10–20 mg/d. [HL1012]
§ Baroness Jay of PaddingtonAll retrospective estimates of fluoride exposure in the decades preceding a diagnosis of clinical skeletal fluorosis are inevitably 235WA imprecise. Many reviews, including the World Health Organisation review cited in Report 41, conclude that crippling skeletal fluorosis is typically associated with intakes of 20–80 mg daily for 10–20 years. In the United Kingdom, only one instance of non-occupational skeletal fluorosis has been reported, in 1966, even though it has been estimated that consumers of exceptionally large quantities of tea may attain fluoride intakes of 12 mg daily.