Mottled Teeth

Between Goose Creek Mountains and Snake River in southernmost Idaho lies Oakley, a farming town of 882 on a feeder line of the Union Pacific. Remote, obscure Oakley last week became an important place on the world's medical map. Investigators have definitely proved that what mottled the teeth of Oakley children, by injuring the buds which lay down enamel for the permanent teeth, was fluorine in the drinking water. The teeth looked chalky, were pitted and stained with yellow spots.

Mottled teeth mar the mouths of children in more than 100 U. S. localities from Talent, Ore. to Conway, S. C., Dental Surgeon Henry Trendley, Dean of the U. S. Public Health Service stated last week. Oakley became aware of the disfigurement in the early 1920's. Children who lived outside town had good teeth. Dentists Frederick S. McKay of Manhattan and H. B. Smith of Jerome, Idaho, suspected drinking water which Oakley residents secured from new wells in the hills. This water contained six parts of fluorine to the million. Well water on outlying farms, where the children with perfect teeth lived, contained only a trace of fluorine. So Oakley at some expense dug new community wells where fluorine measured no more than one-half part to a million. Then parents waited to see how the enamel looked on the second teeth of children who drank the untainted water. In the current Journal of the American Dental Association Dr. McKay reported what little Oakley has been rejoicing over. No child born after the water change has mottled teeth. Every child whose second teeth had begun to form before the water change had teeth mottled to some extent. Therefore it seemed certain that fluorine caused the mottling and all that the other 96 afflicted communities need to do is to get new, fluorine-free water.

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