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The Non-Essentiality of Fluorine in Nutrition^1,2,3,

Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, Bloomington

By means of exhaustive purification procedures it was possible to prepare a diet which proved to be nutritionally adequate for the maintenance of experimental rats through three generations and the beginning of the 4th generation when the experiment was terminated. The diet was estimated to contain no more than 0.007 ppm of utilizable fluorine.

Rats maintained on this diet, but receiving 2 ppm of fluoride in their drinking water, did not show significant improvements in health or weight gain over similar animals receiving the same diet and redistilled water.

Alkaline and acid phosphatase determinations on the kidneys, livers and bones of deficient and supplemented animals showed no differences which could be attributed to the fluorine supplementation.

The teeth of both supplemented and deficient animals appeared to be sound and without gross evidences of decay or defects.

The investigation has demonstrated that under the rigorous experimental conditions employed, fluorine is not a dietary essential. Thus its value in the body is apparently limited to the promotion of resistance to dental caries.

² The material for this paper was taken from a thesis submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, Doctor of Philosophy, in the Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, by R. L. Maurer.

³ Contribution no. 762 of the Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, Bloomington.

⁴ Present address: Naval Medical Research Unit One, University of California, Berkeley, California.

Manuscript received 19 February 1957.

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