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Studies of the Effects of Dietary Sodium Fluoride on Dairy Cows

III. Skeletal and Soft Tissue Fluorine Deposition and Fluorine Toxicosis¹

Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison

The effects of added increments of dietary fluorine in the form of sodium flouride upon skeletal deposition and subsequent changes have been studied in dairy cows fed for 5 years a basal ration which contained 3 to 5 p.p.m. fluorine. A study of the data obtained appears to establish the following facts.

1. Dairy cows fed the basal ration stored less than 1000 p.p.m. of fluorine in the bones of the skeleton.

2. There was a progressive increase in the fluorine content of bone with each added increment of dietary fluorine. The increase was 4.5 and 10 times that of the controls when 20 p.p.m. and 50 p.p.m. of fluorine were added, respectively.

3. The bone fluorine content varied with the type of bone; cancellous bone was uniformly higher in fluorine than the compact leg bones from the same animal.

4. Flourine toxicosis in the dairy cow was associated with a fluorine content of compact bone and of cancellous bone in excess of 5500 and 7000 p.p.m. respectively. Concentrations ranging downward from 5500 to 4500 p.p.m. of fluorine seemed to provide a marginal zone while levels below 4500 p.p.m. were innocuous. The time interval required to increase bone (leg) fluorine concentrations from 1000 to over 5000 p.p.m. represents the "latent period" in these animals.

5. The fluorine content of the soft tissues from the control cows was found to be 2 to 3 p.p.m. and these values were increased two- to three-fold by adding 50 p.p.m. of dietary fluorine to the basal ration. The narrow margin in concentrations between normal and fluorosed tissues makes the use of soft tissue analyses as a criterion of fluorine toxicosis an unreliable one.

6. Mild to extensive exostosis developed in the metacarpal and metatarsal bones which was more pronounced in the latter. Slight exostosis on a tissue-free bone was observed in cows of lot III when the bones of the legs containing 4000 or more p.p.m. of fluorine.

² Present address: Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Manuscript received 5 December 1957.