Does water fluoridation cause bone cancer?

For my position paper I argued that all community water resources should be fluoridated in New Zealand. There were vast amounts of literature and primary research arguing that water fluoridation is safe and effective, and that community water fluoridation provided the best defense against dental caries and improving oral health. On the other hand it was not easy to find good research that supported the opposing side of my argument.

I was pleasantly surprised to find opposing journal articles about primary research on the relationship between water fluoridation and bone cancer. I felt that it was important to address this claim, which has predominately come from the anti fluoridation side, in order to address the claim that water fluoridation is harmful.

The first article supports the anti fluoridation argument and researched the link between bone cancer and water fluoridation in the United States and was conducted by Elise Bassin, David Wypij, Roger Davis and Murray Mittleman (2006). This study compared the incidences of bone cancer against the individual’s exposure to fluoridated water. They used logistic regression; method of finding statistical probabilities, to show that males under 20 years of age residing in areas of community water fluoridation have an increased risk of developing bone cancer and concluded that there was an link present. This conclusion was reached due to the fact the authors had to estimate what level of fluoride each subject would have been exposed without being able to obtain actual fluoride levels from each respective area. Bassin et al. (2006) clearly had confidence in their findings, however, no causal relationship was found during this research meaning that they did not prove that water fluoridation causes cancer.

The opposing argument to the previous research study is that there is no link between bone cancer and fluoridation water and that water fluoridation plays no part in causing the occurrence of bone cancer. This second research article substantiates this claim and was completed in Ireland by Harry Comber, Sandra Deady, Erin Montgomery, and Anna Gavin (2011). The research compared bone cancer occurrences and whether the patient had resided in a fluoridated or non-fluoridated area. The data shows no difference in the number of bone cancer diagnosis of those living in an area with water fluoridation present and those living in no fluoridated areas. Therefore, Comber et al. (2011) reached the conclusion that there was no relationship between ingesting fluoridated water and the development of bone cancer, causal or otherwise. The data used in this study was easy to understand and clearly showed no relationship which I believe strengthened the authors’ findings that there was no link between water fluoridation and bone cancer.

Bassin, E. B., Wypij, D., & Davis, R. B. (2006). Age-specific fluoride exposure in drinking water and osteosarcoma (United States). Cancer Causes Control, 17, 421-428.

Comber, H., Deady, S., Montgomery, E., & Gavin, A. (2010). Drinking water fluoridation and osteosarcoma incidence on the island of Ireland. Cancer Causes Control, 22, 919-924.