Defluoridation in drinking waters

Abstract

Although water supplies containing excessive amount of fluoride are generally very rare worldwide, there are locations in Turkey where drinking water contains very high fluoride concentrations. Especially in the middle and eastern part of Turkey, some mineral and drinking waters contain very high fluoride concentrations. It is a well known fact that drinking water exceeding the critical fluoride concentration (1 mg F-/L) may cause serious dental and skeletal damages. In this study, various techniques were evaluated to find the most suitable solution for defluoridation for these regions, which have high concentrations of fluoride in their water supplies. For this purpose, various chemical agents including locally produced alumina were investigated. Locally produced alumina gave promising and economically sound results in terms of defluoridation capacity and availability.