Health risk assessment in an area of dental fluorosis disease from high fluoride drinking water: a case study from southeastern Türkiye

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on identifying fluoride (F^‒) concentrations and its health risk assessment (HRA) in drinking water sources in south-eastern Türkiye. Groundwater quality was assessed using some graphical approaches such as Schoeller and Piper diagrams and GIS mapping. Average daily exposure dosages through oral and dermal contact exposure routes were considered to determine the potential health risk of F^‒ in groundwater. Groundwater samples were taken from 53 points in spring, summer, autumn, and winter seasons. The results showed that the average annual F^‒ concentrations in water resources in the study area were 0.26‒3.62 mg/L. According to the HRA results, the highest F^‒ health risk in this region was observed in children, followed by teenagers and adults. This study indicated that there is a strong relationship between the high health risk (4.28 > 3.5) in children and dental fluorosis caused by high F^‒ concentration in groundwater.

KEYWORDS:

• Dental fluorosis
• drinking water
• fluoride
• groundwater resources
• health risk assessment

Acknowledgements

We would like to especially thank our close colleagues, graduate and undergraduate students for their assistances in the field and laboratory studies.

Disclosure statement

The authors confirm that there are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Author contributions

Benan Yazıcı Karabulut: Data analyses, Drafted the manuscript Perihan Derin: Visualization, Data collection and Analyses Ayşegül Demir Yetiş: Data analysis, Visualization and Writing-Reviewing and Editing Mehmet İrfan Yeşilnacar: Conception of the study, Revision of the manuscript and editing.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2023.2243848

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) under grant no. 110Y234 and the Scientific Research Projects Committee of Harran University (HÜBAP) under grant no. 17190 and 22055.