Traditional tea drinking in Senegal. A real source of fluoride intake for the population

Tea drinking after meals is a traditional practice in Senegal where more than 80% of the population from 15 to 60 years old drink tea. According to the tradition, in one session, each tea consumer has to drink 3 cups of decocted tea. The content of a cup is about 30 ml of liquid. Some people drink tea three times daily, that is to say after each meal. Tea plant is rich in fluoride. To determine the effective intake of the Senegalese population from this source, we measured the fluoride concentration not only for each component of the prepared tea but also for each cup of prepared tea. For this study, we used the two main kinds of tea existing locally. The analyses have been done at Rochester, NY Eastman Dental Center, Oral Biology Dept Fluoride Laboratory using the Taves Microdiffusion Method and the fluoride Ion Specific Electrode. The results so that the mean total fluoride concentration of each cup, from the first to the third one, is: 4.0 mg F-/L, 7.436 mg F-/L and 1.230 mg F-/L. It means that on an average in one session, a Senegalese tea consumer has a daily fluoride intake of 1.139 mg F-/L when taking in count the total fluoride and drinking only 90 ml of tea. If we consider the ionic fluoride the amount of daily ingested fluoride for someone who takes only 3 tea-pots of 30 ml each, is 0.830 mg. To conclude, we state that this traditional practice may have a caries preventive effect. Further studies will be grateful for that practice when setting up a caries preventive program in our country. We will also be careful in extending that practice to children less than 8 years old because it might cause dental fluorosis as in Senegal the optimal dose of fluoride is 0.8 mg F-/L.