A Journey towards Salivary Fluoride Level Detection by Suitable Low Cost Chemosensor: From Molecule to Product

Fluoride is a ubiquitous anion and essential for us owing to its ability to protect human body from several health related issues. The safe limit of Fluoride ion for human body is 1.5 ppm, above it the ion becomes toxic and can cause dental-skeletal fluorosis or urolithiasis. Several countries are facing such health hazard owing to the naturally abundant excess fluoride in ground water. As a consequence, habitants of such fluoride enriched zone needs to monitor the concentration of fluoride in their body by periodic analysis. In this regard, development of a chemosensor which can detect fluoride from human body fluid at easy-instant-economic way is an obvious mandate. For the first time, our group has developed a sensor kit and sensor station device as a deliverable product for individual and batch scale detection of salivary fluoride level by colorimetric method. The sensor station is the first device made by interfacing chemical output with electronics and the encrypted signal in digital version could be used as a level of fluoride in saliva. Our journey towards the development of suitable chemosensor for recognition of fluoride from human body fluid is summarized in this account.