Cobalt chlorium G and water fluoridation

Two chemistry-related quotes from Dr. Strangelove:

You’ve obviously never heard of cobalt chlorium G. It has a radioactive half-life of 93 years.

Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation of water?

In contrast to fictitious “cobalt chlorium G”, water fluoridation is real. So is opposition to it. To quote the recent Australian study, “water fluoridation appears to be a low-risk, high-outrage controversy”. Luckily, the communist threat is no longer mentioned — or so I thought until I came across a recent publication quoting a Californian mum who wondered whether the dentist was “one of those socialists trying to poison us with fluoride”. From The Fluoride Wars: How a Modest Public Health Measure Became America’s Longest Running Political Melodrama:

It seemed such simple act at the time <in 1945>. A tap was turned, and water that had been chlorinated for many years without much fuss now carried a second chemical supplement to help keep us healthy. Soon, the taps would be turned in city after city across the nation. For most, it was another blessing bestowed on us by modern medical science. But for some, it was one chemical too many.

On biological role of titanium

According to WebElements, “titanium has no biological role”. Having recently acquired a titanium (or rather, Ti₆AlV₄ alloy) dental implant, I am not convinced. To be a dental implant sounds like a perfectly valid biological role to me. Apparently, osteoblasts like to attach to titanium surface (more precisely, to titanium dioxide, TiO₂). However, it is not just the material that matters, it is the shape of the material as well. In the recent paper, in vivo bone binding to TiO₂ nanotubes and TiO₂ gritblasted surfaces was investigated. The authors have found that

after four weeks of implantation in rabbit tibias, pull-out testing indicated that TiO₂ nanotubes significantly improved bone bonding strength by as much as nine-fold compared with TiO₂ gritblasted surfaces.

Earlier this year, another study has demonstrated that the fate of human mesenchymal stem cells can be affected solely by the geometry of TiO₂ nanotubes:

Small (≈30-nm diameter) nanotubes promoted adhesion without noticeable differentiation, whereas larger (≈70- to 100-nm diameter) nanotubes elicited a dramatic stem cell elongation (≈10-fold increased), which induced cytoskeletal stress and selective differentiation into osteoblast-like cells...