Excessive tea drinking can be dangerous to your health

For most people, black tea isn’t a huge source of fluoride -- an entire liter typically contains 1 to 5 milligrams, though some reports put the figure as high as 9 mg, studies have found. But heavy tea drinkers have been known to develop skeletal fluorosis.




Doctors at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit treated a 47-year-old woman who had suffered from pain in her lower back, hips, legs and arms. She was also missing all of her teeth because they had become brittle.

Something was wrong with her bones. Sure enough, X-rays revealed that the vertebrae in her spine showed signs of a painful condition called skeletal fluorosis.

Doctors gave her a blood test to measure the concentration of flouride in her system. A typical healthy person has less than 0.10 of a milligram of flouride per liter of blood; the patient had 0.43 mg per liter.

Skeletal fluorosis can strike people who drink water with high concentrations of fluoride. Industrial workers who inhale fluoride dust and fumes are also vulnerable.

Neither of those conditions was a factor with the Michigan patient. But she did admit to drinking a lot of black tea.