Orange County NC Website
The water shortage has moved Saturday’s scheduled UNC-Notre Dame men’s basketball <br />game to 1 p.m. Sunday at the Greensboro Coliseum. The game will not be televised. <br />Chapel Hill and East Chapel Hill high schools postponed their Friday night basketball <br />games, and Carrboro has moved Saturday’s wrestling championship match to <br />Northwood High School in Pittsboro. <br />Fluoride overfeed <br />OWASA began getting its water from Durham when the fluoride overfeed forced it to <br />shut down the Jones Ferry Road plant, its only drinking water plant. <br />“We don’t know whether it was equipment error. We don’t know if it was human error <br />or both,” Kerwin said. “That is certainly something we need to get to the bottom of.” <br />The utility stressed the overfluoridated water was contained at the plant and did not go <br />out to customers. <br />Fluoride is added to water to prevent tooth decay. <br />Though its use is controversial and some European countries do not add it to their water <br />supplies, “the reality is fluoride is the 13th most common element in the earth’s crust,” <br />said Dr. Tim Wright, chairman of the department of pediatric dentistry at the UNC <br />School of Dentistry. <br />“It’s a naturally occurring element” already present in water and many of the foods we <br />eat, he said. <br />Federal guidelines updated in 2011 recommend adding 0.7 parts per million of fluoride <br />to water supplies to prevent dental caries, the process of demineralization of the teeth <br />that can lead to cavities or holes in the teeth. <br />This is the amount that OWASA normally adds, Wright said. <br />The problem at the water treatment plant was adding up to 5 parts per million to the <br />water. <br />At 2 and 3 parts per million, chronic or long-term fluoride exposure can damage tooth <br />formation prenatally and in children up to teenagers, Wright said. <br />At 4 parts per million, fluoride has been associated with hip fractures in post- <br />menopausal women, he said.