March 2006

This conference, to celebrate 50 years of salt fluoridation in Switzerland, was organised by the Department of Preventive Dentistry, Periodontology and Cariology of the University of Zurich. Delegates were welcomed by Professor Thomas Imfeld who acknowledged the substantial contributions of his colleagues Professor Hans Mühlemann and Thomas Marthaler to the development and evaluation of salt fluoridation. The scientific papers presented at the conference had already been peer reviewed and edited by Jürg Meyer (Basel) and Thomas Marthaler (Zurich) and published, in English, in Schweizer Monatsschrift für Zahnmedizin Vol 115 (Nr. 8 + 9)/ 2005. We understand that bound copies are available from the University Department as long as stocks last ([email protected]). The first paper outlined the use of salt as a carrier of iodine in iodine-deficient areas (Burgi and Zimmermann 2005). Bürgi and Zimmerman, made the important point that the two aims: of preventing hypertension through restricting salt intake, and eliminating iodine deficiency through iodized salt, are not in conflict. This is because it would be easy to compensate for a reduction salt intake in the population by increasing the concentration of iodine in salt. Similar arguments of course could be made in respect of the salt fluoride content. The next three papers outlined the history of salt fluoridation in Switzerland (Marthaler 2005a), France (Tramini 2005) and Germany (Schulte 2005), while the fifth paper outlined the development of salt fluoridation in the Americas (Gillespie and Baez 2005).