Passage of Phosphate through the Human Tooth

Abstract

THE first experiments using isotopes on teeth appear to be those of Hevesy et al. ¹. They administered phosphorus-32 to two human subjects, and to cats and rats, then found it in both dentine and enamel, attributing this finding to ion exchange. Later work with other isotopes (those of hydrogen, iodine, sodium, calcium, sulphur, carbon and potassium) showed that labelled ions may pass into tooth structure, more readily into dentine than into enamel. However, apart from Hevesy et al., such work seems to have been restricted to animals (see ref. 2 for summary).