Tea fluorides - A boon or bane?

Tea, a traditional beverage originally from China, is the oldest, most popular, non-alcoholic caffeine-containing beverage in the world, and is prepared from the infusion of dried leaves of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis. The three main different kinds of tea produced from the plant Camellia sinensis based on the process of oxidation are: green tea - non- oxidized, oolong tea - partially oxidized and black tea - fully oxidized. Tea plants (Camellia sinensis L), nevertheless, can accumulate large amounts of Fluoride (F) in mature leaves from soils of normal F availabilities without toxicity symptoms. The F contained in tea is readily released during infusion, and thus is one of the important dietary F sources. Dietary fluorides from tea pose both good and irreversible bad effects which need to be debated with research based evidence.