Using Tap Water with Formula---Is it dangerous!

I used to prepare my babies' bottles with Sparkletts bottled water, but due to time and more out of convenience, I just use tap water now. I asked our pediatrician about this and he said it's "fine" but he's very relaxed about everything so I wanted to find out from you all what your thoughts are on this topic.

Thanks so much!

 

I think it's fine as long as you don't use toothpaste with fluoride. Heck, some doctors give babies fluoride supplements, so a bit of it must be good for them. I use tap water now too.

 

It is all going to depend on where you live and the water there. We use tap water here, given the ok by the ped. If your babies's doc said it was ok, I wouldn't worry

Dianna

 

I agree with the pp's, if your pedi said it is okay then I think using tap water would be fine. Our pediatrician had told us it would be okay to use tap water to make formula, however for some odd reason, our kiddos preferred ready to feed vs. powdered. I don't know what's the difference, except that my kids are picky!

 

No, I don't think it's dangerous. My tap water doesn't even have enough flouride in it, at 9 months our pedi gave us drops to add to their water once a day. If your pedi said it's fine then I would think it's fine.

 

I have used boiled tap water from day one with the twins. My pedi said it was fine. I don't even think I have to boil it.

 

We used tap water for formula. When visiting my parents, we used bottled water. My parents have a well and I don't even like their water, so I was not going to give it to my kids.

 

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry recommends that children under 3 years old get 0.25mg daily. Here is their guideline. Basically, you just need to find out how much fluoride is in your tap water. If it meets the guidelines, then you're fine. If it below, you may need to supplement.

 

it looks like no level of fluoride is suggested for babies under 6 months. unfortunately the only information i can dig up about the maximum allowable level of fluoride for infants comes from anti-fluoridation websites (who are obviously biased).

from what i've read i'm becoming concerned that fluorosis may be a problem, but i'm not sure i feel my pediatrician is enough of an expert in dental health that i would solely trust his opinion. i wish i could get a definitive answer on whether fluoridated water is okay. perhaps a pediatric dentist could answer this?

 

Sounds like babies definately need some flouride (though definately not tootpaste with it). Around our 6mo appointment our Dr. pulled out a giant chart of MUD districts for us to figure out which one we get our water from and checked the flouride percent for us to detemine if we needed to ADD flouride. Our MUD was on the good list and we use tap water to make bottles to the Dr. said we were ok. He said if we used bottled water we should consider adding flouride drops.