BABY BEAR CARE: A NEW TOOL FOR AVOIDING FLUORIDE TOXICITY IN FORMULA-FED INFANTS

Women are the traditional storytellers, childcare providers and waterkeepers in society. They also make up to 80% of the consumer decisions and 85% of healthcare decisions, yet they show markedly lower rates of numeracy and science literacy than men who are the modern policy-makers. Baby Bear Care is a smart-phone application that bridges this gap by bringing water quality and human health information into the hands of key decision-makers (i.e. caregivers of formula-fed infants) at the point of consumer choice (i.e. in the grocery store aisle) while also “feeding back” real-time individual and geo-referenced data to a central database that is formatted to support science-based and data-driven policy reform. The “flagship” application will focus on fluoride (F) as the best single indicator of chemical suitability of a given water supply for the purpose of infant feeding, making use of annual municipal water reports, literature values of nutrient content of supplements and formula by type (ex. milk-based or soy-based), and several hundred years of water chemistry information collection from national geological surveys and the global mining/energy exploration sectors. The application works virtually anywhere by 1) accessing water chemistry data for a particular geographic location, 2) importing the most current data into a handset or in-store computer terminal, 3) calculating the individual dose delivered by combining the chemical constituents of a particular infant formula and/or supplement product with a particular water supply, 4) making easy-to-understand consumer safety recommendations based on scientifically-derived thresholds of adequacy and deficiency/toxicity, 5) comparing the water + formula + supplement combination with breastmilk, 6) formulating a report to share with members of the healthcare/legal team, and 8) enabling the sharing of knowledge among peer-groups through social media.