Is fluoride in drinking water safe? What to know as some cities ban it
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • 2 weeks ago • 59 commentsBy: Jason Kane and Erin McLaughlin
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The culture wars have a new target: your teeth.
Communities across the U.S. are ending public water fluoridation programs, often spurred by groups that insist that people should decide whether they want the mineral — long proven to fight cavities — added to their water supplies.
The push to flush it from water systems seems to be increasingly fueled by pandemic-related mistrust of government oversteps and misleading claims, experts say, that fluoride is harmful.
"The anti-fluoridation movement gained steam with Covid," said Dr. Meg Lochary, a pediatric dentist in Union County, North Carolina. "We've seen an increase of people who either don't want fluoride or are skeptical about it."
There should be no question about the dental benefits of fluoride, Lochary and other experts say. Major public health groups, including the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, support the use of fluoridated water. All cite studies that show it reduces tooth decay by 25%.
"Drinking fluoridated water keeps teeth strong and reduces cavities," the CDC said in a statement to NBC News.
Still, the resistance to fluoride has been building for decades. More recently, the sticking point is about control.
It wasn't "whether fluoride was good or bad," said Brian Helms, a Union County commissioner who voted against adding fluoride to the local water supply in February. "The real deciding factor for my vote was a matter of consent."
He and others were swayed by people like Abigail Prado, the chair of a right-wing group called Moms For Liberty, who questioned the addition of fluoride in public water systems at Union County hearings on the issue.
"It's the only treatment that the government just mass issues to its citizens," Prado said in an interview. "That's not right."
Union County, just south of Charlotte, is just the latest community to reject fluoridated water. Since 2010, more than 150 towns or counties throughout the country have voted to keep fluoride out of public water systems or to stop adding it, according to the Fluoride Action Network, an anti-fluoride group.
Lawmakers in Georgia, Kentucky and Nebraska have filed bills that would end fluoride mandates in some of their larger communities. Within the past few months, local leaders in Collier County, Florida, and Amery, Wisconsin, voted to stop adding fluoride to public water systems. Last year, lawmakers in State College, Pennsylvania, and Brushy Creek, Texas, did the same.
A federal judge in California is considering whether that research should stop health officials from adding fluoride to drinking water. There have been more than 100 lawsuits over the years trying to get rid of fluoride, without success, according to the American Fluoridation Society, an advocacy group.
The anti-fluoride movement is troubling to doctors who treat children and others vulnerable to tooth decay.
"Community water fluoridation was revolutionary in terms of how it improved the oral health and dental health in our country," said Dr. Charlotte Lewis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, with the "most dramatic effect in those populations that are lower-income and have less access to dental care."
"I think we're going to take big steps backwards," she said.
How does fluoride work? How did it become the 'bad guy'?
Bacteria in the mouth make acid, which weakens teeth and leads to decay. Fluoride counters that process in two ways: It reduces the amount of cavity-causing acids in saliva and strengthens enamel, the tooth's protective outer layer.
Applying fluoride directly to the teeth through toothpaste or rinses is important, but Lochary said small amounts circulating in the body are critical for young kids who still have their baby teeth.
"Prior to the age of 6, you need to have some fluoride that you swallow so that it can get into the developing permanent teeth," she said. "That's the most important time for systemic fluoride."
It was in the early 1900s that experts first suspected something in the environment was affecting teeth. A dentist who moved from the East Coast to Colorado Springs, Colorado, noticed that people born in the area had dental anomalies he'd never seen before: teeth that were stained with dark brown spots but highly resistant to decay.
Experts eventually discovered that the water in Colorado Springs had unusually high levels of fluoride — up to 12 milligrams per liter. Fluoride is a mineral found naturally in rocks, which then leaches into soil, rivers and lakes.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first community in the world to add fluoride to its water supply in 1945. Within a decade, cavities among young children in the town had plummeted by 60%.
Despite the dramatic reduction in cavities in kids, the Grand Rapids program was mishandled from the beginning. Residents weren't immediately told that fluoride had been added to their water supply, leading to distrust in local lawmakers and their ability to make appropriate decisions about additives in the water. That triggered a pushback against fluoride in drinking water that has continued.
In 2015, the U.S. Public Health Service, under the Department of Health and Human Services, set the optimal level of fluoride in water at 0.7 milligrams per liter — a level that, after decades of real-world use, experts said, would help protect teeth without staining them.
As of this year, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population with public water access use drinking water with fluoride, according to the CDC.
A dramatic difference
The positive impact of fluoride on kids' teeth is easy to see, said Dr. Frank Courts, a pediatric dentist who has had offices in Ashe County, a rural community in Western North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, and in Nash County, a rural area east of Raleigh.
"The difference between the level of tooth decay in children is dramatic," he said.
His very young patients in Nash County tend to have fewer and smaller cavities. In Ashe County, children are significantly more likely to have permanent teeth so badly decayed that they have to be pulled before middle school, he said.
"Kids in high school have black front teeth," Courts said of his practice in the western mountain region. "We see many young adults that have all their teeth already extracted and are wearing dentures in their 20s."
Just over 10% of kindergartners in Nash County, which has added fluoride, had been treated for tooth decay in 2022-2023, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. That percentage swelled to more than 44% in Ashe County, whose residents largely rely on nonfluoridated well and spring water.
Both counties have similar income levels and rates of poverty. What explains the difference, Courts said, is that Nash County adds fluoride to its water supply. Ashe County doesn't.
Even though Medicaid covers oral health for children, only 50% receive those services, said Dr. Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
"People who don't have access to dental care benefit even more from fluoridated water," she said. "If they didn't get fluoridated water, they'd be more likely to get cavities."
The science behind fluoride
The fluoride issue goes well beyond medical freedom. The latest tactic used by anti-fluoride activists mirrors that of anti-vaccine groups: strike fear in the hearts of moms and dads.
Similar to the anti-vaccine movement, which has focused on disgraced research associating the mumps, measles and rubella shots with autism, groups opposed to fluoride tend to rely on one study that suggests the mineral is a neurotoxin that lowers children's level of intelligence.
A 2019 study, published in a well-respected journal, JAMA Pediatrics, found that IQ levels were slightly lower in 3- and 4-year-old children whose mothers had higher measures of fluoride in their urine when they were pregnant. Researchers concluded that pregnant women may want to avoid fluoride.
"We have a possible risk," an author of the study, Dr. Bruce Lanphear, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in Canada, said in an interview. "It's absolutely time for us to hit pause on this strategy."
Lanphear stopped short of saying fluoride should be pulled from water supplies, and he said more research is needed. No other studies have shown similar findings.
Even though a direct link has never been proven, the damage has been done, said Dr. Charlotte Lewis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
"It doesn't matter how much you try to dispel that," Lewis said. "The onus is on us to continue to get that information out there. It's a battle just like it's a battle with the anti-vax folks."
Dr. Donald Chi, a pediatric dentist at Seattle Children's Hospital, said he has had to rethink how he talks with parents concerned about fluoride. The conversation starts not with data, but with empathy.
"There's a lot of disinformation out there that preys on the vulnerability of parents," Chi said. "People don't want information. They just want to talk through it and process it."
Richard Carpiano, a public health scientist at the University of California, Riverside, said, "This is an unintended consequence of parents being good parents."
Should pregnant women avoid fluoride?
The American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians recommends that pregnant women use fluoridated toothpaste and mouth rinses to maintain their oral health, but it doesn't take a position on fluoridated water.
Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB/GYN in private practice in Yorba Linda, California, hosts a podcast about possible effects of environmental toxins on pregnancy health.
Microplastics, pesticides and air pollution are some examples. Fluoride isn't.
"To be honest, fluoride doesn't really rise to much attention when I'm counseling patients about things to be worried about in their drinking water," DeNicola said. "Fluoride doesn't fit in one of those categories we're worried about."
Searching for solid evidence
The fluoride opposition argues there has never been a double-blinded, randomized, controlled clinical trial — the gold standard of scientific research — looking at the effects of fluoride on children. Researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, are recruiting 200 children under 6 months old to use either fluoridated or nonfluoridated bottled water in their formula and drinking water. Neither the researchers nor the families will know which kind of water will be given.
"I took that as a particular challenge," said Gary Slade, a professor of dentistry at the Adams School of Dentistry at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The plan is to follow the children for four years to see how their teeth are developing. While the study isn't funded to include a look at the kids' IQ levels, it's possible the study will expand, Slade said.
"It is a perfect situation to look at the IQ of those children when they turn 4," Slade said. "We'd still have time to add on that component to this study."
Lochary said she regularly works to alleviate concerns among families who have heard that fluoride may be detrimental to kids.
"We get people who don't want fluoride, and their kids will come in with a mouth full of decay. Then they won't want us to do any treatment," Lochary said. "I'm like, 'Listen, dental infections can be very dangerous. You can end up in the hospital.'"
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I see fluoridation as a huge public health success. There is a joke among dentists that we work to put ourselves out of business by preaching prevention.
So I suppose dentists could get angry. Or they could see anti-fluoridation as a business opportunity.
FWIW, I don't think every person needs fluoridated water to avoid tooth decay. I see a lot of people who are on non-fluoridated well water, and have a low decay rate. I myself have well water, and haven't had a cavity for years. But those people generally brush well and watch their sugar intake, while children generally don't.
it's probably nostalgia from the red scare days of the 50's. the problem isn't the fluoride, it's the lead pipes our water travels thru...
I'm good with fluoride in my water and think communities should opt for it. BUT...I think it has to be up to the citizens of that community. I don't think it should be forced down anyone's throats (so to speak)
About 10 years ago Arkansas passed a fluoridation law. Any municipality or water system that served 6000 or more were required to fluoridate. What a controversy that caused. Made extra work for me (dammit!)
Fuck all low IQ ignorant fools who are too stupid to understand basic science.
good thing they all get together on sundays...
willful ignorance must be one of their family values...
Lol fluoride is probably the only reason I still have my own teeth (cavities and all)
I lived on well water for the first 19 years of my life. No natural fluoride. Good thing I brushed my teeth a lot
that's all right, we still love you...
some of you do
These people are so dumb I often wonder how they simply survive normal life.
past democrat safety legislation...
Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake., but I... I do deny them my essence.
- General Jack Ripper
Would not do those anti fluoride loonies and good to come here to my little corner of SE Arizona as all our water comes from underground aquifers from mountain runoff that surround the valley I live in. The aquifer water which provides water to wells in the surrounding area is already naturally fluorinated.
uh, those are fracking chemicals from up north...
I seem to remember reading a book that detailed water fluoridation years ago. It claimed that the fluoride that is used for these purposes is actually a toxic byproduct of nuclear weapons production that would otherwise need to be disposed of through expensive environmental processes. It’s not a coincidence that these two technologies came about around the same time. If that is the case then it’s easy to see why there should be great skepticism over the disposal of toxic waste by adding it to the public water supply. If the fluoride added to the public water supply were processed exclusively for the purposes of water fluoridation then it would likely add great expense to the water treatment process. You never hear about that aspect, likely because fluoride is not as much of an additive as the water system is a convenient dumping ground for it.
I;ve never heard the anti-fluoridation loonies link it to nuclear waste. I have head them say it;s a by-product of chemical production which may be true.
I've heard a lot from the anti-fluoridation loonies over the years especially when Arkansas passed its mandatory fluoridation law
I’m not necessarily anti fluoride, I just think it’s important that consumers of public water know what is in it.
They add fluoride to the uranium used in the nukes. So, yeah, I guess fluoride is found in nuclear waste, but it didn't say anything about it being used in drinking water.
Yes, phosphates. That is what I've read. And yes NaF is a rat poison. Rats can't puke so it poisons them. If a human ingests too much fluoride they vomit and prevent poisoning.
Good article.
I’m torn between which is more appetizing: rat poison or gunk scraped out of industrial smokestacks …
I'll go with the rat poison. I don't want to get instant cancer
I'll stick with Ice Cream. It tastes good and I can do with a few missing toes before it takes me... LOL!!
The book I read (don’t remember what it was called) made the claim that the original infusion of fluoride came from the nuclear munitions industry because there was a large amount of this chemical that would need to be dealt with otherwise. Back then there would be a massive surplus of byproducts from the cold war ramping up that wouldn’t necessarily exist today. It sounds like no fluoride source is appetizing considering where it’s going.
Good luck on that.
I get the memo and don't understand half of it.
No.
Teeth are made of phosphates. It is not just phosphates are poison at all.
Dihydrogen monoxide can kill you to. But usually we just drink it.
Smart move!
In fact experiments have proven that if you eat Rat Poison you won't get cavities!
So that explains why so many people are dying-- its because they choose to drink Dihydrogen monoxide.
(People are so stupid-- you'll never catch me drinking any Dihydrogen monoxide-- no way!)
We have a sign at work with the various ways dihydrogen monoxide can kill you
it's called drowning if you OD...
One can get water intoxication. If you drink enough water it dilutes your electrolytes and can kill you
Marathoners are prone to water intoxication.
I can see why
bottled water is pretty much all I drink now, except for morning coffee...
I only drink bottled water when I'm on the road. I like the water I get from CAW.
you have a crow that brings you water?
I grew up on Adirondack well water. I will refill my bottles.
Central Arkansas Water. the best drinking water in the state of Arkansas and actually better than the well water I grew up on
my water comes off of a mountain, not out of the ground...
Still needs to be treated. Beaver and deer shit in those creeks
Ah, yes, worship the sacred cow. Where's the studies that tell us how much tap water people consume nowadays? Where's the studies that tell us how much fluoride survives the distribution system and is delivered at the tap? Where's the studies that FDA uses to approve fluoridated oral hygiene products?
Fluoridation was started in a water system that has aged by 75 years. Consumer habits have changed. Diets have changed. Oral hygiene products have changed. And even science has changed over the last 75 years. But, by all means, protect the sacred cow. That sacred cow accommodates any and all changes that have occurred over the last 75 years simply because the cow is sacred. There is absolutely nothing that can improve on 75 year old sacred science.
Does bleaching teeth nullify the benefits of fluoridation? Whitening teeth has become a cheap, easy money cow for dentists. How does x-ray radiation interact with fluoride? X-rays have become another reliable revenue stream for dentists; another sacred cow. Does teeth cleaning make fluoridation less important? The amount of teeth cleaning has increased dramatically over the last 75 years and provides ever more revenue for dentists.
Today is not 1947 and the 75 year old science did not factor in all the changes that have taken place over the last 75 years. But, by all means, politicize that old, old science to turn into a sacred cow that can be weapon against political opponents. That doesn't have a damned thing to do with health. And the fluoride crazed partisans will adamantly oppose any new science that could threaten their sacred cow.
oh no. maga, drinking it for 75+ years...
With MAGA embedded in so many facets of society perhaps it's not surprising that Trump, by himself, is beating the Biden/Harris ticket from a courtroom in New York.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the advocates for fluoridated tap water are up in arms over fluorinated coatings on cookware. Science tells us fluorine is good and bad at the same time. Are you sure your fluoridated water is safe for cooking?
If he's trying to convince you that it's liberals against fluoride, he may want to know that the people I came into contact with my job were cons who were the ant-fluoride loonies
I'm old enough to remember how big the john birch society was on this issue decades ago. a demographic of morons still in search of conspiracies...
Cuckoo for cocoa puffs
The trouble with Tribbles!
they're always searching for someone to blame for their defective mentalities...
They are all over the Internet!
Don't be lazy-- google it and you'll find them.
(I'm assuming you know how to use google...)
They haven't been digitized; it would be necessary to search a document repository. During the 1970s and 1980s the concern was ecological impact of fluoride in wastewater. (That's when the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were being converted to environmental regulations.) Fluoridated tap water used for watering the lawn becomes wastewater when it runs off. An individual will use more water for showering than they'll consume and that water is discarded as wastewater. In fact, very little tap water is utilized for human consumption. The EPA established a safe limit of 4 ppm fluorine in wastewater.
Fluorides present a situation where more is not better. Too much fluoride intake can result in adverse effects on human health. And the increasing number of products containing fluorine does increase the risk of overexposure. Fluoridation is no longer limited to drinking water. The question today is whether or not fluoridated drinking water is the best way to provide the benefit.
Fluoridation was started in a water system that has aged by 75 years. Consumer habits have changed. Diets have changed. Oral hygiene products have changed. And even science has changed over the last 75 years. But, by all means, protect the sacred cow. That sacred cow accommodates any and all changes that have occurred over the last 75 years simply because the cow is sacred. There is absolutely nothing that can improve on 75 year old sacred science.
Yes, many things have changed. But we must to take back our schools from the disbelievers! Here's some valuable information I found on the Internet:
Suggestions for Teaching
Exodus 32:1–8
While Moses is on Mount Sinai, the children of Israel make and worship a golden calf
Before class, place a picture of Jesus Christ (for example, Jesus Christ , Gospel Art Book [2009], no. 1; see also lds.org/media-library ) at the front of the class and a picture of a golden calf at the back of the class (you can draw a simple picture of a golden calf or write the words Golden Calf on a piece of paper).
Invite the class to stand, and ask students to name events that they think helped the Israelites come closer to Jesus Christ.
(Students’ answers may include the plagues on the Egyptians, the protective pillar of fire, the parting of the Red Sea, the miracles of manna and quail, and water flowing out of a rock, as well as the Lord giving Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.) After each response, list the event on the board and ask students to take a step closer to the picture of Jesus Christ.
Explain that Moses had spent 40 days and nights on Mount Sinai, and the people began to wonder what had happened to him. Invite a student to read Exodus 32:1–6 aloud. Ask students to look for what the Israelites did in Moses’s absence.
How edgy
LOL
Sad how far right wing fascists ruin everything for the rest of us.
misery loves company.
Company knows you well …..
No greater love has any man than that of love of thee Lord!
But the Flouradators-- they are everywhere.
Fortunately there is a solution-- we must take back our schools from the blashphemers and Flouridators! See comment # 6 . 3, above!
Not to worry! Victory is soon to come! See the instruction for redemption-- I have posted it here as we speak-- see my comment 6. 3, above. The Flouradators shall soon meet their just deserts! Out, out, out! Flouride Be Gone!
HALLELUJAH!
The American Dental Association hates Fluoride!