Regular visits to the dentist will fill a cavity that was once a common problem for millions of American children and adults. The reason it hasn’t happened to the late baby boomers and future generations is that fluoridation of drinking water became common starting in the late 1940s and continues today.
So it’s fair to ask why Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., put the end of fluoridation on the top of his agenda on day one of his campaign to attack America’s public health.
“On January 20,” Kennedy said a few days before the election, “the Trump White House will order all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
‘Fluoridation is the most terrifying and dangerous communist strategy we have ever faced.’
The uncompromising Gen. Jack D. Ripper in the 1964 film ‘Dr. Strangelove’
The reason, he emphasized, is that “fluoride is industrial waste that has arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and tuberculosis.”
All of which are completely untrue or grossly misleading. Kennedy’s screed against fluoridation is part and parcel of the policy document with legitimate scientists warning about the public health risks in the process.
Fluoridation of tap water has caused controversy in the community since it was introduced in the US in 1945. But it continues to be fully supported by the American public and by professional organizations including the American Dental Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics. This suggests that the appropriate role of the Secretary of Health and Human Services would be to express support for this event. Kennedy did the opposite.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fluoridation is one of the 10 most successful public health measures of the 20th century, right up there with vaccination, family planning and awareness of the health risks of tobacco.
Fluoridation has changed teeth, especially in children. Fluoridation of tap water was said to reduce tooth decay by 70% when it was first introduced; by the mid-1980s, when alternative sources of fluoride, such as fortified toothpastes, were available, the incidence of tooth decay in children was still 18% lower among those living in areas with fluoridation than those without.
Who would benefit from the end of fluoridation in the community and the recurrence of tooth decay? Dental supply companies, investors in themselves are rubbing their hands in excitement at the prospect of increased demand for their products. For example, shares of Henry Schein Inc., a distributor of specialty dental products, have risen more than 9% since RFK Jr. named as Trump’s choice for HHS secretary.
Kennedy’s tweet about fluoridation shows the vaccine crowd’s way of casting doubt on public health policies. There are two things. One is to highlight rare adverse health effects – some so rare that their existence is questionable – as the greatest and most serious threat. The second is to reduce the utility of the document. This leaves the public believing that this law will only have negative effects, and that those will be immediate and severe.
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Communities that have done fluoridation have seen an increase in dental disease. Since fluoride was removed from drinking water in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 2011, the Alberta Children’s Hospital has seen dental diseases requiring treatment by 700%, a hospital expert told the City Council in 2019. children under 5.
Windsor, Ontario, Canada, voted in 2018 to resume fluoridation five years after it ended the program, after realizing that the number of children with teeth or oral conditions requiring immediate treatment increased by 51% during this time.
Tooth decay is a little-known public health problem, in part because fluoridation has made it less common than it used to be. But it didn’t disappear. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls it “one of the most common diseases in children,” and it can have “lifelong consequences.” It disproportionately affects children of ethnic minorities, from low-income families or with special needs.
It’s not just about the occasional toothache or cavity that needs filling. Tooth decay can produce “debilitating pain,” an infection that can spread throughout the body, and, of course, lead to tooth loss. In the first half of the last century, the only cure for decay was to remove the tooth.
As of 2012, two-thirds of Americans have access to fluoridated tap water. Thanks to fluoridation, the CDC says, “tooth loss is no longer considered inevitable, and an increasing number of adults in the United States are keeping more of their teeth for life.”
More children reach their 60s with “more weak teeth at that age than any generation in history,” the CDC says. Unfortunately, that makes water fluoridation more important than ever, as it means that adults have more teeth at risk of decay than ever before.
Opponents of fluoridation have played on paranoid fears for decades, but until the 1960s, this was often dismissed as a fad from fringe organizations. In the 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove,” Gen. The unflinching Jack D. Ripper declares that “fluoridation is the most terrifying and dangerous Communist strategy we have ever encountered” – echoing the position of the John Birch Society.
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The anti-fluoridation camp has long claimed that the process “increased the risk of cancer, Down syndrome, heart disease, osteoporosis and bone fractures, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease, allergies, and other health conditions,” the CDC. was discovered in 1999. “There is no reliable evidence to support an association between fluoridation and any of these conditions,” the agency said.
More recently, critics argue that fluoridation “is being imposed on them by the state and as a violation of their freedom of choice,” the National Research Council reported in 2006 – similar to the promotion of the “liberty” of the person over the human needs that give life. anti-vaccine movement.
The anti-fluoridation camp scored a legal victory in September, when federal Judge Edward M. Chen of San Francisco, an Obama appointee, ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to review its standards for maintaining fluoridation in tap water. Chen concluded not that “fluoridated water is harmful to public health” but that “there is an unreasonable risk of such harm,” prompting a legal order for the EPA to take a closer look.
Chen’s findings were largely from a government study with a history of research. More on that soon. Despite the limitations of his order, it can be taken as confirmation of suspicion about fluoridation.
What about RFK Jr.’s roster of negative health effects? Let’s take them one by one. First, although fluoride can be produced by industrial processes, it is also a mineral present in soil, groundwater, plants and food.
Arthritis? A 2006 National Research Council review of federal fluoride regulations found “no evidence” in the available scientific literature to suggest that “fluoride had a causal relationship with … rheumatoid arthritis.”
A broken bone? A 2006 study showed that the leading evidence of fluoride’s effect on bone strength showed a lifetime exposure to fluoride at or above 4 milligrams per liter, which is more than five times the amount of fluoridated tap water. The results were found mostly in people who often deposit fluoride in their bones, such as those with kidney disease.
Bone cancer? The main result of this report appears to be a 15-year study led by the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, published in 2006 in the journal Cancer Causes and Controls.
In the same journal article, however, two Harvard scientists cast doubt on the study, noting that the original researchers were unable to replicate their findings when they replicated their study with new subjects. The results, they said, “do not show a complete association between fluoride and osteosarcoma” (ie, bone cancer).
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The evidence for “thyroid disease,” as Kennedy tweeted, is similarly inconclusive, especially at acceptable levels of fluoride in tap water.
This brings us to Chen’s decision in the San Francisco trial. His findings relied more heavily on the National Toxicology Program’s report that was first published in 2019. than others.
The study focused on the effects of water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, more than twice the level allowed in the United States. It admitted that it had only “moderate confidence” that such exposure could result in lower IQs, and said it had “insufficient data” to establish that 0.7 mg/litre concentration in fluoridated tap water affects IQ.
There were many problems with the National Toxicology Program’s monograph. Two peer reviews by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine split it, rejecting it twice. The program “did not adequately support its results,” the peer reviewers wrote.
The monograph lacked “rigorous statistical analysis.” The researchers recommended that the project “make it clear that the monograph cannot be used to draw any conclusions regarding the low fluoride exposure concentrations … commonly associated with drinking-water fluoridation.” Among other changes in the final monograph published this summer, the program removed the text of “neurodevelopmental risks to people.”
Critics have also pointed out the problems found in treating IQ as an objective measure of intelligence, since it is well known that IQ can be affected by “socioeconomic, physical, family, cultural, genetic, nutritional, and environmental factors.” The Academy of Pediatrics notes.
Kennedy’s opinion is curious: He recommended the treatment of CCIDID-19 with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which have been shown to be ineffective for the purpose, but he opposes fluoridation, which has shown health benefits for almost eight decades. What is the way to run a health agency like HHS?
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This story first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.