Anti-fluoridation argument has no teeth
A water war has been raging in Pinellas County. The opening volley was fired by the Pinellas County Commission, which voted to end fluoridation of the public water supply.
As the Tampa Bay Times recently opined, four Pinellas County Commissioners, dubbed the “Fluoride Four,” “blindly accepted misinformation about fluoride and misguided rhetoric about small government from the tea party crowd.”
But six cities in the county, including St. Petersburg, are fighting back for public health by either retaining their own fluoridated water systems or adding fluoride to county-supplied water.
Wading into the fray are two dentists, one from Tallahassee, who last month authored a white paper titled The Anti-Fluoridationist Threat to Public Health. The paper is issued under the auspices of the Institute for Science in Medicine and can be accessed through the Institute’s website. (Disclosure: I am a Fellow of the Institute, a non-profit “think tank” devoted to science-based medicine and public health, and serve on its Board of Directors.)
The authors are John Dodes, DDS, a New York dentist and expert on dental health fraud, and Floridian Michael Easley, DDS, MPH. Among other government, university and private sector positions in dental health, Dr. Easley is a former official in the Florida Department of Health Public Health Dental Program.
Like other reports from organizations such as the American Dental Association, the National Institutes of Health, and the Pew Center on the States, this paper summarizes the overwhelming evidence in favor of community water fluoridation. For example, the paper notes that for every dollar spent, CWF saves an average of $38 to $80 per year in dental treatment costs. And CWF lowers the rate of tooth decay in children by 20 percent to 40 percent over and above the effect of toothpaste and other fluoride sources.
While such facts are important weapons in the fight against ignorance, they are too often met with “facts” from the anti-fluoridation crowd. Without considerable time and effort, it is hard to defend against their misinformation campaign.
And there lies the utility of Dr. Dodes’s and Dr. Easley’s white paper -- it calmly and succinctly deconstructs the arguments of anti-fluoridationists, the same “facts” used by the “Fluoride Four” in depriving Pinellas County residents of what the CDC named one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.
For example, a favorite scare tactic of fluoride opponents is to exaggerate a condition called dental fluorosis, a mild cosmetic condition, usually detectable only by a dentist, which has no effect on the health or function of the teeth. Opponents also like to point out that in India, excessive fluoride has caused a disfiguring condition called skeletal fluorosis, a condition virtually non-existent in the U.S.
What they fail to tell you is that the cause of this condition is not CWF, but rather fluoride in the Indian water supply, some of it caused by pollution, which is four to 15 times higher than the level used to fluoridate the public water supply in the U.S.
Another favorite is the claim that most European governments have rejected fluoridation. In fact, as Drs. Dodes and Easley point out, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and other European countries do fluoridate. Others do not, but rely on alternate sources, such as naturally occurring fluoride (so there is no need to supplement) as well as fluoridated salt and milk.
Other tactics include using outdated quotes from medical authorities, failure to disclose the institution of alternate methods of fluoride delivery where governments have ceased CWF (such as in Cuba), and lifting quotes from public health organizations out of context, thereby making it seem as if the organization opposes fluoridation when actually it does not.
Opponents of fluoridation, like vaccination opponents, are a tiny but very vocal minority with an outsized effect on public health. Their success is dependent upon a campaign of misinformation couched in the language of science. Unearthing their half-truths and misrepresentations requires time and expertise few public officials or average citizens possess. Fortunately, Dr. Dodes and Dr. Easley have done the heavy lifting for us.
If fluoridation opponents start a water war in your community, be prepared to defend your community’s health with a copy of The Anti-Fluoridationist Threat to Public Health.
http://www.scienceinmedicine.org/policy/papers/AntiFluoridationist.pdf
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