Public Health Water Supply: US City of Cortland Mayor Brian Tobin's educational forum on fluoride

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1 Comment

1. There is no point in your spending an hour and a half watching the Cortland debate on water fluoridation. I was first   involved in that debate since regulating it in US drinking water standards about 30 years ago; nothing new of substance has been said by either side. The dentists tend to overstate the population benefits, which are real, but less than they were in the early days  (1940's-1950's). The anti fluoridation side significantly overstates the hypothetical harm.  Everybody agrees that consuming excessive amounts of fluoride from all sources can cause skeletal fluorosis. That occurs in some distinct parts of the world with warm climates and high natural fluoride exposure. The US Centers for Disease Control recommends drinking water fluoride levels of 0.7 mg/l to reduce the potential for cosmetic mild dental fluorosis, while retaining the benefits. The bottom line is that the cancer and other various and sundry negative health claims  are unsupportable. It is true that incidence of dental caries has gone down even in areas that do not fluoridate water; that is because of generally higher standards of living and better dental care and fluoridated toothpaste. The reduced dental caries benefits from fluoridated drinking water accrue to children from  lower income families who do not practice good dental hygiene nor access dental professionals and do not brush with fluoridated toothpaste. As far as I can tell, the rest of the debate is meaningless.