Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks throughout a marketing campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump at Macomb Group Faculty on November 01, 2024 in Warren, Michigan. Kennedy has referred to as for an finish to fluoride within the water provide, a follow that saves billions every year in dental care.
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It’s been thought-about one of many best public well being achievements of the twentieth century: by placing a small quantity of fluoride within the water provide, public well being officers have prevented hundreds of thousands of cavities, saved tens of billions of {dollars} in dental prices, and made youngsters more healthy.
However in a submit on X on Saturday, former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated one in every of his first acts as an official in a brand new Trump administration could be to “advise all U.S. water programs to take away fluoride from public water.” He went on to checklist a number of false statements in regards to the results of fluoride after which linked to a video on a web site based by outstanding anti-vaccine advocate and conspiracy theorist Del Bigtree.
Former President Donald Trump appeared receptive to the concept of nixing fluoride from the water provide. “Effectively, I haven’t talked to him about it but, nevertheless it sounds OK to me,” Trump stated Sunday in a phone interview with NBC. “You realize, it’s potential.”
Specialists had been swift to sentence the promise to take away fluoride from the water. “Fluoride has been properly examined. It clearly and definitively decreases cavities, and isn’t related to any clear proof of the persistent illnesses talked about in that tweet,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a researcher and doctor at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a science denialist. He makes up his personal scientific truths and ignores the precise truths,” Offit says.
Fluoride has clear advantages
The science is unambiguous – including fluoride to the water provide has been efficient in reducing the variety of cavities in each youngsters and adults. Fluoride works to revive minerals to enamel which are misplaced when micro organism develop quickly contained in the mouth, notably after consuming sugary snacks.
Greater than a dozen latest research from governments and educational establishments around the globe have discovered that fluoride reduces tooth decay in youngsters and adults by round 25%, in line with the American Dental Affiliation. It’s notably useful for these in lower-income households who could not have entry to fluoride merchandise, corresponding to toothpastes and mouth rinses. A examine by the Colorado Faculty of Public Well being discovered that including fluoride to the water saved roughly $6.8 billion {dollars} in dental bills in a single yr alone.
Lately, some research have instructed that top ranges of fluoride would possibly trigger decrease IQ in youngsters. A latest authorities overview discovered average proof for the impact, however not on the ranges at present utilized in U.S. ingesting water. The ADA says that the advantages of fluoridation proceed to outweigh any potential dangers.
Stark contrasts
Dr. Amanda Stroud is a dentist who sees the consequences of fluoride – and its absence – on daily basis in her job working as dental director at a well being nonprofit in western North Carolina. AppHealth serves youngsters who’ve fluoridated metropolis water and others who’ve properly water that has no fluoride. The variations are stark, she says.
The youngsters who’re ingesting water that has fluoride, she says, typically have a superb, strong set of enamel with out cavities. They will take smiling and consuming with out ache as a right, “which is a joyful factor at that age,” Stroud says.
When youngsters are ingesting properly water, it’s a unique story. “They may presumably have decay on each tooth,” she says. “After they smile, they might presumably have enamel damaged all the way down to the gum line. Their enamel are showing brown or mottled.”
And that may be a painful situation that makes brushing and maintaining a healthy diet meals like fruit and veggies harder. “It is heartbreaking,” she says.
The unique public well being conspiracy principle
Regardless of the clear advantages, conspiracy theories round fluoride have existed for nearly so long as the water has been fluorinated, in line with Matthew Dallek, a political historian on the George Washington College.
“In a means the conspiracy principle about fluoride within the ingesting water is among the authentic public well being conspiracy theories,” he says.
Fluoride was first launched in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which additionally occurs to be the Trump marketing campaign’s final rally web site earlier than election day.
Placing fluoride in water shortly unfold across the nation as soon as the advantages had been clear in Grand Rapids.
However proper from the beginning, wild theories in regards to the chemical had been circulating. “It served as an nearly excellent conspiracy principle,” he explains. Fluoride was unseen, mandated by the federal government, and current in faucet water, a substance that just about everybody was ingesting.
Dallek says that the theories had been notably pushed within the Sixties by the John Birch Society, a far proper group that alleged communists had infiltrated a lot of the federal government. The group believed that “any step in the direction of authorities interventions was basically a step on the street to a communist nation,” he says. Consequently, they “latched on to fluoride as a part of a communist plot.”
The claims round fluoride had been diffuse, however included the concepts that it might by some means be used for thoughts management, or that it was a chemical weapon designed to poison individuals. Initially, not less than, the concepts appeared to seek out some traction with the general public.
“There have been actions that sprouted up all around the nation to cease fluoridation within the ingesting water,” Dallek says.
In 1966, Honolulu’s authorities vetoed a measure to incorporate fluoride within the water. Fluoride nonetheless isn’t utilized in Hawaii and a 2015 report discovered that the state had the very best charge of tooth-decay amongst youngsters within the nation, and it continues to have a number of the worst oral well being of any state.
Mocked in motion pictures
However the motion by no means caught on extra broadly. The fluoride conspiracies had been overtly mocked in motion pictures corresponding to Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” through which Basic Jack Ripper begins a nuclear battle partly over a perception that fluoride was a communist plot. By the Eighties, the problem largely died away. “Often there have been anti-fluoride campaigns that might pop up across the nation,” Dallek says.
However within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, fluoride conspiracy theories have resurfaced, typically pushed by people corresponding to Kennedy who additionally consider that childhood vaccines trigger autism and different illnesses. As we speak, anti-vaccine advocates push the harms of fluoride together with these of vaccines and chemtrails, supposed trails of chemical substances left by business airliners to hurt individuals and the atmosphere.
Kennedy on Monday posted a video urging his supporters to vote for Trump so he’s elected with a powerful mandate. “Then, nobody will be capable of cease us when he empowers me to scrub up corruption within the federal businesses, and particularly our well being businesses,” he stated.
However Offit says that Kennedy’s potential function in main the nation’s public well being may show disastrous, notably for younger individuals who profit from each fluoride and vaccines. “It’s solely the kids who will endure his ignorance,” Offit says.