Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks throughout a marketing campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump at Macomb Group School on Nov. 1 in Warren, Mich. Kennedy has known as for an finish to fluoride within the water provide, a apply 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 tens of millions of cavities, saved tens of billions of {dollars} in dental prices, and made youngsters more healthy.
However in a publish on X on Saturday, former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mentioned certainly one of his first acts as an official in a brand new Trump administration can be to “advise all U.S. water techniques 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 an internet site based by distinguished anti-vaccine advocate and conspiracy theorist Del Bigtree.
Former President Donald Trump appeared receptive to the thought of nixing fluoride from the water provide. “Nicely, I haven’t talked to him about it but, but it surely sounds OK to me,” Trump mentioned Sunday in a phone interview with NBC. “You already know, it’s doable.”
Specialists had been swift to sentence the promise to take away fluoride from the water. “Fluoride has been nicely 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 Youngsters’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 decreasing the variety of cavities in each youngsters and adults. Fluoride works to revive minerals to tooth which can be misplaced when micro organism develop quickly contained in the mouth, notably after consuming sugary snacks.
Greater than a dozen latest research from governments and tutorial establishments world wide have discovered that fluoride reduces tooth decay in youngsters and adults by round 25%, in keeping with the American Dental Affiliation. It’s notably useful for these in lower-income households who could not have entry to fluoride merchandise, comparable to toothpastes and mouth rinses. A research by the Colorado Faculty of Public Well being discovered that including fluoride to the water saved roughly $6.8 billion in dental bills in a single yr alone.
Lately, some research have advised that prime ranges of fluoride would possibly trigger decrease IQ in youngsters. A latest authorities evaluation discovered reasonable proof for the impact, however not on the ranges presently utilized in U.S. ingesting water. The ADA says that the advantages of fluoridation proceed to outweigh any doable dangers.
Stark contrasts
Dr. Amanda Stroud is a dentist who sees the results of fluoride — and its absence — day-after-day 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 nicely water that has no fluoride. The variations are stark, she says.
The kids who’re ingesting water that has fluoride, she says, typically have a superb, stable set of tooth with out cavities. They will take smiling and consuming with out ache without any consideration, “which is a joyful factor at that age,” Stroud says.
When youngsters are ingesting nicely water, it’s a special story. “They might presumably have decay on each tooth,” she says. “After they smile, they may presumably have tooth damaged right down to the gum line. Their tooth 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 tougher. “It is heartbreaking,” she says.
The unique public well being conspiracy idea
Regardless of the clear advantages, conspiracy theories round fluoride have existed for nearly so long as the water has been fluorinated, in keeping with Matthew Dallek, a political historian on the George Washington College.
“In a manner the conspiracy idea 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 website earlier than Election Day.
Placing fluoride in water rapidly 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 idea,” 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 primarily a step on the highway 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 could in some way 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 price of tooth decay amongst youngsters within the nation, and it continues to have a few of the worst oral well being of any state.
Mocked in films
However the motion by no means caught on extra broadly. The fluoride conspiracies had been overtly mocked in films comparable to Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” by which Common Jack Ripper begins a nuclear struggle partly over a perception that fluoride was a communist plot. By the Nineteen Eighties, the difficulty largely died away. “Often there have been anti-fluoride campaigns that may 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 comparable to Kennedy who additionally imagine that childhood vaccines trigger autism and different illnesses. Right now, anti-vaccine advocates push the harms of fluoride together with these of vaccines and chemtrails, supposed trails of chemical compounds left by industrial 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 robust mandate. “Then, nobody will be capable to cease us when he empowers me to scrub up corruption within the federal businesses, and particularly our well being businesses,” he mentioned.
However Offit says that Kennedy’s potential function in main the nation’s public well being might 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.
