Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. hates it, and said he wants to see it disappear from America’s water supply.
And there’s currently is a bill in the Senate that would make it illegal to use.
The controversial substance? Fluoride.
Senate Bill 2653 proposes a prohibition on adding fluoride to public water supplies, with a new section in the Texas Health and Safety Code(341.033(j)) making it illegal to add the mineral supplement.
According to information from the Centers for Disease Control, about 63 percent of Americans currently receive fluoridated water in their homes.
At least a dozen states have laws mandating fluoridation for larger municipalities, but Texas is not one of them.
In Texas, local governments control fluoridation policy, and city councils or water supply corporations can begin or end fluoridation at their discretion, or as dictated in their bylaws, and local fluoridation ordinances differ widely from city to city.
Why all the fuss?
The Concho Observer wanted to look at the history of fluoridation nationally and locally, and identify the reasons for mistrust of the practice by segments of the public.
Beginning around 1901, dentists in the United States and abroad began to observe lower rates of tooth decay in people with distinctively-stained teeth.
Dr. Frederick S. McKay, of Colorado Springs, began to catalogue what locals called “Colorado brown stain” and spent decades investigating the phenomenon.
Between 1914 and 1925, the first drinking water standards were enacted in the U.S, and more-and-more dentists around the world saw for themselves the connection between “dental mottling” and protection from tooth decay.
Those researching the subject had yet to identify any single factor in the drinking water from one place to another that would explain why some people seem to have the brown coloration.
A big leap forward came when Dr. F.L. Robertson of Bauxite, Arkansas, noticed an unusual number of mottled-enamel cases in local children born after 1909.
After looking into the matter, he learned that coincided with the community’s adoption of a new water-supply well.
McKay eventually linked the “Colorado brown stain” to water sources high in a mineral called fluoride.
During the 1930s, research by Dr. H. Trendley Dean helped figure out that an “ideal” concentration of fluoride was between 1- and 4-ppm, (0.0001 – 0.0004%), which expressed as a percentage would be between one-ten-thousandth and four-ten-thousandths.
Less-than 1 ppm, you risked losing some of the benefit; more than 4 ppm, staining would most likely result.
“The Town Without A Toothache”
As it happens, many places in the continental United States are “blessed” with naturally-occurring fluoride, especially in Texas.
In December of 1942, Collier’s magazine featured an article titled “The Town Without a Toothache,” which gained widespread attention when Reader’s Digest republished it the following year.
The story highlighted the cavity-preventing attributes of naturally-fluoridated water in Hereford, Texas.
A historical marker in that town reads:
Hereford’s “miracle water” was brought to national fame in 1941 when Dr. Edward Taylor, State Dental Officer, told the American Dental Association that tooth decay was almost unknown here. This ideal situation had been discovered by a local dentist, Dr. George Heard, originally from Alabama. In a cross-section survey, dentists found that few local people had dental cavities. Hereford’s mineral-rich water and soil are thought to prevent tooth decay. Demand arose for Hereford water to be shipped all over the U.S. and to foreign nations. (1967)
Despite studies and evidence pointing to the benefits of fluoridated drinking water, this approach isn’t without its skeptics and potential detractors. For example, the cost of water fluoridation has been estimated at $0.60 to $1 per person per year — a noteworthy price for something that, many critics point out, isn’t strictly necessary due to abundant alternative fluoride sources.
One of the first three cities in the United States to implement fluoridation was Marshall, Texas, in 1946. After a six-year study of 6-year olds in that town showed 57-percent fewer dental cavities were found than in youngsters in similar cities with fluoridation.
In 1954, Wichita falls voted to add fluoride but they discontinued it after a few years. (Until adding it back in 1973.)
Companies began adding fluoride dental products in the United States, around that time, in August of 1960, the American Dental Association made the unprecedented move of endorsing a commercial toothpaste.
Crest, a toothpaste made by Proctor & Gamble that containing fluoride, was cited as “an effective decay preventative agent.”
The major endorsement caused P&G’s stock price to shoot-up $8 in a single day.
The association went on to say that while Crest was found to help combat decay, it was no cure-all, “nor would it substitute for fluoridation of community water supplies.”
“Fluoridation, which is supported by exhaustive long-term studies, remains by far the most effective means for obtaining the benefits of fluorides.”
What About San Angelo? And Controversy?
The first effort locally to fluoridate the water began in 1959 when Dr. R.O. McWilliams, president of the San Angelo District Dental Society stated that Lake Nasworthy water didn’t contain “nearly enough fluoride according to official tests.”
Talks that year stalled, but were still being discussed in July of 1960, when Dr. McWilliams defended his position, pointing out that more than 2,500 communities add fluoride to their water, and another 7 million live in areas where it occurs naturally.
The idea had sparked some controversy again in March of 1961, when one side charged that the move was a “communist plot to introduce a mind-control chemical into the water,” while the other touted the proposed program as “the most practical and effective public health measure yet discovered for the prevention of dental decay.”
It It Really Poison?
One of the major impediments fluoridation faced was the fact that from the late 1800s, up through the 1970s, sodium fluoride was used extensively in various pest-control applications, including cockroach powders, and as a stomach poison for plant-feeding insects.
Since 1915, it had been widely used by farmers to prevent lice in poultry populations.
Those same farmers began to give it to birds as a supplement after noticing it improved bone strength and eggshell quality.
During the 1961 debate, one protester summed-up his feelings in a letter to the editor writing:
If Dr. McWilliams wants to consume sodium fluoride and wishes to give it to his family, I am perfectly willing for him to have all of such roach poison as he wishes to take.
I do not think it should be forced upon him or his family. I do think Dr. McWilliams should allow other citizens the right of taking care of their family as they see fit. Such paternalism as (McWilliams) exhibits in fronting for the interests desiring to force sodium fluoride upon San Angelo people is just an opening wedge to socialized medicine.
Let us hope he simply has not considered the final results of the wedge he is trying to force into a free government for the people and by the people.
If Dr. McWilliams cannot buy his own sodium fluoride, I will gladly provide him with a supply which will last for years instead of raising the taxes in this city to put in our water supply.
— TAXPAYER
According to McWilliams, at that time, the cost would amount to a little-less than 10-cents per resident, and the cost of the machinery to do the job would be around $2,500.
Adding tiny quantities of sodium fluoride to water systems was first recommended by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1962, based on research demonstrating the practice helped prevent tooth decay.
The agency suggested municipal water systems should aim for a fluoride concentration between 0.7 and 1.2 ppm, depending on local water variables.
The Abilene City Council approved fluoridation of its water supply by a 4-3 vote on May 28, 1964.
The vote followed a public hearing, and the program was expected to be in place 60 to 90 days later.
In October that same year, the Fort Worth City Council voted 8-1 add fluoride to the water supply. It was estimated the cost would be $30,000 the first year, and $26,000 annually thereafter.
Arlington followed in February of 1965, but Dallas didn’t OK the move until late January of 1966. It appears Dallas City Council members didn’t want to make the decision, so they called for a special election on Jan. 29, when 27,089 voted in favor and only 10,940 voted against.
Fluoridation was still an issue in San Angelo’s city council races that year.
in February of 1966, the Associated Press carried a report from Washington, D.C. where a symposium was held for critics of fluoridating water, who suggested that reports critical of the practice were being suppressed.
Many of the attendees are doctors and academics.
Dr. G.L. Waldbott of Detroit said the medical profession “remains uninformed on how fluoride affects the human body.”
While Alfred Taylor, a biochemist from Ojai, Calif., said the fluoridation program “rests today on opinions, on authority, together with a[n] [associated] discrediting and vilification of nonconformists.”
The gathering was called by the National Health Federation, a group founded in 1955 which still exists today, and lobbies for natural medicine.
Taylor, who was one of the first to graduate from Oregon State University with Ph.D. in biology, went on to work at the Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas where he did foundational cancer research.
Taylor said there should be a thorough investigation carried out independently in several laboratories of the “possible growth promoting effect of various levels of sodium and other fluorides on cancer issues.”
At the time the federation was meeting, officials from the US Public Health Service and American Dental Assn. were holding a pro-fluoridation session in nearby Arlington, Va., which was reported on Page 2.
The issue had come up again in early 1973, when the City Commission heard reports from local appointed to investigate the matter further.
Dr. Lattimore Cavness, DDM, and Jerry Delashaw, health planner with the Concho Valley Council of Governments who told city officials there was no need to add fluoride to San Angelo’s water. It had plenty already.
Cavness said health authorities had revised the “optimum” amount of fluorides in drinking water had been revised-downward, from 1 part per million, to 0.7 ppm.
Since tests showed the local water’s fluoride levels hovered between 0.4 and .07 parts per million, the study group decided it would not we “feasible” to undertake a supplemental program here.
by July of 1977, 6,795 communities in America were fluoridating their water.
In 1980, state and local officals throughout Texas were questioning the practice. The fluoride added to most toothpastes combined with fluoride added to water to create higher-than-recommended levels.
Also, many places in Texas have high naturally-occurring fluoride, and some of them were investigating the cost of equipment to remove some of it from their water.
- Andrews – 4.9 ppm
- Armstrong WSC – Holland – 4.5
- Bardwell – 6.1
- Covington Water Works – 8.0
- Crims Chapel WSC – 8.8
- Seagraves – 4.9
