Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks throughout a marketing campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump at Macomb Neighborhood 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 annually in dental care.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photographs
conceal caption
toggle caption
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photographs
It’s been thought of 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 thousands and thousands of cavities, saved tens of billions of {dollars} in dental prices, and made kids more healthy.
However in a put up on X on Saturday, former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mentioned one among his first acts as an official in a brand new Trump administration could be to “advise all U.S. water methods 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 concept of nixing fluoride from the water provide. “Properly, I haven’t talked to him about it but, nevertheless it sounds OK to me,” Trump mentioned Sunday in a phone interview with NBC. “You understand, it’s doable.”
Specialists have 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 power ailments 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 decreasing the variety of cavities in each kids and adults. Fluoride works to revive minerals to enamel which are misplaced when micro organism develop quickly contained in the mouth, significantly after consuming sugary snacks.
Greater than a dozen current research from governments and educational establishments all over the world have discovered that fluoride reduces tooth decay in kids and adults by round 25%, in keeping with the American Dental Affiliation. It’s significantly helpful for these in lower-income households who could not have entry to fluoride merchandise, comparable 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 in dental bills in a single 12 months alone.
Lately, some research have instructed that prime ranges of fluoride may trigger decrease IQ in kids. A current authorities overview discovered average proof for the impact, however not on the ranges at present utilized in U.S. consuming 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 — each 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 consuming water that has fluoride, she says, typically have a great, strong set of enamel with out cavities. They’ll take smiling and consuming with out ache without any consideration, “which is a joyful factor at that age,” Stroud says.
When kids are consuming nicely water, it’s a unique story. “They might presumably have decay on each tooth,” she says. “Once they smile, they may presumably have enamel damaged right 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 vegetables and fruit tougher. “It is heartbreaking,” she says.
The unique public well being conspiracy concept
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 concept about fluoride within the consuming water is without doubt one of the unique 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 shortly unfold across the nation as soon as the advantages have been clear in Grand Rapids.
However proper from the beginning, wild theories in regards to the chemical have been circulating. “It served as an virtually excellent conspiracy concept,” 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 have been significantly 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 direction of authorities interventions was basically a step on the street to a communist nation,” he says. Because of this, they “latched on to fluoride as a part of a communist plot.”
The claims round fluoride have been diffuse, however included the concepts that it could one way or the other be used for thoughts management, or that it was a chemical weapon designed to poison individuals. Initially, at the least, the concepts appeared to search out some traction with the general public.
“There have been actions that sprouted up all around the nation to cease fluoridation within the consuming 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 kids within the nation, and it continues to have among 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 have been overtly mocked in motion pictures comparable to Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” through which Basic Jack Ripper begins a nuclear battle partially over a perception that fluoride was a communist plot. By the Nineteen Eighties, the problem largely died away. “Sometimes there have been anti-fluoride campaigns that will 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 ailments. As we speak, anti-vaccine advocates push the harms of fluoride together with these of vaccines and chemtrails, supposed trails of chemical compounds left by business airliners to hurt individuals and the surroundings.
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 wash up corruption within the federal companies, and particularly our well being companies,” he mentioned.
However Offit says that Kennedy’s potential position in main the nation’s public well being might show disastrous, significantly for younger individuals who profit from each fluoride and vaccines. “It’s solely the youngsters who will endure his ignorance,” Offit says.
