Inside Medicine: Fluoridation benefits are indisputable
Sarah hates going to the dentist and, frankly, I don’t blame her. At 13, she has 23 fillings, and from the looks of her teeth, she needs several more.
Since these are her adult teeth, she’ll need to live with them the rest of her life. Tooth decay is not inevitable; it’s preventable. The suburban town where Sarah lives provides no fluoride in the water because the community isn’t willing to foot a tiny bill now to prevent big expenses and health problems later.
From a public health perspective, few steps are cheaper and offer more health benefits than fluoridating water. For the past 50 years, fluoride has been a mainstay of urban water systems in most of the nation; as a result, tooth decay has dropped to the point that experts are reconsidering how many dentists we need to train.
The exception is California. We’ll soon be putting up recruiting stations in places like Massachusetts and New York to get dentists who are now sitting around waiting for a child to come in with tooth decay.
I suggested to Sarah’s mother that she needs to alter Sarah’s diet to cut down on sugar and candy, and also to give all her children oral fluoride.
“You’re not one of them,” she said.
“One of them?”
“Yes, one of those socialists trying to poison us with fluoride?”
I was taken aback. Are these the same socialists who believe in health care reform and that health care is a basic human right? I explained that Sarah’s health was suffering, that fluoride is a naturally occurring chemical and that in small doses, it is proved to prevent tooth decay. She took Sarah and left in a huff.
The next day, I received a package with a book inside from Sarah’s mother:”A Common Sense Look at Water Fluoridation.” The book’s author, M.S. Louis J. Ronsivalli, claims to dispel “reckless and unsubstantiated claims that water fluoridation prevents tooth decay.” I read the book carefully, and his argument is nonsense.
To prepare this column, I again reviewed the science on fluoridation. There’s no question that at the very low levels placed in drinking water, fluoride has substantial benefits in preventing tooth decay. That, in turn, prevents loss of teeth, time away from school and anesthesia-related risks associated with treatment.
While it is true that too much fluoride can cause some health problems, so can too much water, too much sleep and too much food. At appropriate doses, it is enormously helpful. Even in times of economic hardship, we need to insist that our governments protect the public’s health, and this includes the fluoridation of water.