Misinformation campaigns increasingly target the cavity-fighting mineral, prompting communities to reverse mandates. Dentists are enraged. Parents are caught in the middle.
The culture wars have a new target: your teeth.
Communities across the U.S. are ending public water fluoridation programs, often spurred by groups that insist that people should decide whether they want the mineral — long proven to fight cavities — added to their water supplies.
The push to flush it from water systems seems to be increasingly fueled by pandemic-related mistrust of government oversteps and misleading claims, experts say, that fluoride is harmful.
“The anti-fluoridation movement gained steam with Covid,” said Dr. Meg Lochary, a pediatric dentist in Union County, North Carolina. “We’ve seen an increase of people who either don’t want fluoride or are skeptical about it.”
There should be no question about the dental benefits of fluoride, Lochary and other experts say. Major public health groups, including the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, support the use of fluoridated water. All cite studies that show it reduces tooth decay by 25%.
You ever hear the joke about an American tourist only drinking alcohol on a trip to Mexico, because you can’t trust the water, and then someone asking them where they got their ice cubes?
On the other hand, at least back when I was there as an American teenager in the 90s, avoiding the water in Mexico was a good plan.
Parents: It’s okay to drink the water in this town, we drove past a water treatment plant.
Me: Absolutely no way.
Guess who didn’t regret saying “absolutely no way?”
No but that’s pretty good
Well, the thing about your friend is that even if he were only drinking boiled well water or whatever, he’s still consuming plenty of the metaphorical ice cubes.
I’d say that’s the only real point the anti-flouridation crowd has, really. Even if they want to opt out, they can’t. Even if their local water utility stops flouridation, anything shipped in will still have it, be it bottled water, frozen meals, anything that uses tap water in production, really.
The alcohol kills the microbes in the melting ice cubes. So it’s not a problem. Also, if you drink the kind of alcoholic beverages that require ice cubes you probably deserve the shits.