The Wednesday Wetness

Vox whines   Why RFK Jr. wants to ban fluoride in water, "Kennedy is targeting our best defense against the dentist.

Having undermined the government’s support for childhood vaccines amid the worst measles outbreak in years, he is now targeting another longstanding pillar of American public health: water fluoridation. HHS will convene a board of experts to review the federal government’s recommendation that communities fluoridate their water, the agency announced on Monday. The Environmental Protection Agency is simultaneously launching a review of the science on fluoride’s health effects.

The end result of those inquiries seems to be a foregone conclusion: Kennedy told the Associated Press that he wanted the government to stop recommending fluoridation. He has called fluoride “industrial waste” and blamed it for an array of health conditions, from neurological damage in children to bone cancer. Banning fluoride is an integral part of Kennedy’s campaign to Make America Healthy Again. The news of the reviews came on the same day he appeared in Salt Lake City to praise Utah for being the first state to officially ban water fluoridation.

”It makes no sense to have it in our water supply,” Kennedy told reporters. “I’m very, very proud of this state for being the first state to ban it, and I hope many more will come.”
. . .
Water fluoridation, which the US government has supported since 1950, has long been considered a major public health win. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported as recently as last year that, based on the best available evidence, fluoride in water reduces tooth decay by 25 percent for children and adults. About three in five Americans now drink fluoridated water from their community water system.

Concerns about fluoridated water’s health effects have been around for decades, too, particularly among conspiracy-minded individuals like Kennedy. Like many conspiracies, it has some basis in reality — but the reality is far more nuanced than Kennedy’s new call for banning it outright would suggest.

As neuroscientist Celia Ford covered for Vox last year, questions around fluoridated water began growing after the US National Toxicology Program stated with “moderate” confidence that exposure to elevated fluoride levels could reduce IQ in children.

That’s a finding worth taking seriously — but only in context. The elevated fluoride levels that were studied in the report were above 1.5 milligrams per liter — more than twice the existing federal guidelines for how much fluoride communities should add to their water. The size of the effect was also fairly small, amounting to 1 to 2 points.

To put their context into context. Fluoride doesn't have to be ingested to be effective for cavity prevention. Fluoride is not incorporated into teeth from food and drink. It is absorbed at the tooth surface. Mere contact with fluoridated water, fluoridated toothpaste or fluoride treatments at the dentist do equally well, without risk of neurological damage.

Similar claims of minor IQ reductions in children from Hg in fish were used as a pretext to massively change our economy, challenging coal use, mandating extreme efforts to remove Hg from coal stack gases. Sauce for the goose.

As I have noted before, our local water system doesn't fluoridate, as a small co-op, we are not permitted to, and the risk of accidental poisoning is too high. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Fresh From The Shower up and garnering clicks at The Other McCain on time and under budget.