According to a recent study, the established public health benefits of fluoridating water may have been lessened by the widespread use of mouthwashes and toothpaste with added fluoride in recent decades.
However, the researchers cautioned that it would be erroneous for communities to use the results as justification for delaying the addition of the cavity-fighting mineral to their water systems.
The study’s co-author and a professor of health sciences research at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, Anne-Marie Glenny, stated that there was no evidence to support the idea that water fluoridation programs should be discontinued where they were already in place.
Hundreds of U.S. municipalities, from Amery, Wisconsin, to Union County, North Carolina, are opting out of water fluoridation.
City officials frequently use the right to medical freedom as an excuse, arguing that citizens, not governments, should determine what should and shouldn’t be added to the local water system. Opponents of fluoride also point out that their children’s IQs could be impacted.
A federal court in California decided only last month that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should tighten water fluoridation laws even though he was unable to determine for sure if fluoridated water posed a risk to public health.
Benefits of fluoride toothpaste
The new study compared tooth decay in children living in areas that added fluoride to their water supply with communities that didn’t. It was published on Thursday in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The analysis of over 157 papers was included in the study.
Before toothpaste enriched with fluoride became widely accessible in the middle of the 1970s, studies involving over 5,700 children revealed that fluoridating water systems decreased the average number of tooth decaying by 2.1 per kid.
Studies was out after 1975, involving close to 3,000 children in Australia and the United Kingdom, calculated a lower benefit of 0.24 fewer baby teeth decaying each kid. That amounts to a tooth’s quarter.
Glenny stated, “The majority of the studies on water fluoridation are over 50 years old.” Nevertheless, “new research indicates that water fluoridation is advantageous,” she said.
Teeth benefited clearly by adding fluoride to water before the mineral was widely available to consumers in toothpaste form. Children’s cavities fell by 60% in less than ten years in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which in 1945 became the world’s first town to add fluoride to its water supply.
In 2024, almost 75% of Americans have tap water that has been treated with fluoride, at the authorized dosage of 0.7 mg/liter.
The American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are among the prominent public health organizations that advocate for fluoridated water. They all report research demonstrating a 25% reduction in tooth decay.
However, new studies have raised the possibility that fluoridating water might be harmful to people’s health. According to a May research, pregnant mothers with greater fluoride levels reported that their children were more likely to exhibit neurobehavioral symptoms by the time they were three years old, had temper tantrums, complain of nagging headaches and stomachaches, and other symptoms.
Nevertheless, decades’ worth of safety data supporting more fluoride have not changed, according to Dr. Johnny Johnson, a pediatric dentist and president of the American Fluoridation Society.
He asserted that fluoridating water can still effectively lower cavities. “It is safe for everyone, in my opinion.”
Janet Clarkson, a clinical effectiveness professor at the University of Dundee in Scotland and another co-author of the current analysis, suggested that the study may “open up a dialogue” to better understand the effects of fluoridating public water systems.
According to Clark, water fluoridation can prevent cavities, but it cannot compensate for excessive sugar intake or poor dental hygiene practices. “Any oral health preventive program should probably adopt a multifaceted, multiagency approach.”
