Should fluoride be in our water?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has put the decades-old debate over water fluoridation back on the table. As President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, he might become the most powerful public health figure in the US who believes we should take fluoride out of our water. Currently, it’s up to municipalities to set their own water fluoride doses — most of them set them around 0.7 milligrams per liter of water — so it’s unclear whether a federal agency will be able to change course on water fluoridation in the US. About 63 percent of Americans have fluoridated water. Millions of Americans also drink water that is naturally fluoridated at even higher levels.
The video explains how this renewed attention on water fluoridation is happening at a time when new science is emerging on the topic. Historically, water fluoridation has done wonders for combatting tooth decay, primarily in children. But scientists are looking into whether it’s still having the same effect today, given how widespread topical fluoride and regular dental care is now.
There is a growing scientific debate about whether the doses we are exposed to in the US are safe for developing brains.
Part of the difficulty of the science on fluoride is that when it comes to studying fluoride’s risks, there has never been a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study — the gold standard in science for proving causation. All of the studies we mention in the video are observational. This lack of study is typical in epidemiology when researching something that could be harmful in some doses. But surprisingly, there’s never been this kind of trial on the benefits of water fluoridation, either. However, the University of North Carolina is currently conducting the first-ever trial of this kind on the benefits of water fluoridation.
It’s worth noting that this video talks about studies that look at the link between childhood IQ and high fluoride levels. These types of studies are done on a population level — so, averaging IQ across a large group. The study of IQ is problematic in some scenarios. But one expert I spoke to explained why it’s the best tool epidemiologists have for doing this type of research.
“Historically, there have been concerns about how IQ is racially biased,“ Bruce Lanphear, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University, told me. “But in fact, probably of all the different measures we use for brain function broadly, IQ is the optimal one we use. In contrast with some of the behavioral scores … which are most typically based upon parent report. And those are valuable and they’ve been validated. But IQ is not only validated, it’s been shown to work consistently, at least within homogeneous groups.”