BOSTON activists are pressuring the state to ban the practice of adding fluoride compounds to public drinking water as this amounts to mass medication without public consent.
A proposal put to a legislative body on Monday would ban the practice. Submitted by Senator Barbara L’Italy, D-Andover, on behalf of a voter, it would end a decades-long public health campaign aimed at preventing tooth decay.
“Medical mandates like this are a policy that purports to be science,” said Karen Spencer, a Gloucester activist involved in anti-fluoridation campaigns. “No government has the right to put anything into our water supply that is harmful to people’s health. It’s immoral. “
Spencer, one of several people who supported the ban during Monday’s hearing, said studies were finding increasing negative health effects – such as gastrointestinal ailments, thyroid disease, kidney disease, and even autism – with the addition of fluoride to the water get in touch.
But dr. John Fisher, a Salem dentist and a trustee of the Massachusetts Dental Society, said the health benefits were undeniable.
“Drinking fluoridated water keeps teeth strong and reduces tooth decay in children and adults by about 25 percent,” he told the Joint Public Health Committee. “Fluoridation of community water has not only been shown to reduce tooth decay, it has also reduced dental costs, resulting in results that have an important impact on overall health.”
Fisher, chairman of the Better Oral Health for Massachusetts Coalition, said the research showed that fluoridated water protects teeth without causing health risks. The American Dental Association, the American Medical Association, and the National Cancer Institute advocate the practice.
Fisher said the internet was full of misinformation about fluoridation in water.
“There’s a lot of distortion out there,” he said. “I think these are generally good people to believe what they are saying, but if they actually read the studies they may be more inclined to accept the evidence for community water fluoridation as safe, efficient, and effective.”
At least 140 public water systems in the state, which serve more than 4 million people, add fluoride compounds, according to the Department of Health. Most have been doing this since the 1950s. The water in Newburyport and West Newbury has been fluoridated since 1969. Around 1,000 Newbury residents receive fluoride-containing water, according to the DPH. Groveland water has been fluorinated since 1995.
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority – which serves more than 2.5 million people in 61 communities including Marblehead, Peabody, Swampscott, and Lynn – has fluorinated water for more than 30 years.
Health impact concerns have deterred several North Shore and Merrimack Valley cities – including Georgetown, Merrimac, and Rowley – from doing so.
Other communities like Rockport and Gloucester have voted to keep using it.
The practice dates back to the 1940s when scientists discovered that people whose water supplies had higher concentrations of the naturally occurring chemical had less tooth decay.
After World War II, despite fierce opposition, health authorities launched a public campaign to supply the public water supply with fluoride. Sometime in the 1950s, some viewed such programs as part of a communist conspiracy.
Many fluoride treatments these days come from industrial by-products made by aluminum companies that wholesale fluoride compounds in liquid or powder form for around $ 1.10 a pound. It is approved for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.
“This stuff is not made in a pharmaceutical lab and dispensed by a doctor,” said Chris Martel, an Amesbury anti-fluoridation campaigner. “It’s an industrial by-product that is scrubbed from factory chimneys in China and dumped indiscriminately into our water supply.”
Amesbury stopped adding fluoride in 2009 due to concerns about its quality. Two years later, local residents voted to stop the practice entirely.
“If you want fluoride treatment, get it from your dentist,” Martel said. “Introducing that into the municipal water supply makes no sense.”
Concerns about the harmful effects of overfluoridation prompted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce the recommended fluoride level in water supplies to 0.7 milligrams per liter in 2011.
Four years later, the recommended level was lowered again.
The changes were prompted in part by a federal study suggesting too much fluoride stains children’s teeth and a finding that many Americans get fluoride from sources other than drinking water.
The MWRA and other communities lowered their fluoride levels.
In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences recommended that the US Environmental Protection Agency lower the maximum fluoride content in drinking water to below 4 milligrams. It warned that drinking water containing fluoride in this concentration for life could increase the risk of fractures.
Currently, 70 percent of Americans get water from systems that add fluoride, according to the U.S. Department of Health.
The CDC has named the fluoridation of water supplies to reduce voids “one of the leading public health achievements of the last century”. But 200 municipalities across the country have stopped the practice in the past decade.
Most of the country’s major cities are still using fluoride, but at least one, Portland, Oregon, voted to end its use in 2013.
Christian M. Wade runs the Massachusetts Statehouse for the North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at [email protected].
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