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Calgary fluoride activists urge city officials to speed up the release of a belated cost analysis report on water fluoridation
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June 25, 2020 • June 25, 2020 • Read for 2 minutes • 12 comments 
Calgary City Council is re-considering fluoride in Calgary’s tap water after studies show more cavities in Calgary children. Photo by Gavin Young /Postal media
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Calgary dentists and fluoride activists are calling on city officials to speed up the release of a cost analysis report on water fluoridation delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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According to Dr. Bruce Yaholnitsky, president of the Alberta Dental Association and college president, the issue of reintroducing fluoride to Calgary water became even more pressing as the pandemic has deterred many from receiving routine dental care. He says children and seniors are most at risk.
“Before the pandemic, two-thirds of the daily surgeries at the Calgary Children’s Hospital were dental. Then we come to the pandemic and all of these elective surgeries have closed. The backlog is now out of control, ”said Yaholnitsky, who runs a dental practice in Calgary’s Mission neighborhood.
“If we had some fluoride, would it have eliminated it? No. But would it have alleviated that problem? Certainly.”
In October 2019, a city council committee recommended that the city council instruct the city government to prepare a cost analysis report on the reintroduction of fluoride to be submitted to the Priority and Finance Committee by June 30.
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The release of this report, as well as any others due in the first two quarters of 2020, was postponed in March after the city council decided to postpone much of its planned business due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to a city spokesman, the fluoride report will now go to the Priority and Finance Committee on December 1st.
Several councilors did not immediately respond to Postmedia inquiries, including Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart, who filed the motion in 2019 that reopened the discussion on fluoridation in the town hall.
The delayed report is the latest in Calgary’s decade-long debate about fluoridation. The city first began adding fluoride to drinking water in 1991, but the practice stopped after a vote in the council in 2011. In two referendums, in 1989 and 1999, Calgarians voted in favor of fluoridation.
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Juliet Guichon, president of Calgarians For Kids’ Health activist group, said December was too long to wait for the report’s results.
“This is not a file to drop off the table. This is a priority, ”Guichon said.
“People of all walks of life in Calgary suffer unnecessarily from the unjustified removal of these public health protections.”
She pointed to the support of the practice by Canadian public health officials and groups like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as evidence that fluoride is safe and effective.
Yaholnitsky said important fluoridation measures should be taken soon in case a second wave of COVID-19 further restricts access to dental care, and said fluoride is a proven preventative measure.
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“I understand the dilemma that the city council went to the administration and asked what they could put on hold because things weren’t going as usual,” he said. “But I think it needs to be looked at much more critically.”
The dentist said the science surrounding fluoridation shows that the practice is safe as long as the fluoride concentration is kept around 0.7ppm. Currently, Calgary fluoride levels are in the range of approximately 0.25 to 0.4 ppm without additional fluoridation.
“We have consistently seen that it is able to reduce the level of tooth decay in the population,” said Yaholnitsky.
Twitter: @jasonferring
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