Kris Maher
Appearances
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
A lot of emotions get raised when it comes down to people's health, you know, their children's health, and it can be very emotionally charged.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
It's found in black tea. It's found in different kinds of fish, shrimp, raisins, apparently.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
Initially, what was noticed was that people had brown staining on their teeth, which is now called dental fluorosis. So this is like a cosmetic thing that can happen to your teeth if you have too much fluoride.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
Well, dental health was a lot different back then. Just the number of people who had a complete set of teeth in their mouth was small. It was far more common just to get your teeth pulled. It was far more common for infections and abscesses and serious health consequences to follow on from that. In about 1950, the American Dental Association made its first statement supporting fluoridation.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
And they just kind of started rolling it out to different communities.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
And, you know, by the 60s and 70s, that was expanding. So people were getting fluoride in their toothpaste. They were getting fluoride treatments, mouthwash, all kinds of other ways to get fluoride.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
Fluoride helps to remineralize your teeth, so, you know, prevents cavities by basically making the enamel stronger. So, yeah, and I think, you know, there were many studies that said that cavities were reduced by 50% or more, you know, so it was having a huge effect. The CDC said that water fluoridation is one of the greatest, most significant public health achievements of the 20th century.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
I have done a lot of reporting on water, but really, to be honest, fluoride never really hit my radar as an issue until last year.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
There have been scientists who have opposed fluoridation from the start in 1945 when it was first put into water intentionally. And some of those people have continued to oppose it for years. Why were they skeptical? Fluoride is the only thing that's added to water. That is to treat people, you know, health. It's not to make the water safe for people.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
The National Toxicology Program is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. It's a group of federal scientists who look at whether substances or chemicals are toxic. So they investigate chemicals for the federal government.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
So children that had been exposed to fluoride at higher levels had IQ deficits. So fairly earth-shattering for this conclusion to come out.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
There's a shift in tone where I think there's just more credence to the position that, you know, fluoride may have been a good thing in the past, but it just may not be necessary now. It's really gaining some momentum.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
The EPA does not mandate fluoride in water, but what it does do is set the optimal level. So the judge said that the EPA had to take some kind of regulatory action. You know, he didn't say specifically what the EPA had to do, but he was saying that this is an unreasonable risk. You've got to take some sort of action. I mean, the action could be warning people that there's a risk.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
It could be lowering the recommended level. So this was a pretty groundbreaking ruling. It caught a lot of people's attention.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
Back in November, he tweeted that the Trump administration would advise all public water systems to get fluoride out of the water. So on day one, you know, Trump was going to get fluoride out of the water.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
There's hundreds of places that have meetings scheduled that are planning to take a look at this issue. So hundreds around the country, probably in, I would guess, nearly every state or every state.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
It's a city of 21,000 people. It's about an hour east of Tampa. They had been wrestling with the question of whether to keep fluoride in their water.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
The two sides of the building were all glass, so one side looked out onto some Little League fields that were pretty new. Lights were just coming on as the meeting was starting.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
He is a... Retired dentist in his 60s. He's also the president of the American Fluoridation Society. So he's one of the most outspoken proponents of fluoride in the country. He often wears a t-shirt that says fluoridation? Question mark? F yeah. So that's kind of an expression of his passion for this subject.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
He showed some slides that showed some mouths that had been really horribly decayed. And I think those were striking for people to see. That's horrible. We don't like to see that at all.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
He and other dentists argue that especially low-income people may really be the ones who will lose out from fluoride being taken out of water because they don't have the best access to dental care necessarily, maybe not even to fluoride toothpaste. From that perspective, this is potentially very risky for a large segment of the population.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
Really what they're saying is that, you know, it's not a financial issue. It's the patients that they treat. It's the suffering that they see. They don't want people to get cavities.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
No, I mean, you take a town like Bartow or some of these other small communities, they're not spending a ton of money on fluoride or this chemical that creates the fluoride. They're spending maybe $20,000 a year. So it's not a tremendous amount of money.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
It's a pretty historic development. Going forward in Utah, cities are not going to be able to add fluoride to their municipal drinking water.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
thing I'm looking for is definitely to see if there's going to be some federal guidance from EPA or from RFK Jr. himself or the Department of Health and Human Services telling public water systems to either take fluoride out. Just as an advisory, I think that would have a really significant effect.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
I think right now the anti-fluoride movement has the upper hand. There seem to be more places, you know, first of all, more places are putting it to a vote. And then when they do, they're voting the fluoride out. Even Johnny Johnson will say he's scrambling. He's working constantly to try to address these, put out these fires around the country and to try to fight this fight.
The Journal.
The Fight Over Fluoride
And, you know, I think he's losing more of these battles than he ever did.
WSJ What’s News
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So the opposition to fluoridation really ramped up last year. There was a report by a group called the National Toxicology Program, which is part of the federal government. And they took a look at some human health studies involving fluoride. And their conclusion, which they said was with moderate confidence, was that
WSJ What’s News
Markets Plummet as Concerns Around U.S. Recession Grow
The greater the fluoride exposure, the lower the IQ scores for youth that had been exposed or their mothers had been exposed. And then a month later, a federal judge told the EPA that it had to take some action because of the findings of this study. But for a long time, the mainstream belief was that there were no problems with this whatsoever.
WSJ What’s News
Markets Plummet as Concerns Around U.S. Recession Grow
It was effective at helping to prevent cavities, tooth decay. A lot of dental groups, the American Dental Association, some health organizations were In fact, the EPA and the CDC have always been in favor of fluoridation, and the CDC has considered water fluoridation one of the top health achievements of the 20th century.
WSJ What’s News
Markets Plummet as Concerns Around U.S. Recession Grow
Back in the fall, when the federal judge told the EPA that they had to take some sort of action, the EPA had said that it was going to be filing an appeal. But that was before the Trump administration came in and Robert F. Kennedy became the top health official in the United States. So it's unclear right now what position the Trump administration is going to take.