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    • What is flour? What you need to know about drinking water in Arizona
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    What is flour? What you need to know about drinking water in Arizona

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    The drinking water for about four million Arizonans would change if fluoride is removed from community water systems, an action that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he might try to take her on as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

    Kennedy was tapped by Republican President-elect Donald J. Trump to lead the federal health department on Nov. 14, and Trump has vowed to let him “go wild” on public health.

    Days before the election, Kennedy posted on social media that a Trump White House would advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from the public water supply, which goes against public health recommendations but stands up to a large number of people who question the safety of fluoridation. water.

    In Arizona, such action would affect nearly 58 percent of all residents who get fluoridated drinking water through community water systems, which is about four million people, most recently DATA from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

    If communities in Arizona that add fluoride to their drinking water were to stop doing so, the results would not be immediate, but rather would begin to show in about five to 10 years, with increased rates of tooth decay, tooth loss, and cavities , said dr. Regina Cobb. , a dentist and former Republican state legislator who is now executive director of the Arizona Dental Association. Cobb is a proponent of water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay.

    The Arizona Dental Association is part of the American Dental Association, which argues that water fluoridation at federally recommended levels prevents tooth decay and is also a health equity issue for lower-income populations who may not have regular access to a dentist and not have access to fluoride toothpaste or fluoride mouthwash. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC also recommend community water fluoridation.

    Arizona ranks in the bottom half of states for its percentage of residents who have a public source of fluoridated drinking water. The national average is 72.3 percent, the CDC says, but there’s a wide range. The public water supply is 100 percent fluoridated in Washington, DC, while in New Jersey only 16 percent of residents served by a community water system receive fluoridated water, the CDC says.

    Some cities have natural fluoride at levels that meet or are close to the federally recommended level of 0.7 parts per million (or milligrams per liter) without adding fluoride. Among those cities is Kingmanan area that Cobb represented for eight years in the state Legislature.

    Phoenix adds fluoride to the water, Tucson does not

    Phoenix fluoridates its water, but several other Arizona cities do not, including Tucson, Flagstaff and Bisbee. Bisbee City Council chose to remove fluoride from the water supply in 2018. In 2012, the city of Phoenix revisited the issue after a local resident was concerned that her thyroid problem was being caused by fluoridated drinking water. Phoenix city officials ultimately decided to go ahead with fluoridation.

    In two recent cases, North American cities that have stopped adding fluoride to their water systems — Calgary, Canada and Buffalo, NY — have said they plan to refluoridate. In Buffalo, a group of parents filed a collective process due to a lack of fluoridated water and are seeking compensation for their children’s dental problems, according to several media reports.

    Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1945 became the first city in the world to fluoridate its public water supplyaccording to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, which found that after 11 years, the rate of tooth decay among Grand Rapids’ nearly 30,000 school children had dropped by more than 60 percent.

    Products that have fluoride in them, especially fluoride toothpaste, are more available now than they were in 1945 when water fluoridation began. That’s why the US Public Health Service recommended lowering fluoride levels in drinking water in 2015, for the first time in 53 years, to the current 0.7 milligrams per liter/parts per million. That’s the level needed to prevent cavities, officials found, while also minimizing the risks of damage, such as developing dental fluorosis.

    “It’s like any kind of vitamin, A, E, D, K – all of these have to be done at a certain level. If you go too high, you have side effects. If you go too low. , you don’t benefit from it,” Cobb said.

    Some skeptics about adding fluoride to public water are concerned about dental fluorosis, which is caused by overexposure to fluoride and can stain teeth. Too much fluoride could also cause a bone disease called skeletal fluorosis.

    The maximum allowable level of fluoride in US water systems by the Environmental Protection Agency is 4.0 milligrams per liter/ppm and 2.0 milligrams per liter/ppm as a secondary standard to prevent enamel fluorosis. It’s important to check the fluoride levels in one’s water, especially if it’s not a public water system, to make sure the levels aren’t too high, dental experts say.

    Most dental fluorosis in the U.S. is mild and appears as white patches on the teeth, the CDC says, and the condition does not affect dental function. The severe form rarely occurs in communities where water fluoride is less than 2.0 milligrams per liter/parts per million — nearly three times the federally recommended level, the CDC says.

    Study, federal ruling cast doubt on fluoride safety

    National Toxicology Program in August ISSUED a controversial systematic review of the published literature on the effects of fluoride in drinking water found that at higher levels, fluoride is linked to lower IQ levels in children, the Associated Press reported. Those higher levels were 1.5 parts per million, which is more than twice the federal recommended level.

    Public health officials continued to recommend fluoridated water to prevent cavities after the report was published, and some, including the American Dental Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, asked THE validity of the revision.

    Further amplifying fluoride skepticism, in September a federal judge appointed by Obama ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen regulations for fluoride in drinking water. According to ReutersU.S. District Judge Edward Chen said the advocacy groups had established during a non-jury trial that fluoride posed an unreasonable risk of harm sufficient to require a regulatory response.

    Responding to the ruling, the American Dental Association, also known as the ADA, said it “provides no scientific basis for the ADA to change its endorsement of community water fluoridation as safe and beneficial for oral health.” Chen’s decision also “does not conclude with any certainty that fluoridated water is harmful to public health,” according to the dental association.

    “Nowhere in the decision does the California court order the EPA to ban water fluoridation,” Cobb said. “Instead, the agency was asked to develop a new rule in this area. Given the circumstances, it would be unreasonable for communities to end fluoridation. If you look at the statistics of what kind of degradation reduction, we get a 25 % in caries in children by having fluoride in the water.

    Protecting teeth requires consistent, low levels of fluoride in the mouth (in saliva and on the surface of teeth), according to the CDC, which named drinking water fluoridation one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century, along with , among others, vaccination, family planning and the recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard.

    While questions about water supply fluoridation have become more frequent from Kennedy and other advocacy groups in recent years, the public health community supports the practice as a positive preventive measure for health.

    “There’s a lot of evidence about how important it is for oral health, especially for preventing cavities in children,” said Will Humble, who is executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association. “The evidence is very clear as to how valuable it is.”

    Even in an era of widespread availability of fluoride from various sources, studies show that community water fluoridation prevents at least 25 percent of tooth decay in children and adults over a lifetime, said Dr. Linda J. Edgar, president of the American Dental Association. in a written statement in September after Chen’s order in the EPA case.

    “The scientific strength of the hard evidence for the benefit of community water fluoridation is clear and compelling.”

    Connect with health reporter Stephanie Innes at [email protected] or follow X, previously Twitter: @stephanieinnes.

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