False choices for fluoride in Florida water supply.

Last week’s Clearwater City Council meeting reminded us that the damage was not the case while the pandemic was over.

Council members heard Monday’s presentation on the benefits of fluorescent drinking water supplies. It’s short, superficial, with Joseph Ladapop, a Florida surgeon general, who appeared as part of a continuing campaign to stop fluorination in Florida, calling it a “presentation” because there’s no better terminology.

The US community has been adding fluoride to water since 1945, and dentists are widely credited for reducing tooth decay and improving the overall health of Americans. This practice is recommended by almost all public health, medical and dental organizations. Therefore, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was named Flororidation as one of the 10 biggest public health outcomes of the 20th century.

However, the backlash against masks and vaccines during the pandemic has seen public health guidance as a conspiracy. The outrage turned on fluorination last year after a new federal report and a federal judge in California questioned the safety of fluorinated water. Ladapo said the development provided clearwater officials with a simple decision. They believe that these new research is either “junk science” or “you have to get used to hurting some of your community.”

Of course, that’s a false choice, but it’s becoming a new tactic that scares Floridians about fluoride.

First, there is no need to declare a study called “junk science” to recognize the extent to which it is flawed in assessing the safety of fluoride in America. Anti-fluoride activists painted a review of 74 studies last year on the association between higher fluoride and lower children’s IQ to determine the risks facing the community. However, over two-thirds of these studies were rated as low quality. All were conducted outside the US and were examined for fluoride levels of over 1.5 milligrams per liter. This is twice the US standard. As they say: garbage, trash. Can anyone say this is an honest apple vs. app comparison?

Second, neither federal studies nor judges (on appeal) declared that the level of fluorination recommended in the United States was harming the community. In fact, both the review and the judge were careful not to overstate their findings. The federal report found that “current fluoride levels have negatively affected children’s IQ,” “more research is needed,” and “determine insufficient data to determine.” And the judge’s ruling was clearly accepted: “The findings do not certainly conclude that fluorinated water is harmful to public health.” The Medical and Dental Association maintained support for fluoride, describing last year’s findings as a “basic” misconception of science.

But this is how debate continues to unfold in front of Florida city and county governments. Locally elected officials should be pleased to accept Radapop’s advice at face value and wipe their hands from their decisions. In the process, they ignore the established science of alarmist theory, reverse the facts into anecdotes and sell conclusions of their favourite research.

Clearwater may be the latest battlefield, but debate over fluoride continues statewide. Congress is considering sweeping out this session, among other things, while the community bars the fluoride to add water. It’s a reckless movement and kneeling approach that would harm millions of health, and that serious people are not in charge of Florida, telegraphing to the outside world.

Republicans have ruled Florida for decades, but one theme that has been repeatedly hammered is that the government cannot trust it to be right. The delusions surrounding Covid have not been alleviated, they have only been redirected to new targets, and now they are poised to steal fluoride and declare cavities in their children. Certainly, the pandemic is over, but the damage has not stopped.