Dispute over benefits, dangers of fluoride

By Emmalie Vance
There was much dispute at the Common Council meeting in Plattsburgh on Nov. 19 on the subject of water fluoridation and whether or not the city should continue to fluoridate the public water. The final vote was four to two in favor of continued fluoridation, but not before several community and council members spoke their mind.
Upon entering the auditorium where the meeting was to take place, there were several handouts about fluoride that were available. There was a fact sheet about fluoride written by Tony Besthoff, chemical engineer at Feasy & Besthoff, Plattsburgh’s fluoride provider, and three others from the CDC covering the benefits, cost savings and positive national trend of fluoridation. There were no documents stating any negatives.
Ward I councilman Tim Carpenter, one of the four who voted in favor of continued fluoridation made his decision after turning to the Department of Health for their recommendation.
“We [the council] all personally did a lot of research but in the end, the stuff I looked at was so technical and I’m not a chemist or a doctor,” Carpenter said. “When something like this comes up, there’s always a board of experts we the council can ask. They said they’d done tons and tons of studies and that they believe the water should have fluoride in it.”
Ward IV Councilman James Calnon took the same approach and turned to the experts for help.
“This is a health and science issue,” Calnon said. “There are exhaustive studies at the national level. Some of them are old but these are the folks with the skill and the charge with protecting out dental heath and I’m trusting in them to protect it diligently.”
According to the CDC, “Water fluoridation is a low-cost way to bring the benefits of fluoride to all residents of the community.”
More quick facts from the CDC state that 70 percent of citizens in the U.S. who get their water from the public system have fluoridated water; fluoride is a natural occurrence in water but fluoridating water means adding more fluoride to reach the “best” or “optimal” level; fluoridation was started in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Mich., and has been used ever since; fluoride is proven to stop or even reverse tooth decay and fluoride dietary supplements and over-the-counter dental products such as toothpaste and mouth wash work in the same way as fluoride-supplemented water.
On the other side of the discussion stood Doug Butdorf of 64 Trafalgar Dr. who said, “I don’t have strong feelings for fluoridation. Many other municipalities have voted to take [fluoride] out and I think we should follow suit.”
Anthropologist Dr. Richard Robbins was also against fluoridation and prepared a speech, which he presented to the council.
Robbins said that fluoride is known to be a toxic chemical and the point at which it becomes harmful is still unknown. He also recognized the fact that it has been proven to help avoid tooth decay in malnourished populations but points out that if a person is not malnourished and brushes their teeth regularly, they would get all the fluoride they need.
“The question is not whether the product or the dosage meets government standards; it’s whether the government standards, as they have been in the past, are based on too little research and on faulty assumptions,” Robbins said.