Sean C. Morgan
The City Council will discuss whether to continue fluoridating Sweet Home water during its regular meeting on May 27.
The Public Works Committee met on April 15 to discuss the question after the practice was challenged by a citizen at a council meeting earlier this year.
Water fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay and cavities. The practice has come under attack in recent years, particularly in English-speaking countries, by those who argue that fluoridation may cause serious health problems, is not effective enough to justify costs, and has a dosage that cannot be precisely controlled.
To change the ordinance would require an ordinance revision, said City Manager Craig Martin. If the council decides it would like to stop fluoridating water, it will need to hold three readings of the ordinance before voting on it.
One person brought it to council, calling it forced medication, said Public Works Committee Chairman Craig Fentiman. “It’s standard operating procedure. Mike (Adams, Public Works director) couldn’t figure out how far it went back actually.”
“I’d like you guys to do a study or meeting to address the issue of fluoride in the water and then stop adding fluoride to the city water,” Marvin Hult of Sweet Home told council members on March 25.
“The stuff they’re putting in the city water, unless Sweet Home is different from every other city in the country, is not pharmaceutical grade calcium fluoride,” Hult said. “It’s industrial waste from the people that manufacture fertilizer, and it’s three different kinds of substances. It’s not just standard fluoride that you think of, that naturally occurs.
“It’s forced medication because they’re forcing us, if we want to drink the water, they’re forcing us to to be medicated by this whether we want it or not; and there’s no standard because it all depends on how much water you drink how much you’re going to get. Some people drink more water than other people. If you’re a lighter-weight person, you’re going to get a a somewhat bigger concentration than a bigger person is going to get.”
It’s not a nutrient, Hult said, and there’s not a recommended daily value for fluoride anywhere.
As a drug, the federal Food and Drug Administration is responsible for studying fluoride, he said, but it hasn’t studied it for use in water.
No study shows it will reduce cavities, Hult said. Europe does not fluoridate like the United States, and its people don’t have any more cavities than Americans, he said.
Texas fluoridates the most among the states, Hult said. About 80 percent of Texans drink fluoridated water, and it has one of the highest rates of cavities in the United States.
It’s a problem for nursing babies, Hult said, primarily among the poor, who most likely reconstitute formula with tap water. That delivers some 250 times the amount of fluoride that a nursing mother’s milk will.
“Inside your body, who knows what it’s doing to the rest of your system, your other organs, your brain,” Hult said. It calcifies the pineal gland, which produces melatonin, which affects sleep patterns.
“I can buy bottled water,” he said. The poor are affected the most because they have to drink tap water.
Fentiman said councilors will have to sift through and weigh the vast amount of information, studies that suggest water should be fluoridated and studies that say it shouldn’t.
“There’s so much stuff on both sides of the table as far as for and against,” he said.
He doesn’t know how he will vote, he said. He can look at one study and think he should vote no to fluoride, and the next one suggested he should vote to keep using it.
“We’re going to go ahead and address it, then let’s put it to bed for awhile,” Fentiman said.
Councilor Bruce Hobbs said he understands that fluoridation carries a cost, while the benefit is uncertain, and it may even cause harm.
“My general thought is that the evidence isn’t good one way or the other,” he said.
He understands that the equipment for treating the water can be stored safely and brought back out for use later if the city does stop fluoridating, he said, but water officials would like to run through the existing supply, using what the city has already purchased before stopping because fluoride does not keep well in storage.
Hobbs would like to save the money spent on fluoride and, if legal, use them to pay for some kind of dental program for low-income children, which with their developing teeth are the primary target of municipal fluoridation programs.
But the funds from water utility rates are restricted to producing water, and Fentiman said he didn’t think it would be legal.
“I don’t see any great harm in removing it,” Hobbs said. “And I can see a possible benefit.”
Fentiman said studies on the subject are suspect because they don’t account for the many variables that affect the subjects.
To study fluoride correctly, each group would need to receive the same dental care at the dentist and at home, Fentiman said. As a result of flawed studies, he thinks they may be biased toward fluoride.