Fluoridation should be city council’s top priority
There is simply no mistaking the science, Juliet Guichon, Jon Meddings, Paul Allison and Mintoo Basahti write.
Re: “The science is not settled on water fluoridation,” Licia Corbella, Opinion, Oct. 12.
As the newly elected Calgary city councillors take their seats, an important public health issue awaits. Children and other residents are suffering because of the 2011 decision to cease fluoridating the water.
Public health officials strongly recommend that Calgary resume this safe and effective practice.
Calgarians approved fluoridation twice, in plebiscites in 1989 and 1998. From 1991 to 2011, Calgarians enjoyed fluoridation’s benefits until some city councillors and a journalist, apparently animated by a U.S. based anti-fluoridation group, significantly misinformed the public and city councillors.
Without having campaigned on the issue, 10 city councillors suddenly removed what 114,105 citizens had approved. This action was anti-democratic.
The decision was ill-considered because fluoridation is safe. The decision was harmful because fluoride is 26 to 44 per cent effective in reducing cavities.
More than 3,000 peer- reviewed studies demonstrate that fluoridation is effective and support its safety. Fluoridation is recommended by Alberta Health Services, Health Canada, the Canadian Dental Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and the leading national and international dental and medical organizations.
How likely is it that public health, dental and medical organizations are all wrong? The highly qualified people who staff and support these organizations work independently and have developed their considered conclusions after following rigorous scientific protocols for their studies, including peer review and publication.
Those advocating for fluoridation are not in conflict of interest; they are focused on the public interest. By contrast, some bottled water companies encourage the false belief that tap water is unsafe to benefit financially from the fear they create.
Fluoridation has been used for 70 years and none of the claimed harms have materialized, despite mischaracterizations of studies irrelevant to North America and conducted in Mexico and in China, where lead and arsenic also occur in their water.
The arguments advanced against fluoridation are weak. First, it is false to claim that fluoridation at 0.7 parts per million is unsafe and ineffective. We call upon all journalists to base all fluoridation commentary on the facts: Fluoride is safe and effective.
A second poor argument is that fluoridation is mass medication. Fluoride is no more a medication than calcium is a medication. Fluoride is a mineral. Fluoride occurs naturally in Calgary water at concentrations of 0.1 to 0.4 parts per million. Fluoridation merely entails topping it up to 0.7 parts per million, which is therapeutic.
A third argument accepts that fluoridation is a public good, but claims Calgary should not pay for it — the province should. But the taxes that fund provinces and cities come from taxpayers. Fluoridation in every North American city is a municipal preventive health measure — just as chlorination, street lights and crosswalks are preventive health measures.
The cost of fluoridation is relatively small, between $5 million and $10 million for equipment and $750,000 for annual operating costs, which amounts to 60 cents per person per year. Capital costs can be amortized, and several studies have shown every $1 invested in fluori- dation yields between $38 to $60 savings in treatment costs. Fluoridation is demonstrated to be cost-effective.
The real question is: Why do Calgarians let a few unqualified people who misrepresent the scientific evidence prevent Calgary children, seniors and others from having the same good oral health that people enjoy in Toronto, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, to name just a few cities? Why isn’t Calgary like the 87 per cent of NHL home cities that use fluoridation?
Calgary dentists and orthodontists are distressed by the significant changes they are seeing. Dental cavities did not occur as often or grow with such speed when the water was fluoridated. Now things are much worse.
The solution is not to build more operating rooms with dental instruments. It is time to honour democracy and to reduce the avoidable pain and suffering of Calgarians. We call upon city councillors to make the reinstatement of fluoridation their first priority.