Council hears both sides of fluoride debate
City councillors were inundated Monday night with passionate pleas on both sides of the divisive water fluoridation debate. Nineteen delegates and close to 60 letters were presented to the first meeting of the newly elected council, tasked with responding to the health unit’s new oral health report that paints a terrible picture of the community ’s worsening oral health and urging multiple actions, including reintroducing fluoride. It was removed in 2013 after an 8-3 council vote, and since then, the report suggests, tooth decay among kids has skyrocketed by 51 per cent.
But the report is full of holes and abnormalities, said Ward 9 resident Donna Mayne, citing research that links fluoride in the water to rising rates of ADHD and higher rates of fluoride in pregnant women leading to lower-IQ children.
Ward 5 resident Richard St. Denis told councillors more than 60 communities in the Great Lakes basin have removed fluoride from the water, including Windsor. “All those communities cannot be wrong,” he said.
Another resident, Cheryl Burr, said that adding fluoride to the water is unethical. The city has a mandate to provide safe drinking water, but fluoride doesn’t contribute to safe water. “The city is looking at medicating its residents in a one-size-fits-all manner,” she said. Council had not finished debating the issue by the Windsor Star’s print deadline.
The critics of fluoridation said that instead of adding fluoride to the water supply, the best way to treat teeth is with fluoridated toothpaste.
A survey of local residents showed that four out of five support water fluoridation. Student Raymond Hoang brought a petition signed by 237 people supporting fluoridation. “This speaks to the support,” he said, adding that fluoridation lets kids have healthier teeth and avoids unnecessary trips to the dentist.
“On behalf of the four out of five Windsorites who support fluoridation, please put it back in our water supply,” he said. Speaking on behalf of the Essex County Dental Association and the Ontario Dental Association, local dentist Dr. Charles Frank said he’s seen the increased quantity and severity of cavities in local patients. Some are children with such severe decay they must be put under general anesthesia in the hospital. He said he’s booking some kids for hospital treatment well into 2020.
“I just can’t keep up,” he said. “No child should have to go to be in pain and have to wait more than a year for treatment.”
Frank told councillors that fluoride in the optimal amount is both effective and save. “There is no peer science to suggest otherwise,” he said.
As executive director of Family Services Windsor-Essex, Joyce Zuk said she’s seen the demand for financial help for low-income families to seek dental treatment rise by 300 per cent, eating up the largest portion of a special fund run by her agency. She said water fluoridation is one way council can address the fact Windsor has the highest child poverty rate in the country.
“When we don’t know the answer, we look to our experts to provide an answer and in this case the experts are the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit and the dental association,” said Zuk. Comparing Windsor-Essex, where no municipalities fluoridate, with the rest of Ontario, where 70 per cent do, the percentage of children with urgent dental needs was double, according to the health unit report.
“Let me tell you, the results are not good,” said acting medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed. He said the average number of cavities has gone steadily up, to the point where seven-year-olds in the community now have an average of two-and-a-half cavities. “This should be alarming for our community,” said Ahmed.
To fix the problem, a number of solutions are required and fluoridation is one way where everyone, young and old, rich and poor, are treated equally, at a low cost and with high benefits, he said. “The consensus of the scientific community is that water fluoridation, at the level recommended to prevent tooth decay, safely provides oral health benefits which in turn supports improved general health,” Essex County Dental Society president Dr. Mark Parete said in a letter to council, citing a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that for every dollar spent fluoridating water there’s a $38 savings in dental costs.
Dr. Thomas Oper, a pediatric dental specialist and dental director at the John McGivney Children’s Centre, said there’s been a marked increase in the severity and number of local children needing hospital care for dental disease. There’s a “severe problem” with early childhood cavities that’s even worse in Windsor-Essex, he said. “As a society it is unconscionable that we have children living with dental pain and infection,” he said. There’s an $850,000 initial capital cost for the equipment required for Windsor Utilities Commission to restart fluoridation.