Fluoride bill all wet
Let’s be done with this debate
S O NOW can the Legislature please get on with bigger and better, things? Let’s hope so. And let’s hope there are no more bills in the hopper like House Bill 1355.
That bill, sponsored by state Representative Jack Ladyman, would have left it to those running local water systems whether to add fluoride to the water you get from the tap. As if what the Centers for Disease Control puts among Top 10 public-health improvements of all time should be a matter of local option, not public health.
Representative Ladyman’s arguments for his bill haven’t improved over time. Last week he was arguing that his bill was all about local control—and he wasn’t about to get into an argument about science. Maybe because he knew the science was against him. And that adding fluoride to water saves a bunch of headaches, or rather toothaches, for the least among us. Any dentist will tell you that the youngest and poorest benefit the most from adding fluoride to drinking water. Because they might not have the chance to have their teeth cleaned every six months or so by a dentist.
This week Representative Ladyman took a different tack. He stressed the “efficiency” of ignoring tooth decay among the young and most vulnerable: “Only about 5 percent—and that’s probably a high figure—of water that is treated is used for drinking water,” he said. “Probably less than 5 percent. The rest of it goes toward washing cars and other things. But we’re treating 100 percent of the water, so it’s not a very effective delivery system.”
So then . . . we should stop adding chloride to the water, too, because much of the water coming out of our taps goes to wash cars? So there’s really no need for chlorinating our public water supply, either. Please. Happily, a least one state Senate committee saw through Representative Ladyman’s spiel. His HB1355 didn’t get enough votes to get out of the Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee, and if all goes as it should, the bill should die there, too.
When the subject is fluoride, Floyd down the street may rattle on about commie plots and other conspiracy theories. Better if the rest of us heed the scientists running the CDC—and every dentist we’ve ever met.