Critics tap into fluoridation in Memphis water
Officials say additive is safe, healthy
A City Council resolution that ordinarily would have gone unnoticed — dealing with a chemical few people have ever heard of — helped propel Memphis into the growing ranks of cities targeted by protests over the fluoridation of water.
The council last month did approve the resolution authorizing the Memphis Light, Gas & Water Division to buy $609,000 worth of fluorosilic acid — a solution used by the utility to treat water with fluoride to fight tooth decay — but not before a local opposition group presented its arguments that the practice is unnecessary, inefficient and potentially dangerous.
“Bottom line, it’s toxic,” Maria Phelps, co-founder of the Mid-South FluorideFree Coalition, said in an interview a few days after the council meeting. “Mother’s milk has no fluoride in it. God did not intend for us to ingest this mess.”
Recent protests not-
withstanding, fluoridation is well established across the U. S. Public utilities began adding fluoride to their supplies more than 60 years ago, and now some 70 percent of Americans have it in their tap water.
By fortifying enamel, fluoride can reduce tooth decay by 20- 40 percent, according to the American Dental Association, which also estimates that every dollar spent on fluoride saves as much as $38 in dental costs.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has hailed fluoridation as one of the 10 “great public health achievements” of the 20th century, along with such advances as vaccination, improved food safety and control of infectious diseases. CDC officials cite numerous studies over the decades showing fluoridation to be safe and effective.
Memphis and most of its suburbs have been adding fluoride to water for more than 35 years. Fluoridation is mandated in a Memphis ordinance, and any attempt to do away with the practice would have to be approved by city voters in a referendum, said MLGW spokesman Glen Thomas.
“We’re basically neutral on the issue of fluoride,” Thomas said. “We’re following the ordinance.”
In Collierville, director of public services Bill Kilp said fluoridation has not generated any controversy. “It’s not very expensive ... and it’s one of the better health changes that (has) occurred,” he said.
Yet locally and nationally there remains an undertow of skepticism and outright opposition to the practice. Although some of the early opponents cited alleged conspiratorial theories, critics now focus on potential harm from the substance — everything from f luorosis, which causes spots or streaks on teeth, to crippling bone damage — and argue that fluoridation imposes on the entire public a medication that many people neither need nor want.
They also say most of the fluoride added to supplies is wasted because just a fraction of public water is used for drinking — with an even smaller portion consumed by the target group: children.
And in any other use, fluoride is considered a drug or hazardous chemical, they say.
“If you dumped a 55-gallon drum of this stuff in a river, you’d go to jail,” Phelps said. “Yet it’s legal to put it in our water.”
The Fluoride Action Network lists scores of cities and towns across North America, including Kenton, Tenn., that have halted fluoridation during the last 20 years. Voters in Portland, Ore., last month overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure calling for fluoridation — the fourth time since 1956 that such an initiative has failed there.
Federal health officials acknowledge there have been problems traceable to too much fluoride, which also is present in toothpaste and other products. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services two years ago moved to lower the recommended fluoride level in water to 0.7 milligrams per liter, from a previous range of 0.7-1.2 milligrams.
The new recommended limit — the first change in nearly 50 years — came after a study found that 41 percent of adolescents experienced fluorosis from 1999 through 2004, up from 23 percent during the 1980s.
Although Phelps argues that MLGW’s fluoride levels are too high, Thomas said the utility’s water is in line with the new federal recommendation.
“It might go as high as point-eight (milligrams), as low as point-six,” he said.
Shelby County Health Department director Yvonne Madlock said local fluoride levels are safe. “It would be extremely difficult to reach a toxic level of fluoride through fluoridated water in Shelby County,” she said.
Madlock said fluoridation rarely generates any controversy in the Memphis area, although it “pops up from time to time at the state level.”
Fluorid at i on has brought far-reaching benefits locally, she said, because it “is made available to everyone in our community, no matter where they live or what their socioeconomic status is.”