In the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, a public health debate rages on.
However, it is not about vaccines, masks or where people can smoke, it is about fluoride.
It’s in our toothpaste and mouthwash, and it’s a common word in dental offices. But in Calgary, Alta., It has a place in the public consciousness because of decades of advocates on both sides struggling in six plebiscites on whether the city should put fluoride, a mineral found in rocks and soil, in the water supply to fight teeth. decay.
The first plebiscite was in 1957. Others were held in 1961, 1971, 1989, 1998, and finally last month. The most recent three received favorable votes on fluoride even when, in 2011, the Calgary city council decided to remove it from the water.
This week the issue is scheduled to return to city hall after the October plebiscite saw 62 percent of Calgarians voted to return fluoride to the water supply. Meanwhile, research conducted during the fluoride hiatus has shown that children’s dental health has been adversely affected since the 2011 decision to remove it.
The issue has sparked a deluge of debate between “no” and “yes” to fluoride fields. They both claim that the other side has ignored science. Both warn that people’s health is at stake.
To be clear, fluoridation of water at appropriate levels is widely supported by medical experts. Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, Health Canada, the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with many other health organizations, support the use of fluoride in drinking water. But that hasn’t stopped a mobilized campaign against fluoride from doing so in Calgary.
Dr. Robert Dickson, Family Physician and Founder of SafeWaterCalgary, He says he voted to add fluoride to the water supply in 1998, but after some research he concluded that “we were doing the wrong thing.”
After 12 years, Dickson says the anti-fluoride side campaigned successfully and in 2011 succeeded in removing fluoride from the water. But the “fluoride lobbyists,” as he calls them, are “persistent” and have waged an opposing campaign to reinstate it, which now seems likely to be successful.
Dickson labels some in the pro-fluoride movement anti-science as, in recent years, there has been some research on the negative impacts of high levels of fluoride (those on the other side launch the same accusation of being anti-science next to him).
The National Toxicology Program, for example, an interagency program supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has published some investigate suggesting that high levels, such as more than 1.5 mg / L of fluoride in water, could be associated with lower IQ and other cognitive effects in children.
Currently, the widely recommended amount of fluoride in water is 0.7 mg / L.
When asked during an interview if he agrees that most medical experts support having fluoride in the water supply, Dickson said: “I can say that most medical unions and associations have not done any research and yes , back it up. “
“I am so frustrated with this because we have been wrong so many times in medicine and in the past, it has taken so long to change these things,” said Dickson.
Over the years, those in favor supported its well-established dental protection qualities, while those who opposed it have questioned whether it could have health consequences and have argued in favor of freedom of choice.
Timothy Caulfield, a disinformation expert and professor of health law at the University of Alberta, says there is broad support for fluoride among health professionals.
“Fluoride is beneficial in general, but particularly for those communities that may be in the lower socioeconomic strata,” he said. “There is also an equity component to these policies.”
While there is “ongoing research on the harms, benefits and risks associated with fluoride,” there is a “fairly strong body of evidence” internationally to suggest that it is safe, he said.
What people on the anti-fluoride side are trying to do is “insert a false balance” into the debate and paint it as “50 percent of people say this and 50 percent of people say that,” but in reality, the weight of evidence is on the side of being beneficial, Caulfield said.
“It is a political decision based on science,” he said.
Still, “this is not like anti-vaccines,” Caulfield added, “there are credible voices on the other side raising interesting questions that warrant an exploration.”
Caulfield added that, in Calgary, it appears that some on the anti-fluoride side were able to “sidestep the science” by making the debate on “government ethics, choice and overreach.”
“There’s been a lot of really interesting research that suggests that if you do that, if you frame the debate that way, you’re more likely to be persuasive.”
Brantford, Ontario, was the first Canadian city to use fluoride in 1945.
A year before that, an article in the Edmonton Bulletin suggested that fluorides could lead to the elimination of dentistry after a population in Ontario was found to be avoiding tooth decay due to “unusually large amounts of fluorides” found naturally in water.
“A few months ago, Ontario public health officials found a village where dentists starved to death,” it said.
“Don’t ask us what are or what are fluorides. All we know is that it prevents tooth decay and that’s all we need to be profluoride. “
The article helped usher in the introduction of fluoride into the water supply in Canadian cities during the 1940s. Researchers studied its use and considered it groundbreaking science at the time it was discovered that a certain amount of Fluoride in the water supply reduced tooth decay.
The practice increased over the next several years and now, many dental products contain fluoride.
In Canada, fluoride at 0.7 mg / L is considered the optimal level to support dental health. There is still natural fluoride in Calgary’s water, but at lower levels ranging from 0.1 mg / L to 0.4 mg / L, depending on the city.
Research from the University of Calgary this year found that of approximately 2,600 second-graders in Calgary and Edmonton, 55 percent of Edmonton’s, who fluoridated their water, had one or more cavities in their baby teeth. The rate was 64.8% for Calgary children.
Juliet Guichon, associate professor of law and ethics at the University of Calgary, leads the city’s fluoride campaign, calling the period between 2011 and 2021 “the decade of decline.”
She says the battle is not over, even though the plebiscite vote was in favor of fluoride.
Guichon said the anti-fluoride side has spread “false and misleading information” about fluoride among Calgar residents and believes the group is part of a broader campaign that has its roots in spreading fear about public health in general. .
“There is a terrible fear because they have been misinformed,” he said. “They don’t understand why public health authorities are not addressing what (people) have been wrongly informed to be harmful.”
Although the plebiscite did cast a favorable vote, Guichon believes it could have been higher if public health agencies and other organizations in Alberta had been more involved, promoting the benefits of fluoride.
The latest hurdle for the Calgary City Council to move to return fluoride to water is Guichon’s next promotional goal.
“This … coincidence of events has caused demonstrable harm to children,” he said.
“That should never have happened.”
With files from Madeline Smith
Reference-www.thestar.com