P: Should Waterloo Stop Fluoridating the Water?

Fluoride in a water supply is just one of those facts that make sense when you hear it. The active ingredient in toothpaste is fluoride, so adding a small amount of fluoride into the water system can help clean teeth without providing any health hazard to the public. Introduced to Ontario in 1945, almost 75% of Ontario households have fluoridated municipal water. And the recorded instances of dental maladies have dropped dramatically from the mid forties to today. But can fluoridation of water be the only reason for this, or can better advances in dental hygiene take the majority of the credit?

There is far from a worldwide consensus to implement fluoridation programs in water. Where places like the United States and Ontario have a high percentage of people using fluoridated water, Western Europe, and even specific provinces in Canada have incredibly low fluoridation numbers. One study looked at the cavity rates of people in Ontario (75% fluoridated) and Quebec (6% fluoridated), and found a very minimal decrease in tooth decay in children aged 6 to 19. Ontario kids averaged about 0.3 cavities less than the unfluoridated Quebec children. When looking at adults, the difference was erased, with the Quebequois having slightly more than Ontarians, but not an amount that is statistically significant (7.98 to 7.94 cavities on average). With such a disparity in the amount fluoridation numbers, you think there would at least be some statistical variation in users. European countries such as Finland and Germany have noticed similar cavity rates after discontinuing use of fluoride in their water.

When fluoridation was put into place, dentists believed that the ingestion of fluoride in drinking water would aid in strengthening tooth enamel from the inside out. However, later studies showed that only the topical application of fluoride provided any dental health benefit. This is where information begins to get murky. Unless you are swishing your drinking water around in your mouth, you are getting very little contact time, especially compared to tooth brushing. There are many conflicting values when trying to figure out the optimal fluoride concentration for dental health. The US government specifies that a concentration of 0.7- 1.1 mg/L is needed however, the World Health Organization states that any more than 1 mg/L would lead to dental problems such as fluorosis (those white spots and weakened enamel on teeth). The city of Waterloo says that it maintains fluoride rates of 0.5 to 0.8 mg/L; depending on which report your read, this concentration is nearly outside of the range of dental health.

The government of Canada states that groundwater sources with concentrations of fluoride greater than 1.5 mg/L can pose a health risk, especially to infants. The funny thing, though, is that southern Ontario is the only place in Canada that is noted to have natural fluoride concentrations higher than this threshold. For you Geos, you can thank our generous limestone and fluorite deposits for the influx of halogens in our water supply. However, this is very regional and watershed dependent and no reliable data could be found for regions around the Waterloo Region.

Fluoridation of water is also a waste. With the amount of water used for other applications, we are just passing fluoride through the system, and letting it out into the environment. The accumulation of fluorites in water sources, combined with the naturally high fluoride concentrations, can lead to many towns downstream of Waterloo that rely on well water to have dangerously high concentrations that they can’t purify. The fluoride source used, hydroflouorosilicic acid, contains trace heavy metals, namely arsenic. Arsenic is a single-point carcinogen, meaning that even one molecule of it can cause cancer. Introduction of this into the water source, no matter how small the concentration, can pose another cancer risk in our already cancer-filled lives.

Fluoridation had a very important impact when it was first put into place. However with an increase of dental hygiene, an awareness of dental maladies, and an increased frequency in dental visits, it is quickly becoming obsolete. It’s not that fluoride poses any real specific danger, it is more like there is no benefit with adding fluoride to the water supply. When you can’t see a benefit, there just might not be one.