I would like to take this opportunity to weigh in on this discussion. I have been a Water Treatment Professional for almost 19 years, in Florida and Colorado. I have worked with domestic water supply fluoridation in both states. It is an unquestionable fact that fluoridated domestic water has a salutary effect on the incidence of dental caries in children.
The discussion is not whether fluoridation is effective in the doses currently used in municipal water supplies (it is)—it is whether the money spent is being used as efficaciously as possible.
In a typical water utility, the percent of treated water used by residential consumers is about 65% of the total (48% single-family homes, 17% multi-family homes,) the remainder being used by business, industry, and agriculture. Of this figure, about 6% is used from the faucet (as opposed to lawn watering/shower/toilet/laundry/etc.) This includes all cooking, dishwashing and other non-consumption uses. Water used in cooking will lose almost all the fluoride content due to the heat involved, and contributes a negligible benefit.
Even including mixed drinks (as stated above—lemonade, kool-aid, tea, coffee and all other drinks made from tap water), the total percentage of tap water consumed by the target demographic (young children most prone to dental caries) is a small percentage of the water consumed from the faucet. A significant fraction of the drinks most popular with the target demographic are sport drinks (Gatorade and such), power drinks (Red Bull, etc.), soft drinks (Coke and Pepsi products, for example) and bottled water, fruit juices and iced tea. None of these has significant fluoride content, and yet make up a sizeable fraction of the liquids consumed by our target demographic.
If the families of these young children supervise a conscientious program of oral hygiene, using fluoridated toothpaste, and regular dentist visits with [COLOR=black][FONT=Trebuchet MS]professional [/FONT][/COLOR]teeth cleaning and fluoride treatments, the benefit of municipal water fluoridation is trivial (not non-existent, but of negligible utility.)
The premise of introducing medication into the municipal water supply to provide a net benefit to about 1% of the utilities’ consumers is, to say the least, a questionable use of taxpayer resources. Many studies have concluded that the same resources could more profitably be used in other ways, with no loss of benefit to the community.
Add in the expense of transporting, storing, metering and disposing of the fluoride compounds at the Water Treatment Facility, considering that fluoride compounds are considered hazardous materials, and there are significant city, state and federal regulations dictating all facets of fluoride handling and disposal, and the net cost/benefit equation tilts dramatically to the negative.
That there are many reasons for public water supplies to have fluoridation is undeniable. Many families do not encourage regular brushing with fluoride toothpaste, or provide regular professional care, and children in these families will derive a significant advantage from municipal fluoridation. The thesis underlying municipalities such as Wichita’s decision to not fluoridate is that the resources could be allocated in a much more useful way to accomplish the same ends.
