It could be called the vote heard `round the world.
On March 5, Mount Desert town residents voted to stop fluoridating the town’s water supply. The measure passed by a ratio of more than four to one, with 229 in favor of ending the practice to 42 opposed. The town became the first municipality in Maine choosing to end fluoridation.
Some thirty doctors and health care providers swiftly condemned the Mount Desert decision at a hastily-convened press conference in Augusta shortly after the vote. Meanwhile, fluoridation opponents worldwide, including some top scientists, doctors, and dentists, praised the vote’s outcome.
The measure was initiated by the Mount Desert Water Company’s board of directors and water district manager Paul Slack. Under Maine law, municipal voters must directly vote to begin or discontinue fluoridation.
Slack declined to be interviewed for this story, citing concerns by his board of directors over the negative publicity generated by the vote. Earlier, in a MDI newspaper, he said: “We’re thrilled by the results…It’s now going to be a water supply without additives that’s going to be safer for everybody.”
The vote put Dr. Dora Anne Mills, Maine’s Director of Public Health, on the defensive. Mills worried Mount Desert’s decision might entice other municipalities to go the same route. For her, the timing of the vote was especially worrisome since Bangor’s city council was to decide later that month whether to put a similar measure up for referendum.
“Fear is definitely a contagion,” Mills said in a Statehouse News Agency report.
Along with organizing the Augusta press conference, Mills wrote an op-ed piece in favor of fluoridation that appeared in the March 23 edition of the Bangor Daily News. The newspaper chose not to print a direct rebuttal of Mills’ column penned by Dr. Hardy Limeback, director of Preventative Dentistry at the University of Toronto and a leading anti-fluoridation expert. On March 26, the Bangor City Council declined to put the fluoridation question to referendum vote.
Fluoridation proponents often are mystified why anyone would choose to end fluoridation. Dr. Michael Easley is Florida’s dental health coordinator and one of the country’s leading pro-fluoridation experts. In his view, fluoridation is one of the greatest medical achievements of the 20th century, providing a low-cost way for communities to cut their tooth decay rates in half. Optimal fluoridation, he said, helps teeth properly develop and protects developed teeth from decay. The vast majority of U.S. health experts, including the past five U.S. surgeon generals, endorse the practice. Easley said people who oppose fluoridation do so out of ignorance or stubbornness.
“Partly, people just don’t understand fluoridation and partly people just don’t like the government doing anything,” Easley said.
Easley’s comments echo a common perception among fluoridation’s proponents that those opposing fluoridation are radicals without scientific backing or legitimate arguments. Such characterizations don’t explain the credentials of some leading anti-fluoridation activists like Dr. Limeback, who was fluoridation’s staunchest defender in Canada until he decided he could no longer support the practice.
And Dr. Bill Hirzy, who heads a group of 1,100 EPA scientists, lawyers and engineers that have called on the EPA to impose a fluoridation moratorium. Easley characterized Hirzy as a union leader out to embarrass the EPA. Hirzy is the ranking chemist at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a chemistry professor at American University.
Hirzy said his union decided to oppose fluoridation after EPA officials amended a study to downgrade fluoride’s possible carcinogenic effects. Also, he said, the fluoride used for drinking water is contaminated with trace amounts of lead, arsenic, and other poisonous materials typically banned from drinking water by EPA regulations. To endorse such a product would compromise professional ethics.
“It’s hard for me to rationalize why the EPA isn’t jumping on this,” Hirzy said.
Anti-fluoridation activists question conventional wisdom on fluoridation, and they feel they have the science to back it up. They say modern studies show little benefit from fluoridation, arguing that better dental hygiene and diet account for much of the drop in dental decay. They also believe normal fluoride exposure may increase the risks of bone cancer and bone fractures.
Recently, the CDC and American Dental Association made headlines issuing an advisory warning parents to avoid using fluoridated drinking water to reconstitute some infant formula. While both statements affirm that fluoride is safe and effective, they say infants who use such formula face a higher risk of developing fluorosis, a medical condition caused by overexposure to fluoride that primarily affects teeth.
The CDC/ADA warning led the New Hampshire Health Department to advise parents to limit fluoride exposure in infants and the Vermont Health Department to recommend against giving any fluoridated water to all children under 12 months of age. No such warning has been forthcoming in Maine.