Should fluoride be in our water?

this is the New York City tap water that I drink and for every liter of it there is8 mg of fluoride in it fluoride is essential for our oral health it protects us from cavities which is why it's also in lots of toothpaste and mouthwash and in treatments we get at the dentist and for about 63% of Americans it's also why it's in our drinking water now someone with a lot of views on public health not supported by science is being considered to lead one of the country's top Public Health agencies and one thing he believes is that we should advise all us Water Systems to remove fluoride from public water putting fluoride in the water has long fueled conspiracy theories but it turns out the science is still evolving and some of it emerged even as we made this video and it's causing some scientists to take another look at this practice and wonder do we still need fluoride in our water and if so how much is safe fluoride protects us from cavities by remineralizing enamel on our teeth it acts as a protective barrier against the acid that bacteria in our mouths produce when we drink fluoride in water about half of it sticks around in our bodies some of it binds to our bones and some reaches our teeth through our saliva fluoride occurs naturally in soil and air and some regions have naturally occurring fluoride levels in their water almost 100 years ago dentists figured out that high naturally occurring levels of fluoride in the water was staining children's teeth but it was also preventing tooth decay in 1945 Grand Rapids Michigan and Newberg New York were among the first communities to start fluoridating water artificially in Grand Rapids researchers monitored roughly 30,000 school children over 15 years and observed that the rate of tooth decay declined by more than 60% so other communities started adopting the practice too and eventually it got added to toothpaste which works topically the goal of adding it to water was to make sure that everyone had access to fluoride's protection regardless of whether they used fluoridated products or had access to dental care one way to figure out how well the fluoride in our water is still working is to look at what happens in communities who have stopped adding it supporters of water fluoridation point to studies like this one that looked at what happened in Calgary Canada after they stopped fluoridating their water in 2011 the rate of tooth decay in children's baby teeth was already on the rise but after they took the fluoride out of the water that rate spiked but this 2024 review looked across 21 studies of communities that added fluoride to their water and could only determine that it may have led to a slight reduction in tooth decay the study authors found that prior to 1975 there was was a clear and important effect on prevention of tooth decay in children due to water fluoridation but because of the increased availability of fluoride in toothpast since then it is unlikely that we will see this effect in all populations today so fluoride in the water did help us have healthier teeth in the past and it still might in some communities but because of how widespread topical fluoride is the effect might not be as dramatic as it was historically and in recent years a handful of scientists have been looking at into another question how much fluoride is safe fluoride as an additive to water is usually in the form of liquid fluosilicic acid and the World Health Organization recommends a dosage no higher than 1. 5 mg per liter of water to put that in perspective that's about 1 gallon for an Olympic swimming pool amount of water the CDC recommends 7 Mig per liter of water or a little less than a half gallon per swimming pool municipalities set their own fluoride Doses and most set it around this amount like my New York City tap water this CDC recommendation is solely based on an amount that balances the protection from tooth decay while limiting the risk of dental fosis the mostly harmless tee staining first observed in communities with high natural fluoridation but scientists studying these dosages today are looking at how fluoride affects developing brains both in utero and as young children primarily by measuring IQ what we've learned about the developing brain is it's probably one of the most sensitive indicators of toxicity and so we typically begin there Bruce Lamere is a professor of Health Sciences at Simon Frasier University in Canada and studies environmental neurotoxins like lead pesticides and Mercury some of the first studies to show a link between fluoride intake and IQ were from villages in China with high natural amounts of fluoride starting in 1989 through the 2000s some of them looked at children who grew up in a village where the water had high levels of fluoride and compared them to Villages without high levels of fluoride they measured levels as high as 2. 3 Gall per swimming pool of water these early studies had plenty of issues but they did raise a big red flag and what they found is comparing the High versus the low populations they saw about a s IQ Point difference but when it's that large it's hard to sort of just dismiss for the average person a few points difference in IQ doesn't have a huge impact and it might not even be measurable the former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences explained this to me using lead as an example you know Laura if you'd had less blood lead maybe you'd have three more IQ points you can't prove that in an individual but you look at a population and we know that if you shift the population's IQ you have more people needing special services you have fewer Geniuses the results of those early studies inspired some researchers to try and find out whether the neurological risk from high fluoride levels could also occur at lower levels like the who maximum of 1.

5 mg per liter or even at the lower levels we fluoridate our water in the US over the years some Studies have found an association between IQ and lower fluoride levels some haven't leaving scientists particularly in the dental and epidemiological communities divided on the issue but while we were working on this video US Federal scientists published a rigorous analysis of 74 of the studies on childhood IQ and fluoride in it a small number of highquality studies from outside the US found an association between lower IQ and water fluoride levels below 1. 5 mg per liter but the small number of studies meant that they weren't able to draw conclusions about the levels that we fluoridate water in the US I called Bruce Lamere back up to make sense of the results hello again hello the metaanalysis is really a way to synthesize and quantify the high quality studies and the low quality studies and try to make sense of it right because otherwise what you're left with is well these studies which are my favorite studies said this and that confirms my belief and these studies uh which did that don't confirm my belief and clearly they're wrong what this new metaanalysis was able to conclude is that urinary fluoride levels below 1. 5 mg per liter were associated with lower IQ translating to a loss of 1.

6 IQ points per 1 millgram per liter of fluoride in urine urine which captures the totality of exposure that people have and that's how we measure risk from Total exposure not from one isolated Source Bruce explained that the fluoride we put in our water is just the minimum amount of fluoride we all consume black and green tea leaves have high fluoride content a variety of food like potatoes and canned shellfish has fluoride in it the pesticides on our food can have fluoride in it too we consume fluoride if we accidentally swallow toothpaste or mouthwash and the levels of fluoride we add to water also doesn't capture the roughly 3 million Americans primarily in the southwest that use groundwater that has natural fluoride concentrations even higher than 1. 5 mg per liter experts were particularly concerned about infants who drink formula almost their entire diet is fluoridated water and dry formula that can have fluoride in it too and about pregnant people who can pass all of this fluoride intake to a fetus we often times see exposures that exceed 1.