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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: The true costs of banning fluoride in drinking water [1]
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Date: 2025-05-31
Of all of this administration’s rapid-fire efforts to transform this once-proud country into a pitiful, second-class shithole for all but the uber-wealthy, the efforts by HHS head Robert Kennedy Jr. to eliminate or curtail fluoride from the nation’s drinking water probably now ranks (sadly) as one of the least of our concerns.
Nonetheless, because it is emblematic of the administration’s senseless war on science, Kennedy’s anti-fluoride fixation deserves some analysis, if only to illustrate the far-reaching consequences of putting a medical illiterate and established conspiracy-theorist in a position where he can alter the likely health outcomes for millions of Americans.
As reported last month by the Associated Press:
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he plans to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoridation in communities nationwide. Kennedy said he’s assembling a task force of health experts to study the issue and make new recommendations. Also on Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it is reviewing “new scientific information” on potential health risks of fluoride in drinking water. The EPA sets the maximum level allowed in public water systems.
As the AP article notes, “Kennedy cannot order communities to stop fluoridation, but he can direct the CDC to stop recommending it and work with the EPA to change the allowed amount.”
Except that based on the overwhelming consensus of the medical and dental community, there is no sound scientific rationale for eliminating or “altering” those amounts of fluoride currently in use by one-third of the country’s community water systems. Instead, it appears Kennedy and the EPA under another the aegis of Trump acolyte Lee Zeldin, are intent on creating one.
As ArsTechnica’s Beth Mole reports, according to a very recent study published in the Health Forum for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the wholesale elimination of fluoride from drinking water in the U.S. — once a prospect left to satire, but now given abject credence by elected Republican governors and legislators in the states of Utah and Florida — would have devastating, undeniable consequences not only for the public health, but economically as well.
[A] pair of researchers at Harvard—Sung Eun Choi and Lisa Simon—have modeled exactly what will happen in the US if Kennedy follows through on his pledge: The number of cavities and decayed teeth in American children and teens (ages 0–19) will increase by an estimated 7.5 percentage points over the first five years. That means there will be 25.4 million more rotten teeth in the mouths of children and teenagers. The dental bills for the added decay will total at least $9.8 billion in that time. Other costs, such as loss of work among parents, were not included, making the financial estimate conservative. But children will also be more miserable, with an estimated loss of 2.9 million quality-adjusted life years.
The same report is cited this weekend by NBC News. As the researchers note, after ten years the absence of fluoridation in those communities which currently use it in their drinking water would double that
number of rotten teeth in this country to 53 million, with an attendant economic cost of over $19 Billion.
As noted by the publication Forward, the ostensible justification for the elimination of fluoride has relied on new studies that are untethered to the rate in which fluoride is actually delivered through the American water supply.
Kennedy’s stated rationale, conveyed on X (formerly Twitter) Saturday is that fluoride “is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” (Most of these claims, at the levels approved for American taps, don’t carry water; there is evidence that suggests a link between IQ drop in children and the mineral at higher quantities, though experts say more research is needed.)
The “fluoride causes cancer” assertion has been largely debunked; according to the American Cancer Society, which conducted a review of existing research to date “The general consensus among the reviews done to date is that there is no strong evidence of a link between water fluoridation and cancer.” And the irony of the “Low IQ” argument being put forth by anyone in this administration notwithstanding, as Mole confirms, those concerns fairly evaporate when the real-world context of American fluoridation rates is factored in:
The data linking water fluoridation to low IQ is controversial. Many of the studies on the topic are of poor quality and have numerous confounding factors and flawed methods. Many compare IQ levels in communities in China and other countries, where there are areas with water that is naturally high in fluoride—much, much higher than what is intentionally added to US water. Further, a federal meta-analysis—a type of study that aggregates and reanalyzes data from independent studies—has been plagued by criticism for bias, poor statistical methods, and a lack of data transparency. But despite the controversy, one thing is clear in all the data and debate: Any possible association with low IQ and fluoridation only occurs at excessive levels—levels more than twice the amount used in the US and recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As an admittedly anecdotal aside, I am the product of growing up with fluoridated water. I’ve had one cavity in my existence, occurring late in my life (I will also humbly stand my IQ against anyone’s that might be currently employed in the service of this administration). But that ignores the larger point here: Fluoridation has been one of the more studied public health measures in our country’s history, simply by virtue of its longstanding proven outcomes. As Brett Kessler, the current head of the American Dental Association, observes:
“This is a huge cost for our country and it’s all avoidable. There is no better replacement for the time-tested, doctor trusted use of fluoride in community water programs,” Dr. Brett Kessler, president of the American Dental Association, said in a statement. “No amount of political rhetoric or misinformation will change that good oral health depends on proper nutrition, oral hygiene and optimally fluoridated water, or fluoride supplements if community water programs lack fluoride.”
Unlike Mr. Kennedy, Dr. Kessler is actually a dentist, one who knows something about public policy and dental health.
This anti-fluoridation campaign, like many of this administration’s more serious (and potentially far more lethal) public health edicts, seems to be driven by a singular proposition: that if enough people credulously swallow enough facile or non-contextual information on the internet, then actual, real-world science and outcomes can be safely disregarded if only to cater to those misconceptions.
The corollary to that thinking appears to be that, as a political calculation, much of the American public is by now so self-absorbed and indifferent to others that whatever destructive actions this administration commits are OK simply because Americans aren’t experiencing any consequences happening to them right now.
Sadly, on this latter point, they are mostly being proved right.
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