Debunking Fluoride

Debunking Fluoride: Cavity Fighter or Toxic Intruder?
By Carol S. Kopf
Issue 107, July/August 2001

It just became easier to say "No thanks!" to fluoride supplements. Fluoride drops, tablets, and vitamins are more likely to damage children's teeth than to prevent cavities, according to mainstream dental groups such as the Canadian Dental Association and the Western Australia Health Department's Dental Service. Both organizations have stopped recommending regular fluoride supplementation.

Routinely prescribed to US children who don't drink fluoridated water (starting with toothless six month olds), fluoride supplements were never tested for safety and efficacy by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).1 These supplements are one category of many different medications the FDA officially "grandfathered" in, meaning they were sold before drug testing was required by law.

Current research shows that many of the old fluoride studies were flawed. Fluoride's benefits are merely topical, not systemic, as was once thought. Moreover, ingested fluoride can result in unwanted side effects, including dental fluorosis-spotted, stained, or pitted teeth.

Brian A. Burt of the University of Michigan School of Public Health states that, "Fluoride supplements should no longer be used for young children in North America...the risks of using supplements in infants and young children outweigh the benefits."2

Euan Swan, author of the Canadian Dental Association's (CDA) new fluoride supplement guidelines,3 said, "The evidence supporting the effectiveness of dietary fluoride supplements is relatively weak... There's better evidence indicating that they contribute to dental fluorosis."4

The CDA urges that no fluoride supplements be used until the permanent teeth appear at around age six or seven, when the risk of fluorosis is diminished, and then they should be given only to children with a high risk of cavities. How do parents and dentists know who is at risk? The most consistent predictor of cavities in children is past cavity experience, reported a recent National Institutes of Health panel.5 Eating a lot of sugar or drinking sugared sodas increases cavity risk. "And fluoride won't help," Reggie VanderVeen, a Wyoming dentist, stated in an Associated Press story on children's tooth decay. "Sugar will beat fluoride every time," he said.6

Still, the CDA advises that all fluoride sources be tallied up first, an almost impossible task, and that only lozenge-type supplements be used for high-risk patients; such supplements stay in the mouth a long time, bathing the teeth the way fluoridated water does on its way to the stomach.

"The notion that systemic fluorides are needed in nonfluoridated areas is an outdated one that should be abandoned altogether," says Canada's leading fluoride authority, Hardy Limeback, head of the Department of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto and past president of the Canadian Association for Dental Research.7 The Western Australia Health Department's Dental Service reports, "Regular fluoride supplement use has also been associated with elevated risk... of acquiring mild dental fluorosis, even in areas without fluoride in the drinking water... Dental Services staff won't normally advise any child patient to use fluoride supplements."8

Why, then, does the American Dental Association continue to recommend fluoride supplements? Dental professionals are extremely reluctant to speak negatively about their sacred cow, fluoride. Fluoridation has given organized dentistry political viability, helped establish the National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research, and provided a bundle of research dollars.

As a result, we have fluoridated foam, varnish, dental sealants, cements, filling material, bonding material, floss, toothpicks, toothpaste, mouth rinse, vitamins, drops, lozenges, pills, rubber bands and adhesives for braces, chewing gum, gels, and dental office treatments-and children who are overfluoridated. Even when fluoride is not swallowed, some of it gets absorbed into the body via the mouth's mucous membranes. Nobody knows how much.

Most dentists do not think that fluoride is harmful. Many sincerely believe what they were taught in dental school and prescribe fluoride for their own children and grandkids. But even the fluoridation of water may be a mistake. In the early 1900s, researchers found that people who drank water high in natural calcium fluoride had discolored teeth. Puzzled as to why the same people also seemed to be without cavities, dentists deduced that, since tasteless, odorless fluoride in the water supply discolored teeth, it must also be what stopped tooth decay.9, 10 They overlooked other water nutrients such as calcium (today a recognized tooth and bone builder) that may have been the real decay-preventing hero.