Fluoride opposition is silly
FLUORIDATION of our community water and the benefits it would bring are now dead, at least for another year. That will bring the total attempts to fluoridate Hawaii's water to 56.
Let's look at some of the objections that frightened our elected representatives:
It isn't safe. Yet 145 million U.S. residents have been drinking the stuff, washing their dogs in it and watering their petunias with it for as long as 55 years.
These people represent every nationality, ethnicity, medical condition, allergy, medication (legal and illegal), body type, socioeconomic stratum, and every breed of dog. If there was anything going wrong, we would have experienced it in big numbers and long ago.
It doesn't offer freedom of choice. Oh? Choice for whom? The kids, who stand to benefit, should be the ones who make the choice. Do you think they would vote for rotten, unsightly teeth that would imperil their health and undercut their appearance?
There are other ways to do it. But the time to do it is when children's teeth are forming. It is fluoride's hardening from within that makes their teeth resistant to attacks from caries-producing influences. Painting or brushing it on affects only the surface. It helps, but marginally by comparison, and it doesn't help the kids who don't get it.
It's the responsibility of parents. Yes, we should teach parents to take the responsibility, to pay for pellets, to stand over the kids while they brush, and to keep them from putting caries-producing stuff in their mouths.
Great idea. But modifying daily behavior -- or any behavior -- is the hardest part of public health. Look, we can't even persuade pregnant women to stop smoking. How many generations of children will have lousy teeth while we try to get this going?
Kids don't drink water. Who cares? Soda contains water, canned fruit juice contains water, and these and other products would be made in Hawaii -- with fluoridated water.
Maybe we're getting too much fluorine already.
Part A: Not. The Institute of Medicine reports that the appropriate intake lies between 3.5 to 10 parts per million daily. The state plan calls for .7 parts per million.
Part B: The best way to assure minimal fluoride intake, if that's what's worrying you, is to fluoridate community water. Then you could forget completely about pellets and toothpaste and all the rest.
It's too expensive. Los Angeles figures one-fifth of a cent per person per month. If it were 100 times as much, that would be 20 cents. Think we can handle it?
If God had wanted us to fluoridate our water, he would have done it. Well, he did. That's how we discovered it in the first place.
Let's not be hasty. Aw, come on. For what? For another generation of kids with lousy teeth?
With a few of our key legislators, this kind of sense didn't prevail. Pity.
Charles J. Hardy is a lecturer in maternal and child health
at the School of Public Health, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
