Why is Dallas City Hall humoring fluoride conspiracy theorists?
City councils and city managers come and go at Dallas City Hall, but some things never change. For years, a parade of conspiracy theorists who blast adding fluoride to the water supply have shown up to speak at council meetings.
Adding fluoride to the water supply is a practice rooted in decades of research. In the early 1900s, a dentist in Colorado noticed residents had brown stains on their teeth but few cavities. Scientists found that water with naturally high levels of fluoride protects against tooth decay. Most water supplies, however, don’t have enough natural fluoride, so in the 1940s, cities in the U.S. began adding just enough to fight tooth decay but avoid staining.
The conspiracy crowd has long railed against fluoridation. In the 1960s, it was a Communist mind control plot. Today, it’s a government ploy to make kids dumb. Or something. The Dallas City Council sits through the harangues and hosts occasional briefings to educate the public, which is the right thing to do. But we were alarmed by recent comments from some council members that seem to have encouraged the conspiracy-minded.
In an October briefing, a panel of medical experts, including Dr. Philip Huang, the Dallas County health authority, went over the robust research that shows fluoridation is safe and beneficial. Council member Paula Blackmon questioned whether it was appropriate to continue the medical practice, however.
It’s true that science evolves. But the passage of time doesn’t just make established science irrelevant. We still treat infections with penicillin and vaccinate against a host of diseases.
As Huang noted, federal public health experts in 2015 lowered their recommendation for water fluoridation to 0.7 parts per million to reflect the wider availability of fluoride from other sources. That is a tiny fraction compared to the fluoride that comes in our toothpaste, but it can still decrease tooth decay by 25%, according to established science.
Adam Bazaldua, chair of the Quality of Life committee, nevertheless called on city staff to have a panel of experts from “the other side.”
“There are some questions that I’d like to hear answered from an unbiased standpoint,” Bazaldua said, prompting Huang and the others to remind him they’re not lobbyists.
There isn’t any credible “other side” to the fluoride question. Yet Bazaldua’s committee on Tuesday will hear from two people representing fringe groups. One group promotes alternative treatments in dentistry. The other, Fluoride Action Network, has found bedfellows among conspiracists and anti-vaxxers like Alex Jones and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A third panelist is one of the authors of a 2019 study that was manna to the conspiracy crowd and that supposedly linked lower-IQ in boys to fluoride exposure in the womb. But the study has been shown to be deeply flawed.
Blackmon and Bazaldua tempered their comments in interviews with us. They said they would like to hear arguments from scientists who are skeptical about fluoridation because they must weigh all the evidence. But Blackmon said this isn’t a policy priority and that she trusts Huang. Bazaldua told us he’s not pushing for a council vote on ending fluoridation.
Elected officials need to be careful when it comes to public health, especially matters that rest on long-established beneficial practices. Our country has been healthier because we have embraced scientific findings around vaccines and fluoride. Those who can least afford care benefit the most.
Opening the doors to conspiracists is dangerous, even if it’s in the name of just asking questions.
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