Utah can become the first state that forbade fluoride in public water

Utah may soon become the first state of the USA, which forbade to add fluoride to drinking water.

On Friday, the Utah senate approved Bill This prohibits adding a mineral to public water systems. If it is signed by Governor Spencer Cox, the middle will enter into force on May 7. The governor did not publicly comment on whether he was supporting the bill.

The passage of the Act in Utah appears about two weeks after confirming Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as a health secretary. In November, Mr. Kennedy I swear that Trump’s administration “will advise all US systems to remove fluoride from public water.”

In 2022 around 44 percent Residents of Utah supplied with public drinking water drank fluoridated water. Fluorine is added to drinking water because it prevents cavities, the benefit observed for the first time over a hundred years ago. Disease control and prevention centers healed Water fluoridation as one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.

“Evidence that adding fluoride to water reduces the niche and tooth decay is unambiguous,” said Dr. F. Perry Wilson, an epidemiologist of a doctor and a chronic disease at the Yale School of Medicine.

Opponents of water fluoridation, including Kennedy and a representative of the state Utah Stephanie Gricius, who introduced the act, claim that chemicals can have a harmful neurological effect on fetuses and adolescent children. IN Last Article ArticleScientists from the National Institutes of Health analyzed the results of 74 studies and came to the conclusion that a high level of exposure to fluorine or childhood was associated with lower IQ results in childhood.

However, fluoride levels associated with lower IQ results were twice as high as the levels of water fluoridisation recommended by CDC usually, high levels of fluorine exposure are related not to the water fluoridation of the community, said Dr. Wilson, but with natural fluoride pollution from water running on the rocks and soil.

And some Other tests I found no connection between fluoride and IQ.

“There is still no evidence that social water fluoridation, with fluoride levels used in the United States, is associated with all adverse health effects,” said Dr. Scott Tomar, public health dentist and oral epidemiologist at the University of Ilinois Chicago College of Dentistry.

This does not mean that such a link cannot exist. Among other things, no gigantic, longitudinal research was carried out on the relationship between water fluoridation and IQ in the United States.

“We always have to look for novel data and allow us to change our applications,” said Dr. Wilson.

And there is no doubt that some Americans are exposed to higher than recommended fluoride levels in drinking water due to natural fluoride pollution. In 2020 testScientists analyzed water samples from private wells throughout the country. They discovered that water in some wells was naturally contaminated with fluoride at levels above four milligrams per liter, Legal fluoride limit to drinking water. It is over 2.5 times the level at which IQ has been observed.

The novel Utah law would prohibit manually adding fluoride to public water, but this does not apply to water, nor would reduce the amount of fluoride inhabitants to natural sources.

“This law would have zero influence on this,” said Dr. Tomar.

Other countries and American cities and poviats have been considering or implemented similar bans. This month, a prohibition of water fluoridation was introduced to the Montana legislator has been repealed by the committee February 25. Some communities in North KarolinaIN OregonAND Pensilings They have recently stopped fluoridizing. And legislators in others of state They submitted bills that would leave the decision to fluoridate voters or local management bodies.

Studies suggest that fluoridation bans can have negative consequences for oral health. AND Research 2018 He stated that children in the US without access to fluorized water developed 39 percent more niche in infants, and 16 percent more recesses in their regular teeth than children in communities where most people had access to fluoride water.

Dr. Wilson was also worried that the law would have the greatest impact on residents of low income. “Fluorization of water supply has a disproportionate benefit for a lower socio -economic status, with less access to preventive dental care,” he said. “This account will hurt this Utahans the most.”