[Revised 12/4/22]

The issue of fluoridating Spokane’s water supply is expected to remain on the back burner until the city mandated cost analysis is completed sometime next spring. At that point the majority on the Spokane City Council will likely move to continue the fluoridation process. However, be advised, those who advocate fluoridation, (and other evils done under the sun), never sleep.

Case in point, just one week before the mid-term elections, the Spokesman-Review (SR) published an article blaming the lack of chemical fluoride in Spokane’s drinking water for a high rate of tooth decay among area children.  [“Company Works to Boost Oral Health Awareness” by Erica Bullock SR Journal of Business – 10/30/22]   In response to the obvious misrepresentations in the article, (and with the understanding that fluoridation is a hot button topic), it is likely that several people sent letters to the SR editor’s desk in an attempt to challenge the narrative. I know of at least two, but for some mysterious reason, not one letter critical of the article, including mine, made it past the round file. Fortunately, this blog page gives me the ability to sidestep the newspaper’s gate keepers and publish my own opinions freely and without censorship.

In the SR article, Spokane entrepreneur Edie Higby made the outrageous assertion that, “If you’re living in Spokane, Washington, your child is three times more likely to suffer from tooth decay because we don’t have fluoride in our water.”  Higby’s statement is not only unsupported by any scientific data or documentation, it is demonstrably false, or in other words, an outright lie.

Higby can be excused for not being aware that Spokane’s water already contains low levels of naturally occurring fluoride. She simply doesn’t know the facts. However, by claiming there is a link between lack of ingested fluoride and poor dental health outcomes in Spokane area children, Higby has inserted a fiction which obscures the real reasons some children in Spokane may be experiencing poor oral health outcomes.

Over consumption of sugar and the proliferation of oral bacteria due to lack of proper dental hygiene are the top two factors proven to result in poor dental health among children.  Neglecting regular dentist visits rounds out the top three most significant factors.  Lack of fluoride in drinking water doesn’t make the list. In fact, most of the beverages children consume, from juice to soda pop, are made with fluoridated water. No one knows for sure how much fluoride a child living in Spokane already consumes, but the amount is likely significant. Mandating even more of this dangerous chemical by putting it in our water supply is not just ignorant, it constitutes an act of medical, and yes, criminal malfeasance! Unfortunately, such inconvenient truths don’t sit well with the pro-fluoridationists, or our political leadership, all of whom claim to know what’s best for the rest of us.

Community health education is anathema to what the fluoride lobby wants to accomplish. Advocates for fluoridation have a vested interest in concealing the facts. Compliance to their command and control agenda requires keeping people ignorant. To support the scheme, the Washington State Department of Health has put out a flyer entitled “Addressing Fluoride Hesitancy” to assist fluoridation proponents.

In the “do’s and don’ts” section of the flyer, DOH specifically advises the pro-fluoridation side against “leading with the science”. The DOH also warns about making things “complicated”. Instead of looking too closely at the facts, DOH advises fluoridation advocates to: “Be positive; show you care; identify target audience; focus on community benefit, invest in core partners; recommend it every time; and use personal stories.”

This politically driven corporate marketing strategy is designed to convince people who live in un-fluoridated communities that they are missing out on the important health benefits of fluoridated water. Disposing of large quantities of industrial waste by marketing the substance as something beneficial in order to dilute it through the public water system makes perfect economic sense. Meanwhile, advocates for clean pure drinking water, healthy diets, and proper dental care, are demonized as unsympathetic Neanderthals who hate children and want their less prosperous neighbors to suffer.

While there may be some small benefit from the topical application of fluoride directly on tooth enamel, there is little to no benefit derived from ingesting the chemical. In fact, all one has to do is read the warning label on a tube of fluoridated toothpaste to understand the dangers of ingesting even small amounts of fluoride. A recent study conducted in the UK concluded that even the presumed topical benefits of fluoride, which were always considered minimal at best, may have been overblown. Meanwhile, dozens of studies linking the ingestion of fluoride at levels typically associated with community water fluoridation with lowered intelligence scores and a rising tide of developmental disabilities continue to pile up.

If we seriously want to improve children’s dental health then we should work with parents to be able to increase children’s access to oral health care, improve diets, and teach proper tooth brushing skills at home and in our schools.  Doing any one of these three things would lower tooth decay rates far more effectively than adding a dangerous neurotoxin to Spokane’s community water supply.

Sources for this article include:

https://www.spokanejournal.com/local-news/tooth-fairy-co-works-to-boost-oral-health-awareness/

Fluoride & IQ: 76 Studies

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11424061/Fluoride-water-limited-benefit-improvements-toothpastes-study-suggests.html

straitsresearch.com/report/fluorosilicic-acid-market/

ttps://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/oral-health

Click to access 348-692-AddressingFluorideHesitancy.pdf