The battle over whether we should be putting fluoride in our water has reached fever pitch. We’ve got U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and anti-fluoride activists saying it’s a neurotoxin that’s lowering our IQs. But supporters say that fluoride is a safe and effective way to protect our teeth from cavities, and that stopping water fluoridation would lead to a spike in tooth decay. To find out who’s right, we talk to epidemiologist Dr. Ashley Malin and community health scientist Professor Lindsay McLaren. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsFluoride In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Chapter 1: Why did we start water fluoridation? (07:00) Chapter 2: What can fluoride do at really high levels? (11:18) Chapter 3: Can low doses of fluoride affect the brain? (20:41) Chapter 4: Anything else to worry about? (24:53) Chapter 5: Does fluoride in the water protect our teeth? This episode was produced by Meryl Horn, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, So Wylie, and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke to for this episode, including Professor Christine Till, Professor Jonathan Broadbent, Dr. John Morris, Professor Bruce Lanphear, Professor Loc Do, Dr. Maria Kipper, Professor Philippe Hujoel, Professor Stephen Peckham, Dr. Tommaso Filippini, and Professor Steven Levy. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why did we start putting fluoride in the water?
Okay, there's so much controversy right now around water fluoridation. I know. Which we'll get to. Okay. But first, I have to tell you the, like, wild and surprising story about why we started putting fluoride in the water in the first place. Because it is kind of weird that we do this, right? I guess so. How did it all start? Well, it's actually a detective story. It starts in 1901.
So picture a young dentist. Frederick McKay moves to Colorado Springs. And he starts seeing patients and immediately notices that there's something weird going on. A lot of his patients have dark brown stains on their teeth. He writes that the color was sometimes dirty or an almost ebony black.
Mm-hmm.
Do you want to see pictures?
Of course I do.
All right.
Oh, it's a real black line, thick line across their teeth. That is unsightly.
Yeah. So McKay starts to obsess over this, searching for an explanation. He writes to a friend at one point who responded, quote, I have never seen a stain that penetrated the enamel so deeply before. And this guy guessed that maybe the stains came from dead organisms. Hmm. So, like, they had no idea at first, like, what was going on here.
I mean, it looks, you could see, it looks like mold on their teeth.
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Chapter 2: What happens when fluoride is present at really high levels?
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Welcome back. Today, we're looking at whether fluoride should be in our water or not. Is it safe or not? Meryl Horne, PhD, is here with us. Hi, Wendy.
Meryl, where do we begin? Is fluoride a poison now?
Well, I mean, like a lot of stuff, at really high levels, fluoride can kill you. So the most dramatic example that I found of this was in the 90s, there was a town in Alaska that accidentally dumped like way too much fluoride into the water supply. And like dozens of people got really sick. Someone even died.
The case study said that, quote, after 24 hours of intractable vomiting, a 41-year-old man was found dead at home.
Oh, God. How much fluoride did they dump in the water in that case?
It was way more than we normally put in. So like that water that that guy drank had roughly like 350 times more than what we aim for when we fluoridate water.
Wow. Right.
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Chapter 3: Can low doses of fluoride affect brain development in children?
Yeah, let's dive into that one since people are really worried about that and it's also where a lot of the research has been. So to walk us through this, I called up epidemiologist Ashley Mallon, an assistant professor at the University of Florida.
Fluoride. Got it.
Yeah. So Ashley first remembers when she heard about this idea that fluoride might be bad for us. She was with a family member.
I was drinking a bottled water and they said, don't drink that. There's fluoride in it. And I said, yeah, well, it's good for my teeth. And they said, no, fluoride lowers IQ. And I said, there's no way that something would be added to the drinking water that could potentially lower IQ. And what about it felt kind of implausible?
Yeah, I was skeptical because this is a widely used public health intervention that's supposed to be protecting our teeth and it's supposed to be something that's good for us. So I just said they wouldn't add that to the drinking water if it was harmful in any way. Like I couldn't even fathom that that was a possibility.
Yeah, I hear that.
But, like, she was intrigued enough that Ashley started looking into the research. And at the time, there was a little bit there. Like, there was a study in the 90s that looked at over 500 rats and found that giving them fluoride could change their behavior. Like, it made some of them hyperactive.
Mm-hmm.
And then she also found some studies in people, like in China, there are a lot of places with these really high levels of fluoride in the water.
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Chapter 4: What does recent research say about fluoride and neurobehavioral issues?
Chapter 5: Are the fluoride levels in our water today safe?
Chapter 6: Why is there controversy and opposition to water fluoridation today?
Chapter 7: Does fluoride in the water protect our teeth from cavities?
I think fluoride is a poison.
But he's not alone. There's a whole kind of chorus of people saying that adding fluoride to the water has been a huge mistake because fluoride is actually really bad for us.
Fluoride, it's a neurotoxin and it's found in rat poison.
It literally drops IQ in children. It helps cause ADHD. It makes our bones brittle and increases hip fractures. Fluoride in drinking water absolutely increases the risk of thyroid disease.
And on top of all the dangers of fluoride, people are also saying now that it doesn't even work to prevent cavities anymore. Now that we have better dental care.
Not only ineffectual, but harmful because of all the science that's emerging. Water fluoridation, scientifically proven not to work.
Is fluoride really the hero that we once thought it was? And so now fluoride is being taken out of the water in some places in Australia and now Utah in the U.S.
So who's right? Is fluoride the hero that we thought it was or is it the nemesis that people now say it is?
Yeah, that's the question. And just to say that, like, the research on this was, like, not at all what I was expecting it to be.
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