Salt Lake City (AP) -Utah is the first state to prohibit fluoride in public drinking water, over the opposition of dentists and national health organizations that warn the move will lead to medical problems and affect the municipalities with low incomes disproportionately.
The Republican governor Spencer Cox signed the legislation on Thursday, in which cities and municipalities are supposed to add the decision about the mineral to their water systems.
Fluoride strengthens the teeth and reduces the cavities by replacing the US centers for the control and prevention of diseases during normal wear.
The legislators of Utah, which urged a ban, said that the introduction of fluoride in water was too high-priced. Cox, who grew up and raised his own children in a community without fluoridated water, recently compared it to the “medical” from the “medication” government.
May 7th is the prohibition that is expressed weeks after the US Health Minister Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has expressed skepticism about water fluoridation.
The American Dental Association criticized the legislators Cox and Utah sharply and said that the ban showed “deliberate disregard for oral health and the well -being of their voters”.
The group said that cavities are the most common chronic disease in childhood.
“As a father and dentist, it is discouraging that a proven, public health policy that exists for the well -being of an entire community was dismantled due to distorted pseudosciences,” said the association’s president, Denver Dentist, Brett Kessler,.
The legislator in states, including Ohio, South Carolina and Florida, have also made suggestions to prevent local governments or water system operators from adding water to fluoride in water.
Proposed restrictions on fluoridation in New Hampshire, Tennessee and North Dakota were rejected. A measure in Kentucky to optionally bring the fluoridation to a standstill in the state senate.
The fluoridation is considered the most cost -effective way to prevent the tooth on a immense scale. More than 200 million people in the United States or almost two thirds of the population receive fluoridated water from shared water. The addition of low fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest achievements in public health of the last century.
But some cities across the country removed fluoride from their water and consider other communities to do the same. A few months ago, a federal judge of the US environmental protection authority ordered fluoride to regulate fluoride in drinking water, since a high level could be a risk of the intellectual development of children.
The President of the American Dental Association, Brett Kessler, said that the fluoride quantities that are added to drinking water are under the level as problematic.
The national health institutes say that very high fluoride doses that can cause disease are typically due to sporadic accidents, such as the unintentional swallowing of the utilize of fluoride by dentists or supplements that are provided inappropriately. The agency says that it is “practically impossible” to get a toxic dose that could cause systemic health problems by fluoride that are added to water or toothpaste in standard levels.
The opponents warn that the ban will affect disproportionately low -income residents who can rely on public drinking water with fluoride as the only source for preventive dental care. Families with low incomes may not afford regular dentist visits or the fluoride tablets that some people buy in cities without fluoridation.
The sponsor of Utah legislation, Republican MP Stephanie Gricius, recognized that fluoride has advantages, but said that it was a question of the “individual decision” not to have it in the water.
Of the 484 water systems in Utah, in which 2024 data reported, only 66 fluoridated their water, as an associated press analysis showed. The largest was the largest city in the state, Salt Lake City.
In 2022, Utah took 44th place in the nation for the percentage of residents who received fluoridated water, according to the data of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases.
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Brown reported by Billings, Mont.
