Juliet Guichon and Ian Mitchell are faculty members at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary and helped lead Calgary back to water fluoridation.
On an ordinary cold and dark winter morning in Calgary, parents and their children wait for the dental clinic to open. All children require dental surgery that requires general anesthesia, a need that increased dramatically after Calgary ended water fluoridation in 2011, as did the need for emergency intravenous antibiotic therapy to treat infections originating from a tooth.
Calgary City Council’s foolish decision in 2011 to stop water fluoridation is a lesson for all Canadians. Fluoridation works and is safe. Fluoridation reduces tooth decay by about 25 percent.
The Liberals and New Democrats plan to spend more than $13 billion on a national dental treatment plan, but have not included a prevention plan: to fluoridate municipalities that do not currently benefit from this service. From a cost perspective, this is a critical mistake.
Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s riding of Papineau in Montreal and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s riding of Burnaby South in Metro Vancouver do not benefit from water fluoridation.
Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Singh would be much more appreciated by the children of Montreal and Vancouver if their jobs allowed children to continue playing with their friends at recess with healthy mouths – as many children do in, for example, Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax, Winnipeg and Edmonton, all of which are fluoridated. Children generally do not enjoy dentistry treatment, despite the kindness and skill of the dentist. Prevention is always better than cure.
Most of Canada is non-fluoridated, unlike the United States and Australia. Canadian federal, provincial and municipal elected officials could work together to save billions of dollars over time by adjusting natural fluoride levels in water to 0.7 parts per million — less than one part of fluoride in one million parts of water.
The first reason federal elected officials might offer for not taking up this initiative is that water treatment is not in their jurisdiction. However, the federal government may provide fluoridation infrastructure grants to reduce the cost of its new dental treatment plan. Fluoridation should be promoted by the federal Conservatives, who are usually focused on cutting big spending – this policy will save money in the long run.
Provincial governments also have good reasons to encourage fluoridation. They oversee and pay for hospital care and dental care for low-income residents. People with infections and pain often present in emergency departments and must be admitted for treatment, sometimes to prevent death. Provinces could reduce costs by incentivizing municipalities to implement water fluoridation.
Municipalities are at the forefront of water treatment, but some municipal officials refuse to take on another burden that does not reduce their budgets because health care is not a municipal responsibility. Municipal cost without municipal benefit is why incentives should be considered.
More problematic is the tendency in recent years for elected officials to be prone to false, hostile and sometimes threatening physical opposition to water fluoridation from a small but very vocal minority who oppose it.
Water fluoridation is a scientifically proven public health measure, but some opponents, fueled by misinformation, falsely claim that fluoridation harms the brains of infants. As has been proven by US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicineand numerous well designed Studies, there is nothing to the claim “fluoridation damages the brain”. On this and other false claims, elected officials should take the advice of public health experts.
Although opponents of fluoridation should be answered with courtesy and respect, their arguments are without merit and should be resisted by elected officials. Sure, it’s unpleasant to be threatened by these individuals, but elected officials must make tough decisions in the public interest despite the opposition of some residents. Their police forces must ensure that they can do so safely.
And opponents of fluoridation should work to mitigate their own concerns. They can read the plain language explanations about the effectiveness and safety of water fluoridation offered by Health Canada and United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Or they could consider the careful, technical reviews provided by the Australian Health and Medical Research CouncilThe Irish Food Safety Authorityor the German Senate Committee on Food Safety.
Canada has decided to pay billions for a national dental care plan. We have to pay millions for prevention. All Canadians should benefit from more than 75 years of evidence that water fluoridation is effective, safe and cost-effective. Prevention is always better than cure – and less expensive, too.
