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Fluoride foes get validation

• Scientists: Substance less safe than presumed; more research needed

By Nick Budnick

The Portland Tribune, Mar 24, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Over the last six years, Lynne Campbell has become accustomed to being called a liar and a kook.

That’s how long it’s been since she left her advertising job to fight fluoride full time, trying to keep the cavity-fighting chemical out of Portlanders’ drinking water.

But while fluoridation proponents have long maintained that Campbell and her allies are wrong to say the chemical’s safety is unproven, now the mild-mannered Lake Oswego woman for the first time has backup from Uncle SamÑ a U.S. government study saying that, indeed, there are unanswered safety questions about fluoride.

The study has special significance for Portland, the largest city in the country that still does not fluoridate its water Ñ and which remains a high-priority target for both sides in the fluoridation fight.

On Wednesday, a panel of the Washington, D.C.-based National Academy of Sciences released a report finding that fluoride is less safe than previously thought, and that the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit on fluoride in water should be lowered. Specifically, it said that levels of the cavity-fighting substance currently allowed under federal water-safety rules cause a harmful variety of dental fluorosis, a mottling of the tooth that in its more severe form actually can cause cavities.

Moreover, it found persuasive evidence that fluoride in water increases bone fractures as well as stiffness in the joints of the elderly, and that it also may be related to Alzheimer’s disease, marginally reduce IQ in children and alter the endocrine and hormonal levels that control most of the functions of the human body Ñ with unknown effects. The chemical may even cause bone cancer, said the NAS Ñ although the evidence is “tentative and mixed.”

“It’s progress,” said Campbell, who heads a group called Oregon Citizens for Safe Drinking Water. But she argued that the report, by failing to directly discuss whether water-fluoridation makes sense, does not go far enough. “We’ve got evidence of cancer, bone fractures and endocrine effects,” she said, adding, “How much longer do we have to wait?”

Kurt Ferre, a Portland dentist who heads local fluoridation efforts, echoed Campbell in noting that the report does not explicitly pass judgment on current water fluoridation levels. But after reading the report’s executive summary, he said he does not think the risks of fluoridation outweigh the benefits.

“I will continue, along with the Oregon Dental Association, to advocate for community water fluoridation as the most cost-effective way to help reduce dental decay across our population,” he said.

Brett Hamilton, director of the Oregon Dental Association, agreed, saying his group “continues to advocate for the process of adding fluoride to public water supplies to reach an optimal level in order to protect people against tooth decay.”

Last year, Ferre’s group, the Tri-County Fluoridation Forum, spearheaded efforts in Salem for a law that would force Portland, which has rejected fluoridation four times since 1956, to change its ways. Ferre has said he plans to try again next year.