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For some of the region’s leading dental experts, it was deja vu all over again Wednesday in Buffalo City Hall.
One year ago, they appeared before Common Council members and expressed alarm after a Buffalo News investigation revealed that the city quietly stopped adding fluoride to its water system in 2015.
Now the dentists are exasperated by the fact that Mayor Byron W. Brown’s administration has missed its own deadline for re-fluoridating the water by the end of 2023. The mayor’s top water official said the city is waiting on state approval but he declined to give an estimated timeline for completion.
“I thought it was going to be started in June. I thought it was going to be started in October. And here we are. How do we justify that?” asked Dr. Brendan Dowd, former president of the New York State Dental Association.
Dr. Emily Friedan, a pediatric dentist who teaches at the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine, said the issue was one of health equity because she and other dentists have noticed an “astounding difference” in dental decay among children in the city compared with those in Buffalo’s suburbs.
“Even since this came out a year ago, we could have done things,” Friedan said. “I should have been prescribing these daily supplements to all of our Buffalo children since I found out last January.”
Dentists avoided doing that because they were told the city was working on the problem, they said. While scientific studies overwhelmingly have found that fluoride in drinking water safely reduces tooth decay, too much fluoride can also be harmful to the body.
“There was no awareness campaign to the community at large,” Friedan said. “The past seven years of secrecy and the current inaction is health inequity at its worst: depriving those of a proven health measure. Come on, we can do better.”
Through a spokesperson, Brown declined to comment
Buffalo Water Board Chairman Oluwole A. McFoy said in a written statement, “We are responding to a second round of comments received last week from the NYSDOH. We have pre-ordered and are in possession of long lead time items, so once NYSDOH approval is received we can proceed with construction.”
McFoy declined to say whether the administration has a new deadline or time estimate for returning fluoride to the water. County and state health officials told The News they were reviewing materials provided by the city in December.
The State Health Department “is in the process of reviewing re-fluoridation project materials received from the City of Buffalo in mid-December,” spokesperson Erin Clary said.
Kara Kane, spokesperson for the Erie County Health Department, said in an email that the department “received responses to the first rounds of comments from the city of Buffalo’s engineer on 12/21/2023, and those responses are currently under review.”
As was the case a year ago, Common Council members on Wednesday appeared frustrated by the lack of progress from the Brown administration.
“We should be racing to resolve this issue, said University Council Member Rasheed N.C. Wyatt. “It’s appalling that we’re at this stage. Hearing from these folks really makes me more angry.”
“We need to know a timetable,” Niagara Council Member David Rivera said.
Council President Christopher P. Scanlon said his staff would send a letter to the mayor by day’s end seeking answers.
Buffalo’s water system now contains far lower measurements of fluoride, which boosts dental health and guards against tooth decay, than what public health experts recommend. That puts Buffalo in the minority both nationally and in New York State. Experts say the change could have serious implications for dental health, particularly in children.
Buffalo Water Board officials say they were in the process of upgrading an outdated fluoride system when the lead water crisis in Flint, Mich., caused them to pause in 2016 and study whether the new type of fluoride system would have a corrosive effect on Buffalo’s many lead pipes. They say studies showed the system is safe and city would begin adding fluoride to its water again sometime in 2023.
Since 2015, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended an optimal fluoride concentration of 0.70 parts per million in community water systems. Buffalo’s fluoride concentration in its 2021 water quality report was 0.13 parts per million, more than five times lower than the recommended level. In its 2022-23 water quality report, Buffalo said the fluoride concentration was .115 parts per million in 2022, six times lower than the recommended level.
The News reported that Buffalo stopped adding fluoride to its water system in June 2015, according to the Buffalo Water Board’s annual water quality report for that year. Fluoridation was expected to be restored sometime after March 2016, the report stated. The next year, that estimate was pushed back to December 2017, before being extended to 2018 and 2019.
Last year, a group of Buffalo parents filed a class-action lawsuit against the city in State Supreme Court for not adequately telling the public about the decision to stop adding fluoride to the water eight years ago.
The lawsuit stated that the lack of fluoridation in city water violated the new “Green Amendment” to the state constitution, which was approved by voters in 2021 and guarantees “a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
It seeks the immediate return of fluoride to Buffalo’s drinking water; the opening of free dental clinics throughout the city for residents who have developed tooth decay from the lack of fluoride; and $160 million in damages for the roughly 250,000 city residents who have been without fluoride since June 2015.
The city, through spokesperson Michael DeGeorge, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Community water fluoridation began in 1945 and “is a major factor responsible for the decline in occurrence and severity of tooth decay during the second half of the 20th century,” according to a 2015 report from the U.S. Public Health Service.
In adolescents, tooth decay in at least one permanent tooth decreased from 90% in the 1960s to 60% in the early 2000s, the report stated, adding that fluoridation also contained benefits for adults.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists community water fluoridation as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century, along with vaccines and the recognition of tobacco as a health hazard.
Nearly 70% of American water systems contain added fluoride, according to the CDC.
Local governments, though, have the ultimate say on whether to fluoridate water. Those in Western New York and across the state have overwhelmingly said yes.
Of New York State’s 10 most populous cities, only Buffalo and Albany do not add fluoride to their water systems.
*Original full-text article online at: https://buffalonews.com/news/local/government-politics/deja-vu-in-city-hall-one-year-later-still-no-fluoride-in-buffalos-water/article_de966298-ab17-11ee-b369-2b4f2c325210.html
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