Odds are you grew up not giving too much thought to fluoride in drinking water to prevent cavities. For 80 years, most American cities have been adding the chemical for healthy teeth. For just as long, dentists have been giving children fluoride drops and tablets. Now the FDA has just restricted the use of ingestible fluoride, saying it may be linked to gut and brain issues. And there’s a growing movement to remove fluoride from public drinking water. Adding to the fire, a judge’s order for the EPA to address added fluoride as a toxic substance for the first time, and mitigate what the court says is an unreasonable risk to children’s IQ.
We’re at the water department in Melbourne, Florida with Mayor Paul Alfrey who says he first got worried about fluoride when he read the chemical’s warning sheet.
Paul Alfrey: From my experience serving in U.S. Coast Guard, I was very familiar and trained on a Material Safety Data Sheet. And when you looked at what it said, it said what they call fluoride, which is Hydrofluorosilicic acid, would say “arsenic,” it would say “lead,” and different things that really are not good for the body.
In January, Melbourne became among the first in Florida to stop fluoridating its water supply.
Alfrey: You have a right to know what’s in your water and what’s necessary to be in your water. So that really should be your choice.
Sharyl: It’s classified as a drug—when it’s not put in your drinking water, it’s required to be disclosed on products?
Alfrey: Right. And then you had some people say, “Well, if you’re adding that, why don’t you add other medications and add, you know, vitamins?” And really that’s not our process. Our process is to try to develop the cleanest water and really just put the basics in water.
Water fluoridation dates back to the 1940s. The chemicals are potent toxins from industry waste, like aluminum and phosphate fertilizer plants. Factories once released them into the air and water. When health concerns put that to a halt, the industry began selling the toxic waste as fluoride components to add to public water to fight cavities, effectively flipping a costly hazard into a $1.2 billion-a-year business.
Alfrey: It’s a hazardous material and it’s getting rid of it. I mean, now they have to figure out where to put it. They have to pay. So really it was, you know, it was the ability to get rid of it and dumping it in drinking water, and get paid to do so.
Melbourne’s action was followed by statewide ban. In July, Florida became the second state after Utah to halt fluoridation.
Sharyl: So as we sit here today, it is not legal for cities and counties in Florida to add fluoride to the water?
Ladapo: It is illegal. That’s correct. It is illegal for cities and counties to add fluoride to water currently.
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo says only after a deep dive into the research did he come to support banning fluoride.
Ladapo: I mean, it is a poison and folks don’t know that. Most folks don’t know that.
On the other side— staunch fluoride advocates, including dental associations. The American and Florida Dental Associations wouldn’t agree to an interview.
The Florida Dental Association referred us to pediatric dentist Dr. Johnny Johnson, who told us he’s only speaking for himself and not any dental groups nor the American Fluoridation Society.
Dr. Johnny Johnson: There is no scientific evidence that there water fluoridation should be stopped.
Johnson argues that many fluoride studies show no connection to lower IQ, bone fractures, or other health risks. And the ones that do, used flawed methodologies. He’s particularly critical of a 2019 Canadian study that suggested a link between fluoride exposure in pregnant women and lower IQ in boys.
Johnson: The worst thing is they’ve never allowed their data to be evaluated by independent researchers. And a group in this country worked for two years trying to get that data and eventually the university that houses it said, “No, you’re not getting it.”
Johnson warns of dire consequences if the anti-fluoride movement expands.
Johnson: Dental cavities are the most common chronic disease of adults and children in the U.S. and around the world. It is an infectious disease and one of the most common ways to stop it is through water fluoridation. We know that abscess teeth lead to brain infections, septicemia, lung infections and collapse, heart attacks, strokes and people dying. That is a very serious disease and fluoridation helps to reduce that greatly.
Ladapo: These concerns, they’re completely bunk. It’s totally bogus. Like nothing like that is gonna happen. The fluoride and water is not the thing that’s going to make the difference between good dental health in Florida and bad dental health in Florida.
Sharyl: The other side will point to a lot of studies and say what you said, there are weaknesses in them. And that there are many studies on the other side saying that there is no risk that comes with fluoride.
Ladapo: The fact is, yes, there are some studies that don’t show a relationship. And that’s true. However, still, when looking at them, what is striking is that the vast majority line up on this side of fluoride potentially being harmful. And the additional piece of information is that not only do you have congruence across many, many studies in different countries, but there’s also a presence of a dose response relationship. It is poor judgment to ignore that. People can do it, like the American Dental Association, they can do that. But it is poor judgment.
Sharyl: One of the big arguments that dental, some of the dental experts make has to do with what will happen if cavities aren’t prevented with fluoride in the drinking water. More children, they say will be hospitalized and need dental treatments in an emergency room and that sort of thing.
Ladapo: Yeah, it’s one of the strategies they use. So what they won’t tell you is that, you know, even, even before any of these efforts in Florida, something like a third, maybe a quarter of Floridians lived in areas without fluoridated water and their teeth are not falling out over there. So this whole idea that, you know, the floor is just gonna come out from underneath this in terms of dental health is not supported by any data. There’s no data to support that.
On point, Hawaii with the least fluoridated population in the U.S. last year, also had the best dental health. Still, fluoride advocates claim there are many examples of measurably poor health in places with less fluoridation.
Meantime, a court ruling in California last year is forcing the issue at the federal level. A judge ordered the EPA to regulate added fluoride for the first time as a toxic substance, saying it poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s IQ. The industry-friendly EPA under Biden, and now Trump, is appealing— apparently on a different page than the Trump administration’s FDA and CDC.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.
Dr. Marty Makary: So fluoride is a classic example of how medical group think gets a very myopic view. The field saw this potential reduction in cavities and started saying, “Let’s put this in drinking water.” Well, it turns out for the same reason, it may kill some bacteria on the teeth, it’s also killing bacteria in the microbiome in the gut. And so the billion different bacteria that live in the gut normally that are critical for digestion and mental health and produce serotonin and vitamins, that microbiome is altered by fluoride. And so one of the actions I took at the FDA was to remove concentrated fluoride tablets for babies. And that’s why we are saying, “Let’s look at the data on fluoride.” It’s associated with lower IQs. It accumulates in a certain part of the brain. It may not reduce cavities, as the Cochran Review suggests, and it’s altering the gut health of a generation of children. So we need to stop and be honest with people and let them know when we don’t know something.
Overall this year 17 states introduced bills to ban fluoridation. 2 passed, 10 failed and 5 are pending. Locally, in the past year at least 62 communities stopped adding fluoride to water.
Sharyl: Practical advice for people who are concerned because of the things that you say— What can they do if fluoride’s not being added to their water?
Johnson: There’s no substitute for water fluoridation. You cannot do anything that delivers the right amount of fluoride to an entire community without a single change in someone’s behavior, you don’t have to think about doing anything.
Alfrey: At one point, you know, more doctors chose Camel cigarettes, you know, and there, or you know, we, baby powder was good. And, so we’re learning more and more. Matter of fact, doctors are investing more and more, and they’re saying that some of the stuff that we used to do wasn’t so healthy.
Sharyl (on-camera): The EPA’s appeal of the fluoride court ruling is still pending. If the agency is forced to regulate added fluoride, it could set stricter limits, require warnings or monitoring, or ban it altogether.
Original article online at: https://fullmeasure.news/newest-videos/fluoride-11-14-2025