BARTOW, Fla.—The lights were flickering on above the Little League fields outside the Bartow Civic Center when Dr. Johnny Johnson pulled up in his Ford F-250 and emerged wearing jeans and boots.
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo arrived in a suit, a small entourage trailing him.
Before a standing-room-only crowd, Johnson, a pro-fluoride former dentist, displayed gruesome images of decaying teeth. “People die of dental infections,” he warned. “That’s horrible. We don’t want to see that.”
Ladapo, on an anti-fluoride tour, took the podium next. “The cost in terms of human health is far too high to be fooling around with this,” he said of the chemical.
He jabbed at Johnson. “I get physically sick when I’m in the presence of people who are trying to sell you on something,” he said.
Johnson, a 68-year-old who often sports a T-shirt proclaiming, “Fluoridation? F Yeah!” and leads the American Fluoridation Society, once dominated such showdowns. Lately he frets as more officials jettison the chemical he champions.
A city divided
This community of 21,000, known for its silver-domed former courthouse, began fluoridating its water in 2004. Bartow Mayor Trish Pfeiffer spearheads the charge to remove it after digging into the research.
“This is not our lane,” she told the audience. “We should be looking at planned developments and traffic and budgets. Health, and treating the people of our city, should not be our lane but we’re forced into it, because this happened way back when and became ‘the norm,’” she continued, making air quotes. “Now it’s being questioned and people are listening.”
Residents rose to testify passionately on both sides.
“Bartow has always been a place where we take care of each other,” said Kelly Parker, a former teacher who argued that fluoride protects the most vulnerable.
Before the hearing, Pfeiffer took a Wall Street Journal reporter to Bartow’s water plant, where the city daily adds seven to eight gallons of fluorosilicic acid, which yields fluoride when mixed with water.
Workers don shoulder-length gloves and face shields to handle the chemical, which has damaged the floor and hinges over time. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the chemical is safe in drinking water at recommended levels.
Pfeiffer, who has an autoimmune condition, said people should have a choice of whether fluoride is in their water. “It is a freaking corrosive acid,” she said.
Shifting opinions
Critics cite recent research. Last August, the National Toxicology Program, which assesses potentially toxic chemicals for the federal government, found that higher exposures to fluoride were associated with lower IQ in children, based on a review of human-health studies. The higher exposures were roughly twice the recommended level in U.S. water.
A month later, a federal judge ruled that fluoride in drinking water presents an “unreasonable risk” and ordered the EPA to take action. The judge said his ruling “does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health”—but warrants a response.
The American Dental Association defends fluoride’s safety and criticized the IQ studies, which were conducted outside the U.S., with most subjects exposed to higher levels of fluoride than in the U.S.
Still, in Florida alone, at least 23 cities and counties removed fluoride since September. Eight of 12 states mandating fluoridation face bills ending those requirements, including Kentucky and Nebraska.
Dentists champion fluoride, citing evidence it reduces decay. They warn low-income families without access to alternatives will bear the brunt of bans.
The Utah measure would end one of the most “tested public health strategies in the arsenal of preventive medicine,” the ADA wrote the governor, urging a veto.
“We’re getting blindsided,” said Johnson, who pivoted to advocacy after a wrist injury ended his dentistry practice in 2009.
Fluoride face-off
When Johnson learned Bartow might dump fluoride, he spoke with Mayor Pfeiffer for 90 minutes. Though unmoved, she invited him to present at the community meeting anyway.
“Listen,” she recalled telling him, “we’re going to have to agree to disagree and be friends, because I cannot come to the other side.”
Inside the Bartow Civic Center, attendees filled folding chairs in a high-ceilinged room overlooking the empty municipal pool. On a table, printouts prepared by the mayor highlighted the surgeon general’s guidance opposing fluoride.
At the podium, Johnson raised and refuted concerns. Fresh from touring the city’s water plant himself, he said the acid isn’t harmful. “In my soda, there’s phosphoric acid.”
He challenged the recent federal study and pointed to Bartow schools’ test scores, which have exceeded those of a nearby non-fluoridated community. “If there were supposed to be some IQ changes, why wouldn’t it be there?”
Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general, referred to studies showing safety concerns about fluoride, and said alternatives like mouthwash aren’t expensive.
“For you, they might not be,” countered Parker, the former teacher who testified.
Afterward, only Mayor Pfeiffer committed to voting against fluoride when city leaders deliberate later this month. Four commissioners wanted to learn more.
As people dispersed, Johnson held hope Bartow would keep fluoride. “I think it is up in the air.”
Meanwhile, other battlegrounds awaited.
Original article online at: https://archive.ph/huqCD