Finally Fluoride, After 50 Years : Sacramento puts an end to a longstanding and often loony California debate

Half a century after municipalities across the nation began to fluoridate drinking water to reduce tooth decay, California has finally joined the movement. Gov. Pete Wilson has signed a bill to require most California water agencies to add fluoride.

Seldom has a public-health measure drawn such emotional and bizarre objections as fluoridation. Early foes called it a communist plot to destroy America, and others have seen it as a poisonous threat to human genetic material. But after 50 years of widespread U.S. fluoridation, communism has collapsed and not many two-headed monsters roam the countryside. Yet the bill, by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame), still drew stout opposition. With no more Commies to blame, the critics now rage over forced “mass medication” and claim unproved links to bone fractures and cancers.

The scientific facts are essentially beyond dispute. Years of comprehensive studies have proved that fluoride reduces tooth decay in children by about 60%. Half of all American children entering first grade today have never had a single cavity.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for California youngsters. Opposition was so stubborn that to this day only 17% of the state population gets fluoridated water, compared with 62% nationally. Such major cities as Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego are among those without. An exception is San Francisco, which long ago accepted fluorides. (Well, maybe it is a political plot to make people weird after all.)

The fight was particularly bitter in Los Angeles, where the City Council rejected fluoridation in 1966 and again in 1974. The opposition was led by the late Councilman Gilbert W. Lindsay, who maintained that the poor dental health of children in his impoverished district was due to “bad diet,” not lack of fluorides.

Today, the critics argue that consumers should have a choice over fluoridating--a rankly elitist position that inevitably works against the health of the poor. Today, the residents of Beverly Hills have the cavity-fighting benefits of fluoridated water, as well as good dentists, but not the poor of Los Angeles. As Wilson properly noted, fluoridation will not only reduce dental decay but also lessen taxpayers’ burden for the state Denti-Cal program. The only valid objections came from water agencies concerned about getting the money to install the new equipment. As amended, Speier’s bill allows them to wait until funding is found. Once that is done, the relatively minimal operating costs of $5 million a year statewide should return large dividends in public health and reduced taxes.

Let’s hope this finally marks the end of a long and loony debate.