L.A. to Add Fluoride to Water by End of Year

By BOB POOL

Sept. 24, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Once it was like a root canal. Even now, it’s a lot like pulling teeth.

But on Tuesday, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter presided over a painless end to the legendary fluoride controversy, which once ranked with gun control as a maker and un-maker of political careers.

Three years after setting out to make every drink an exercise in preventive medicine, Galanter gathered a group of dental experts and water officials to ceremoniously announce that the city will soon begin adding decay-fighting fluoride to its water supply.

The city will go with the flow by the end of the year, officials said.

“This is a really momentous occasion in Los Angeles history,” Galanter said. “Fluoridation is one of the most cost-effective public health measures, and its use in Los Angeles is long overdue.”

David Freeman, general manager of the Department of Water and Power, said his agency has spent about $10 million to design and build the facilities required to pump fluoride into water--about double the cost initially projected by engineers. The process will cost $700,000 a year after that, he said.

But that’s still a bargain since “$50 in dental bills” can be saved “for every $1 we spend” on fluoride, Freeman added.

Acknowledging that the issue has been controversial since Grand Rapids, Mich., started the national fluoridation trend 52 years ago, dental experts said evidence shows that fluoride prevents cavities in both children and adults by about 40%.

“It’s been the most widely studied public health issue in U.S. history,” said Dr. Gene Casagrande, chairman of the Los Angeles Dental Society and a longtime fluoridation advocate.

Added Dr. Stanley Heifetz, a professor at the USC School of Dentistry: “We now have five decades of safety experience with community fluoridation. . . . There is no scientific controversy about the safety and decay-preventive effectiveness of fluoridation.”

Although Gov. Pete Wilson signed a law three years ago requiring water districts serving 10,000 or more people to fluoridate tap water if funding allows, only about 17% of Californians now consume fluoridated water, compared with 62% nationally.

The only cities in Los Angeles County that currently fluoridate drinking water are Long Beach and Beverly Hills, said Dr. Timothy Collins, Dental Director for the county Department of Health Services. (Pico Rivera city officials announced this month that they plan to soon begin fluoridating water used by their 9,100 homes and businesses.)

Los Angeles officials came close to taking the plunge in 1966 when, amid great controversy, the City Council defeated a proposal to raise the fluoride level citywide to 0.9 parts per million.

In 1975, city voters rejected a fluoridation ballot measure 56% to 44%.

During one debate, then-Councilman Gilbert W. Lindsay, who helped kill fluoridation in 1966, argued that “bad diets,” not “bad water,” were responsible for tooth decay.

Fluoridation foes contended that putting fluoride in the water supply poisons it and spreads diseases and illnesses such as brittle bones and kidney disorders.

Other arguments against fluoridation have been more fanciful.

Critics asserted in the 1950s that fluoridation was a Russian plot. One opponent testified before an Assembly subcommittee that it “weakens the brain and makes citizens vulnerable to being taken over by the communists.”

By the early 1960s, the American Dental Assn. had identified the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society as among the groups opposing fluoridation. “The house of anti-fluoridation has many rooms. Residents range from the charlatan, from the confused to the quack,” a spokesman told participants of one health conference.

These days, plenty of opposition to fluoridation remains. Galanter recalled working hard to overcome critics in August 1995, when she convinced other council members to reevaluate the fluoride issue.

Galanter had been surprised to learn “to my horror” that Los Angeles water was not fluoridated.

“It pains me to share the microphone today, since I took all the heat in the council on this one,” she quipped Wednesday.

“By the end of the year we will have caught up with every other major city. And I must say it’s about time.”

Galanter brushed aside suggestions that the DWP has dragged its feet in getting on the fluoride bandwagon. “You don’t just walk out to the reservoirs and dump it in,” she said.

Freeman said that 10 engineering projects scattered around the city had to be designed to handle the fluoridation. Melinda Rho, a DWP water quality engineer, said the job has been complicated by the fact that city water comes from a variety of sources--the Colorado River, the state aqueduct, the city’s own Owens Valley aqueduct and various wells.

Besides being delayed by permits from various other government agencies, the fluoride project has been slowed by staff reductions within the DWP, Rho said.

Officials said notices will be sent to DWP customers before fluoridation begins. That way parents will know to stop giving their children fluoride tablets recommended by many doctors.

Galanter said Wednesday’s ceremonial announcement had been planned for last week so it would correspond with the start of school. But developments in Washington with President Clinton and the Starr Report caused her to delay it.

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Late, but Not Last

Only a handful of cities in Southern California fluoridate their water. Of the five biggest cities in the nation, Los Angeles is the only one that does not fluoridate, according to water officials. Below, a list of some cities that do fluoridate and the years they started:

Los Angeles County

Long Beach: 1971

Beverly Hills: 1970

Orange County

Fountain Valley: 1971

Huntington Beach: 1971

Ventura County

Port Hueneme plans to start fluoridating this year.

Other California cities

San Francisco: 1952

Oakland: 1976

Fresno: 1954