(CNN) – The US Department of Health and Services. UU., Said Monday that it is a reconstruction of the community’s preventive services work group, an independent panel of experts in public health and prevention, “to study and make a new recommendation on fluoride.”
The secretary of the HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also told Associated Press on Monday that he will tell the US centers for the control and prevention of diseases in the United States that stop the fluorization of the recommendation for drinking water in communities.
And the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, announced Monday that EPA will quickly review scientific information on “potential risks to fluoride health in drinking water.”
“Without preaching any results, when this evaluation is complete, we will have an updated fundamental scientific evaluation that will report the future steps of the agency,” he said in a statement.
Although the CDCs make recommendations, it is the EPA that establishes the limits on what is allowed in the water and makes recommendations under the Law of Safe Drinking Water.
On Monday, Kennedy and Rarin visited Utah, which in March forbade municipal drinking water systems to add fluoride, from May.
“I think it is a moral imperative that we all believe in freedom of choice in this country,” Kennedy said. “It is one of the fundamental principles of our democracy, and the government’s shoulder is not making decisions, intimate decisions about our own lives.”
Legislators in states such as Ohio, South Carolina and Florida have also proposed restrictions on fluorid water.
“As dentists, we see that direct fluoride elimination has in our patients and is a true tragedy when the decisions of policy formulators damaged children and adults vulnerable in the long term,” said Dr. Brett Kessler, president of the American Dental Association, in a statement on Monday. “To blindly asking for the prohibition of fluorinated water harms people, it costs money and, ultimately, will damage our economy. We see the benefits of fluoride daily, both of the flurate water for drinking and of products and fluoride toothpaste and other dental products, so we know that the need of both exists.”
Dr. Darren Chamberlain, a pediatric dentist located on the Board of Directors of the Utah Dental Association, said he operated Monday morning in patients who had 12 and 14 cavities.
“I am nervous that this is the future in Utah, and I did it at the expense of Medicaid, and there were thousands of dollars to be able to do so. So I hope they have the funds to help the children,” Heath Seying “I feel for the children who will be affected by this.”
The fluration of public water systems has long been considered one of the most successful public health advances in the twentieth century. The municipalities throughout the country have been adding fluoride to the water since the 1940s, after the scientists noticed that the people who obtained water in places with high rates of natural fluoride had cavities.
The CDC, the American Pediatrics Academy and the American Dental Association support the use of fluoride as an effective and safe way to maintain dental health.
Adding this natural mineral to drinking water is the most profitable way to strengthen teeth, says CDC, protecting them from normal wear, as well as cavities, particularly among children’s children. In some cases, it can be the only protection of oral health to which a family has access if they cannot pay regular trips to a dentist.
CDC calls the cavities the most common chronic childhood disease in the United States, and Kennedy has said that chronic conditions are their main concern. But the HHS secretary also said that the country to eliminate the fluoride of its water systems due to concerns about their health risks.
In the campaign last autumn, Kennedy called fluoride of “industrial waste” and said that the exhibition has resulted in a wide variety of health problems, including cancer. The American Cancer Society and CDCs disagree, noting that most of the studies of people living in areas with fluorid water made an association between fluoride and cancer risk, although many also for additional investigations.
Rarin cited Kennedy’s defense about fluoride as one of the main reasons why he requested scientific review.
“As soon as I was nominated by President Trump as EPA administrator, the secretary communicated instantly to start talking about issues that are passionate, and the number one on that list was fluoride,” Rarin said Monday.
The recently announced scientific review that the EPA will be carried out together with HS focuses on a report that the National Toxicology Program published in August, concluding that the highest levels of fluoride are reduced, above 1.5 milligrams per liter.
“These studies used investigations from areas outside the US. UU. With high natural fluoride and did not find an association between fluoride and IQ at low levels,” said the American Dental Association in his statement. “The authors of the report clearly indicate that their findings do not belong to the practice of fluoration in the United States and Canada with levels of 0.7 mg/l”.
The EPA has committed to an “thorough review of these findings and studies reviewed by additional peers,” said the agency on Monday.
In September, a federal judge ordered the EPA to take additional measures to regulate fluoride because a handful of other studies have found a possible link between exposure to high levels of fluoride and intellectual development of children.
A recent report separately from Cochrane collaboration, an independent group that analyzes scientific research, found only a slight benefit when adding fluoride to tap water, which leads to slightly less cavitions in children’s teeth. Tempera the scale of the positive effects of adding fluoride to public water.
Fluoride is used in public drinking water systems supplied to three quarters of Americans, according to CDC.
The American Dental Association says that fluoration remains effective in reducing dental decomposition by at least 25% in children and adults, even when there are alternative ways for people to obtain, such as toothpaste.
In Utah, legislators and voters have gone from side to side in the benefits of adding water fluoride. In 1976, voters approved a voting initiative that prohibited the State Health Board from demanding the addition of fluoride or other medications to public water supplies and required local voters to approve an initiative to add them.
However, health conerns are the only reason for the prohibition; Rather, some voters believed statements that the fluoration was part of a communist plot against the country.
In 2000, Salt Lake County voters were the first in Utah to vote to add fluoride to their water. The fluration blessed in 2003, and other counties soon followed, but the number of people who drink fluorid water in Utah is still low compared to other states.
In 2022, the CDCs found that only 44% of Utah residents had access to fluorid water systems, with Utah in 44th position among US states. In comparison, all drinking water in the area in Washington is fluorked. In Kentucky, it is for 99.7% of the population.
More recent, some antifuoruro lawyers in UTAH have said that water accounting fluoride was too expensive, while others discussed their health effects. The American Dental Association sent letters to legislators to protest the ban, and some municipalities also fought against it.
Salt Lake County has argued that eliminating the fluoride from drinking water will be expectation for local families.
The department department of Health told CNN on Monday that it supports water fluoration as a “safe, proven and efficient way to improve the oral health community throughout the community or the level of income or access to regular dental care.”
The department said it is preucational information to inform families that when fluoride is eliminated from their water, they must provide fluoride supplements so that their children replace the benefits.
The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry recommends that children between the ages of 6 months and 16 who have a high risk of cavations obtain some type of fluoride every day.
Although it is believed that water flow saves an average of $ 32 per person per year avoiding the need for cavities, said Salt Lake County, having to add supplements to the daily routine of a child $ 54,000, and not divide the supplements.
The completion of the fluoration has had negative effects in some places. A 2019 study in Juneau, Alaska, found that children without access to fluoride in their drinking water also had more procedures related to dental.
Calgary, Alberta, stopped putting fluoride in his water in 2011, and a study found that the children there had more cavities than those of the cities that maintained fluoride. Calgary will resume the fluoration this year.
“Perhaps we should be happy on some level that the EPA is investigating this, because we definitely know for the 80 years of fluorked water in the United States that is effective,” said Chamberlain. “In practice, we definitely see a significant difference between people living in fluorid and non -fluorated communities.”
Meg Tirrell, Nadia Kounang and Tami Luhby of CNN contributed to this report.
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