It’s considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century: By adding a small amount of fluoride to drinking water, public health officials prevented millions of cavities, saved dozens billions of dollars in dental costs and improved children’s health. .

But in a post on X SaturdayFormer presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said one of his first acts as head of a new Trump administration would be to “advise all U.S. water systems to eliminate fluoride public water. He then listed several false claims about the effects of fluoride, then linked to a video on a website founded by prominent anti-vaccine advocate and conspiracy theorist Del Bigtree.

Former President Donald Trump seemed receptive to the idea of ​​eliminating fluoride from the water supply. “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it seems OK to me,” Trump said Sunday in a telephone interview with NBC. “You know, it’s possible.”

Experts were quick to condemn the promise to eliminate fluoride from water. “Fluoride has been well tested. It clearly and definitively decreases cavities and is not associated with any clear evidence of the chronic diseases mentioned in this tweet,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a researcher and physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a science denier. He invents his own scientific truths and ignores real truths,” Offit says.

Fluoride has clear benefits

The science is unambiguous: adding fluoride to the water supply has been shown to reduce the number of cavities in children and adults. Fluoride works to restore minerals to teeth that are lost when bacteria grow rapidly in the mouth, especially after eating sugary snacks.

More than a dozen recent studies by governments and academic institutions around the world have shown that fluoride reduces tooth decay in children and adults by about 25%, according to the American Dental Association. It is particularly beneficial for people in low-income families who may not have access to fluoridated products, such as toothpaste and mouthwash. A study by the Colorado School of Public Health, found that adding fluoride to water saved an estimated $6.8 billion in dental costs in just one year.

In recent years, some studies have suggested that high levels of fluoride could lead to lower IQ in children. A recent government review found moderate evidence of this effect, but not at levels currently used in drinking water in the United States. THE ADA says that the benefits of fluoridation continue to outweigh the possible risks.

Striking contrasts

Dr. Amanda Stroud is a dentist who sees the effects of fluoride — and lack thereof — every day in her job as dental director at a nonprofit health organization in western North Carolina. AppHealth is for children who have fluoridated city water and others who have fluoride-free well water. The differences are stark, she says.

Children who drink fluoridated water, she says, often have good, strong, cavity-free teeth. They may take for granted smiling and eating without pain, “which is a joyful thing at that age,” Stroud says.

When children drink well water, it’s a different story. “They could have cavities on every tooth,” she says. “When they smile, their teeth can be broken all the way to the gums. Their teeth appear brown or mottled.

And it’s a painful condition that makes it more difficult to brush your teeth and eat healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. “It’s heartbreaking,” she said.

The original public health conspiracy theory

Despite the obvious benefits, conspiracy theories around fluoride have existed almost as long as water has been fluoridated, according to Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.

“In some ways, the conspiracy theory about fluoride in drinking water is one of the first public health conspiracy theories,” he says.

Fluoride was first introduced in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which also happened to be the Trump campaign’s final rally site before Election Day.

Adding fluoride to water quickly spread across the country once the benefits became evident in Grand Rapids.

But from the start, wild theories about this chemical circulated. “It served as an almost perfect conspiracy theory,” he explains. Fluoride was invisible, mandated by the government and found in tap water, a substance that almost everyone ingested.

Dallek says these theories were particularly pushed in the 1960s by the John Birch Society, a far-right group that claimed communists had infiltrated much of the government. The group believed that “any move toward government intervention was essentially a step on the road to a communist country,” he said. As a result, they “clung to fluoride as part of a communist plot.”

Claims around fluoride were diffuse, but included the idea that it would somehow be used for mind control or that it was a chemical weapon designed to poison people. Initially, at least, the ideas seemed to resonate somewhat with the public.

“Movements have arisen across the country to end fluoridation of drinking water,” says Dallek.

In 1966, the Honolulu government vetoed a measure to include fluoride in water. Fluoride is still not used in Hawaii and a 2015 report found that the state had the highest rate of tooth decay in the country and continues to have some of the worst oral health of any state.

Mocked in movies

But the movement never took on greater proportions. Fluoride conspiracies have been openly ridiculed in films such as Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr.” Strangelove,” in which General Jack Ripper starts a nuclear war in part because he believes fluoride was a communist plot. By the 1980s, the problem had largely disappeared. “From time to time, anti-fluoride campaigns would break out all over the country,” says Dallek.

But in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy theories about fluoride have resurfaced, often pushed by individuals like Kennedy, who also believe that childhood vaccines cause autism and other illnesses. Today, anti-vaccine advocates highlight the harms of fluoride as well as those of vaccines and chemtrails, supposed trails of chemicals left behind by commercial airliners to harm people and the environment.

Kennedy released a video Monday urging his supporters to vote for Trump so he is elected with a strong mandate. “Then no one will be able to stop us when they give me the power to clean up corruption in federal agencies, and especially in our health care agencies,” he said.

But Offit says Kennedy’s potential role in directing the nation’s public health could prove disastrous, especially for young people who benefit from both fluoride and vaccines. “Only children will suffer from his ignorance,” Offit said.

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