Editor’s note: This is one of several Lincoln Squirrel articles about an agenda item (a “warrant piece,” with apologies to Leo Tolstoy) to be considered at the March 23 Town Meeting.
By Alice Waugh
Should Lincoln’s public water supply continue to be fluoridated? Residents will have a chance to say yay or nay at the March 23 Town Meeting, thanks to a citizen’s petition by a group opposed to the water additive.
The warrant question—”Shall the public water supply for domestic use in the town of Lincoln continue to be fluoridated?”—may also appear on the ballot at a future town election (though not the one on March 25). If a majority of voters at that election say no, the town will stop adding fluoride to the water and may not apply to do so again for at least two years.
There will be a pro-fluoridation information session today at 3:15 p.m. at Bemis Hall featuring speaker Kathy Lituri.
Thousands of cities and towns nationwide add a small amount of fluoride to drinking water to reduce the incidence of dental cavities, and Lincoln has been doing so since 1971. However, one of the petition drive’s leaders, Moira Donnell, argues that too much fluoride can lead to a greater incidence of stress fractures, especially in active people who drink a lot of tap water during and after exercise. Since many supermarket beverages have added fluoride and children routinely get fluoride treatments directly to their teeth at dental checkups, “I think we really need to reconsider,” she said.
Donnell said she started doing research as a “concerned mother” and pointed to anti-fluoridation websites including the Fluoride Action Network and Parents of Fluoride-Poisoned Children. Her family now drinks bottled water, although she said she was still concerned about fluoride being absorbed through the skin when showering.
On its website detailing community water fluoridation’s benefits, safety and statistics, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls the measure “one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century” along with things like vaccination and the recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard. The only potential negative effect of fluoridation is dental fluorosis, or discoloration of the tooth enamel in children under age 8 who routinely drink water with higher-than-recommended fluoride levels, according to the CDC.
However, the CDC also notes that two other federal agencies recommended in 2011 that added fluoride in drinking water be reduced to a maximum of 0.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L), down from the previous recommended range of 0.7 to 1.2 mg/L.
In Lincoln, 81 percent of residents are served by town water, which comes from Flint’s Pond and a well on Tower Road, said water superintendent Gregory Woods. The town Water Department keeps the fluoride concentration at 1 mg/L, he said.
“From the Water Department’s perspective, we have a neutral stance” on the Town Meeting warrant article, Woods said.
Lincoln’s Board of Health has a decidedly different position on removing all fluoride from town water, however. “Members of the board think that’s actually crazy,” said Dr. Fred Mansfield, chairman of the Board of Health and an orthopedic surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He said dental fluorosis generally occurs only in patients who had excess fluoride applied directly to their teeth by dentists and that his colleagues in orthopedics have not seen a correlation between stress fractures and fluoride intake.
Sodium fluoride is sometimes used to treat osteoporosis (bone thinning) because it actually increases the density of one type of bone mineral, although one study in the New England Journal of Medicine also found that overall, it was not helpful for postmenopausal women who already had osteoporosis and received 75 milligrams a day of sodium fluoride.
“It’s very, very difficult in this country to say anything against fluoride,” Donnell said. “Every single person who has come out against fluoride has been denigrated in a very convincing way.”
Asked if research claiming to demonstrate negative effects of fluoride was valid, Mansfield said, “The science may be there, but I don’t think it counterbalances the benefits” of water fluoridation. “Fluoride has played a big part in oral health for kids.”
Further reading:
- Community Water Fluoridation (CDC)
- Community Water Fluoridation: Questions and Answers (CDC)
- Water fluoridation and Water fluoridation controversy (Wikipedia)