Health Secretary RFK Jr. to target water fluoridation
New York City is said to have the best tasting tap water in the world. Doctors and medical experts say it’s also good for New Yorkers’ teeth because it has fluoride in it.
“It doesn’t impact the taste, doesn’t impact anything except the benefits of washing the teeth, particularly in children, and reducing the number of cavities,” Dr. Richard Valachovic, with NYU Dentistry Center for Oral Health Policy and Management, said.
What You Need To Know
- New York City has added fluoride to its water supply since 1965
- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is asking CDC to no longer endorse fluoridated water
- Mayor Eric Adams supports keeping fluoride in the city's drinking water
Dr. Valachovic spoke to NY1 after U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin took a new, skeptical look at communities that add fluoride to their drinking water.
There will be new studies on it, and Kennedy said he’d get the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to no longer recommend it and undertake new studies.
“You can achieve that benefit from brushing your teeth and the era of fluoridated toothpastes and mouthwashes — it makes no sense to have fluoride in our water,” Kennedy said at a news conference this week.
“We’re prepared to act based on the science,” Zeldin said.
They’re relying on a report last August from the National Toxicology Program at HHS.
The report says “with moderate confidence, that higher estimated fluoride exposures” — that is, higher than 1.5 milligrams per liter — “are consistently associated with lower IQ in children.” And that “associations between lower total fluoride exposure and children’s IQ remain unclear.”
The fluoride in New York City’s water is well below that level at 0.7 milligrams per liter and well below maximum levels allowed by New York State and the federal EPA.
“There’s no evidence that there’s any impact at that level,” Valachovic said.
Brushing with toothpaste containing fluoride also has no impact, according to Valachovic, who says the benefits are apparent.
“We’re not seeing the levels of cavities that are seen in other cities with similar demographics that don’t have water fluoridation,” he said.
Dr. Prabha Krishnan, president of the New York State Dental Association and who practices in Queens, said the difference between patients from other countries is clear.
“We’ve seen patients that have come from other countries that have rampant cavities,” she said.
But the wonders of fluoridated water had not been so apparent to Mayor Eric Adams. Back in November, he said, “I’m not too familiar with the whole conversation around fluoride, what makes it good or bad.”
He said he’d defer to his agencies’ experts. A spokeswoman for the mayor said they still hold the position today that fluoridated water is beneficial to New Yorkers.
