False statements about fluoridation in the Portland election campaign

Thursday, May 09, 2013 by: Doug Cragoe
Tags: fluoride, Portland election, disinformation

(NaturalNews) Portland Oregon voters are now voting to decide if they want to start adding fluoride to their pristine water supply. "Health Kids, Health Portland" is the campaign website designed to convince voters they should vote for fluoridation. These are some of the false statements found on that website.

"The Portland metro area has 40 percent more tooth decay than kids in the Seattle area."

The references for this statement are the Oregon Smile Survey 2007 and the 2010 Smile Survey Summary King County. In these documents Portland has reported 54 percent of children with at least one cavity, and King County (Seattle) has 40 percent. That's a difference of 35 percent, not 40 percent as claimed. If you compare untreated tooth decay, Portland has 21 percent and Seattle has 15 percent. That is a 40 percent difference, but untreated tooth decay is not the same as "more" tooth decay.

A CDC oral health official stated: "Untreated tooth decay is more a measure of access to oral health/dental treatment." Evidence of this is reflected in the two reports, where 23.5 percent more children in Seattle had dental sealants on their teeth. More sealants in Seattle are a major factor explaining why fewer Seattle children had a cavity. The statement is also false for the simple reason that neither of the reference studies reported the numbers of cavities in the children. Also, children in different grades were examined in Portland and Seattle and the surveys were done in different years. Add that to the lower tooth decay rates for Portland and Oregon from the 2012 Oregon Smiles and Health Growth Survey data and the statement is even more false now than it started out to be.

Data from the Oregon survey shows that children in schools in non-fluoridated Portland had less decay experience than children in schools in fluoridated areas of Oregon. This new data had to be obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, as the state did not want that data to be seen by a major Portland TV station.

"The National Research Council states that water fluoridation below 2ppm does not lead to mild fluorosis."

No reference is given for this statement. Fluoridation has always been considered a public health trade off - more fluorosis for less tooth decay. But fluoridation advocates today tend to want to forget that and have to be educated, like the National Institute of Dental And Craniofacial Research - a federal institution. On their 2005 webpage called "The Story of Fluoridation" was this statement referring to H. Trendly Dean: "By 1936, he and his staff had made a critical discovery. Namely, fluoride levels of up to 1.0 ppm in drinking water did not cause mottled enamel; if the fluoride exceeded this level, however, fluorosis began to occur." That statement was absolutely false, and it was eventually corrected only after a complaint about it was made known to leading fluoridationists. The reworded statement is this: "By the late 1930s, he and his staff had made a critical discovery. Namely, fluoride levels of up to 1.0 ppm in drinking water did not cause enamel fluorosis in most people and only mild enamel fluorosis in a small percentage of people."

So on a federal website there is a statement that contradicts the campaign claim. Fluoridated water is a significant source of fluoride, which can lead to mild fluorosis, just like any significant source of fluoride exposure. Much higher fluorosis rates are one of the reasons scientific opposition to fluoridation has grown in recent years.

More false statements used in the campaign will be in a future article.

Sources for this article include:

http://healthykidshealthyportland.org/the-crisis/

http://public.health.oregon.gov


About the author:
Doug Cragoe is an activist concerned with the increasing level of fluoride exposure in the United States.