Summary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that a Trump administration would prioritize removing fluoride from public water systems, a position at odds with major health organizations like the CDC, the American Dental Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which endorse water fluoridation as safe and beneficial for dental health.
Despite Kennedy’s controversial stance on health and environmental issues, which includes previously debunked claims linking vaccines to autism, Trump has praised his passion, stating that Kennedy would have significant freedom to influence health policy if Trump were elected.
It was never introduced on a large scale to begin with (Montreal never did it for example) and there’s a group that helps citizens fight it where it’s still done (5 cities still do it).
One of their main argument is that the studies that most cities refer to to defend it date from the 60s/70s and their methodology was so so, more recent research don’t seem to find as much of a difference if socio-economic criterias are taken into consideration (but again, Quebec as a whole vs any other province as a whole should cover that, Quebec is richer than New-Brunswick yet kids have more cavities in Quebec) and there’s the environmental question considering that about 1% of the water is used as drinking water, it’s 99% of the fluoride being wasted.
Sure ok. I appreciate you taking the time to answer.
The issues you’ve mentioned apply generally to fluoridation anywhere. It sounds like the reason why it’s not present in Quebec is that the resistance was better organised.
There’s fluoride in the water here in regional Western Australia, but I fear that’s probably the least concerning additive. I’ve never really thought much about it but apparently there’s chlorine in the tap water, you can smell it from time to time. If you think about it, things love to live in water and keeping it free of things like cholera must take some doing.
Yeah chlorine is everywhere because it’s used to make the water safe to drink, without it I hope you have a good, uncontaminated well, otherwise you can’t drink tap water!
Yeah resistance is better organized to stop it since the 90s, but I think adoption didn’t happen as much back in the day because of the very conservative government in place when it became normalized all over Canada (we call that period of Quebec’s history the great darkness for a reason!)