Neither Vero Beach nor Indian River County currently have plans to stop adding fluoride to local drinking water, but the issue is likely to come up soon after new guidelines from the Florida Surgeon General and Robert F. Kennedy’s swearing in Jr. ban on fluoride.
Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s next Secretary of Health and Human Services, wants to ban fluoride from drinking water, and Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who heads the Florida Department of Health, recommended two weeks ago that communities stop adding fluoride to their water.
“Due to the neuropsychiatric risk associated with fluoride exposure, particularly to pregnant women and children, and the widespread availability of alternative sources of fluoride for dental health, the Surgeon General recommends against fluoridating community water,” Ladapo said in a analysis of professionals. and disadvantages of municipal water fluoridation.
Following Lapado’s direction, the city of Stuart has decided to stop adding fluoride to its drinking water at least temporarily. But neither the Vero Beach City Council nor the Indian River County Commission has taken any action so far.
Even without the addition of fluoride to the drinking water supply, both Vero Beach and Indian River County utility customers receive some natural fluoride present in Florida’s aquifers.
The City of Vero Beach Utilities serves most of the barrier island with drinking water, including those living in the unincorporated area of South Beach, the city of Indian River Shores and, of course, Central Beach.
Vero mixes its drinking water from wells that tap into shallow or “surface” wells below the airport and into Florida’s deeper aquifer. Utilities Director Rob Bolton explained that “Fluoride is in both Florida’s surface and aquifer. Of course it is at 0.23 milligrams per liter (mg/L) in the surface and 0.32 in Florida. The mixed level in city water is about 0.26 mg/l,” he said.
“The city is adding hydrofluorosilicic acid to bring the level to 0.7 mg/l, which is the recommended level. The maximum contamination level is 4.0 mg/l,” Bolton said.
“I realize this is a hot topic of discussion right now. I can tell you that it has been talked about for the last 35 years that I have been in the water profession. You have the activists on one side claiming it causes osteoporosis and the dental profession on the other side claiming it’s beneficial for good strong teeth,” Bolton said.
Bolton said fluoride was first added to drinking water in the postwar late 1940s, and the program expanded greatly in the 1970s and 1980s. “I can remember grants in the ’90s through the Florida Department of Health for the payment of fluoride injection systems and the first year of chemicals to convert stocks that had not added it. Until then there was common opposition to the addition of fluoride.”
As Ladapo pointed out in its guidance sheet, almost all toothpastes today contain fluoride, and dental fluoride treatments are available for those who have access to care and can afford it.
“As a result, the recommended level was reduced to 0.7 mg/L about 10 years ago. The dental profession continues to add fluoride because poverty-stricken areas cannot afford to go to the dentist,” Bolton said.
Bolton said his parents’ and grandparents’ generation that didn’t have fluoride in their drinking water growing up often had partial or full dentures in their golden years, but that’s much rarer among today’s Baby Boomers, who are largely retiring now with a full set of teeth – “a result of growing up with fluoridated city water,” Bolton said.
Indian River County provides drinking water to much of the northern part of the barrier island, as well as Sebastian and South Counties outside the Vero Beach city limits.
“Our groundwater wells have naturally occurring fluoride levels of 0.3 to 0.35 milligrams per liter (mg/L). The Department of Utility Services supplements naturally occurring fluoride with sodium fluoride to reach the Public Health Service’s recommended dosage level of 0.7 mg/L, which is well below the federal drinking water standard of 4.0 mg/L ,” said Indian River County Utility Services. Director Sean Lieske.
Lieske said he and his staff “have not been instructed to put together a plan to stop adding fluoride. However, the Department would stop the addition should the Board of County Commissioners choose to do so.”
