It was more than two decades ago that the Honolulu City Council told the city to keep its hands, washed or not, out of Oahu’s drinking water.
It was specifically banning fluoride from being added to Oahu’s public water supply.
Drinking water is obviously a touchy subject — as the Navy found out when its Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility contaminated the drinking water supply for thousands of residents on Oahu.
In the case of fluoride in Hawaii’s drinking water, the city was on the side of public health, but even that has its good and bad points.
A state Health Department report in 2015 announced that Hawaii had “the highest rate of tooth decay among third graders in the nation. More than seven out of 10 third graders here were affected by tooth decay, which is significantly higher than the national average of 52% nationwide.”
According to national reports, one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century has been adding fluoride in the water supply.
Public health officials across the nation say fluoridation has prevented millions of cavities, saved tens of billions of dollars in dental costs, and made children healthier.
Simple science, however, is not always simply understood or believed — and this is where President Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Hawaii come into the picture.
The American Dental Association has said that water fluoridation reduces dental decay by at least 25% in children and adults. At a recent meeting in Utah, however, Kennedy said he plans to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
Kennedy’s trip to Utah came after dental groups and national health organizations warned the move would “disproportionately hurt low-income residents who can’t afford regular dentist visits.”
At the same time, The Washington Post reported a tally that 7 out of 10 Americans who get their drinking water from public water systems receive fluoridated water, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This is happening at the same time that the Trump administration announced that the CDC’s 20-person Division of Oral Health was among the recent federal cuts. The Post reported that the division managed grants to local agencies to improve dental health and, in some cases, encourage fluoridation.
The Associated Press quoted the the American Dental Association as saying, “Decades of fluoride in drinking water have been shown to reduce tooth decay.”
“When government officials like Secretary Kennedy stand behind the commentary of misinformation and distrust peer-reviewed research, it is injurious to public health,” said the association’s president, Brett Kessler.
Hawaii’s state Legislature has previously considered taking action on a statewide fluoridation ban, but without enough interest to pass it into law this year.
Brush your teeth, anyway.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com
