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In other words, what happens when a population suddenly stops taking fluoride in their drinking water, like Juneau's citizenry did?
Now, thanks to a recent study led by first author and public health researcher Jennifer Meyer from the University of Alaska Anchorage, we've got new insights into the subsequent effects.
In the study, Meyer assessed Medicaid dental claim billing records for two groups of children and adolescents aged 18 or under.
One of these groups represented what the researchers call "optimal" community water fluoridation (CWF) exposure: 853 non-adult patients on behalf of whom Medicaid dental claims were filed in 2003, years before the fluoride cessation began in 2007.
The other group was made up of 1,052 non-adult patients from families who similarly met Medicaid income requirements, and who made the same kind of dental claims almost a decade later, in 2012.
[...] "By taking the fluoride out of the water supply... the trade-off for that is children are going to experience one additional caries procedure per year, at a ballpark (cost) of US$300 more per child," Meyer explained to KTOO News.
Reference: Jennifer Meyer, Vasileios Margaritis & Aaron Mendelsohn, Consequences of community water fluoridation cessation for Medicaid-eligible children and adolescents in Juneau, Alaska, BMC Oral Health, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-018-0684-2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @09:11AM
Oddly enough, I find people who use words like 'anti-science' tend to have a limited understanding of science to begin with. The word itself is somewhat of an oxymoron since it tends to refer to skepticism of an established view, when that is itself a fundamental component of science.
Beyond that you demonstrate a specific misunderstanding here. A number (in this case procedures) jumping from 1.55 to 2.52 doesn't mean anything in a vacuum. You need to measure variance. In other words, how much would you expect your results to vary based on little more than noise? Turns out dental procedures have extremely high variance. The figures from the paper are 1.55 +/- 3.89 in 2003, and 2.52 +/- 4.35. So in other words, the change after fluoride was removed was well within the range as expected by statistical noise alone.
The paper shows that there is minimal value to fluoridation of water. Also noteworthy is that the study was exclusively based around kids from very poor families. This sample is going to substantially over-represent the value of fluoride since it's biasing itself towards a sample that is going to have disproportionately poor eating habits, oral hygiene, and numerous other factors that increase the value of fluoridation. Ultimately it shows that there is negligible value to water fluoridation. Given potential side affects, it's probably not a smart idea.