City of Kingston passes motion to consider fluoridating the water supply

During a general meeting held by Kingston City Council on May 7, a motion to explore the feasibility of fluoridating the city’s water supply was passed, reigniting a 70-year-old scientific debate.

The motion, which passed with 11 in favour and one opposed, aims to investigate the feasibility of introducing fluoride into Kingston’s water system in the near future.

City Councillor of Sydenham District Conny Glenn, introduced the motion, with a detailed discussion scheduled for a special council meeting no later than the end of the fourth quarter of 2024.

While over 14 million Ontarians, or 73 percent, have access to fluoridated in their homes, Kingston is one of the few Ontario cities without it.

Before the vote, experts presented arguments for and against water fluoridation. Family physician Dr. Susan Phillips, who has practiced medicine in Kingston for 35 years, emphasized the extensive evidence supporting the benefits of fluoridated water in protecting teeth from cavities.

Fluoridation is more effective than encouraging parents to avoid feeding sugary drinks to their children or encouraging children to brush their teeth as soon as they turn six months old, Phillips said.

According to a report by the U.S. Surgeon General, tooth cavities, also called dental caries, are one of the most common childhood diseases, occurring five times more frequently than asthma.

Dr. Jennifer Archibald, a Harvard-trained pediatric dentist, told the City Council untreated cavities can impact diet and speech. “Imagine you’re a three-year-old, and you don’t have front teeth. How are you able to talk and develop speech?” Archibald asked the Council.

Community water fluoridation is credited as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century for its ability to reduce health inequities, according to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health inequities as systematic differences in the health status of different population groups.

Those who benefit the most are children from low socioeconomic backgrounds since they may not have access to pharmaceuticals or dental care, Archibald said.

“The proportion of five-year-old’s who’ve experienced tooth decay has increased from 25 percent to 40 percent of school-age children that we screened over the past five years,” Dr. Piotr Oglaza, medical officer of health of Kingston, Frontenac, and Lennox & Addington (KFL&A) Public Health, said.

Oglaza told the Council fluoride exists naturally within Kingston’s water supply, but its concentration is less than 0.1 parts per million. The ideal concentration set by Health Canada is 0.7 parts per million and the maximum acceptable threshold is 1.5 parts per million.

In contrast, Kingston resident, Marion Gilmore, told the council the aluminum industry invented water fluoridation to dispose of toxic fluoride waste. She further claimed Dr. Henry Trendley Dean, the first scientist to investigate fluoride’s preventative effect on caries, “admitted, under oath, that fluoride does not work as a remedy for tooth decay.”

“There has never been a single double-blind study to indicate that fluoridation is effective in reducing cavities, not one,” Gilmore said.

“Thankfully, at this point, we have a very large amount of data to show the safety of community water fluoridation. Recently, the City of Calgary stopped fluoridating their water, and so we were able to see very clearly, compared to Edmonton, that there was a dramatic increase in childhood caries,” Director of the Master of Public Health (MPH) and Public Health and Preventive Medicine (PHPM) program Dr. Samantha Buttemer said in an interview with The Journal.

Buttemer said a very rich, dietary source of fluoride is black tea, where the dry leaves can contain four to 400 parts per million of fluoride and the brewed tea up to six parts per million. The typical strength of a regular family toothpaste is between 1,000 and 1,500 parts per million of fluoride.

“[Opponents of water fluoridation] refute the quality of the evidence because they can’t refute the position of the evidence,” Buttemer said.

She referenced the argument of needing more data because the current data isn’t strong enough—it’s a stalling tactic, akin to how alcohol industry organizations mislead the public about alcohol and cancer.

Buttemer said observational studies are just as valuable in the field of public health compared to expensive double-blinded randomized-control trials (RCTs). Buttemer referenced a research paper clarifying the differences between two types of quantitative research methods. Observational studies are described as a quantitative, epidemiological method, while RCTs are categorized as a quantitative, experimental research design.

The passed motion is not a new concept since the City of Kingston’s 2019-22 Strategic Plan directed staff to consider the feasibility of fluoridating the drinking water. The plan conducted research in 2019 with KFL&A Public Health and Utilities Kingston. According to the passed motion, the work stopped with the COVID-19 pandemic and was not included in the 2023-26 Strategic Plan.

Tags

city council, Health, water

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