LIHUE — Legislators pushing a proposal to add fluoride to Hawaii’s public water systems say it would promote better dental health, but some on Kauai have concerns about cost and implications of fluoridating the water.
The legislation would require major public water suppliers to fluoridate drinking water in Hawaii and for the Department of Health to reimburse water suppliers for expense incurred initially, and provide suppliers with training and technical assistance.
None of Hawaii’s counties fluoridate their water, and Honolulu County banned that practice in 2004. Nationwide, however, fluoride has been in some states’ drinking water for 70 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC says drinking fluoridated water reduces cavities by about 25 percent in children and adults and points out that the practice is recommended by the American Dental Association.
State Sen. Karl Rhoads proposed the legislation and says fluoridating the water would be a safe and cost-effective way to improve Hawaii’s dental health.
Other lawmakers disagree.
“It is so important to get fluoride for dental health, but the cost is tremendous with water fluoridation. Topical fluorides, like toothpaste, is a better option to me,” said Kauai Rep. Dee Morikawa.
She suggested supporting better access to children’s dental health and attending regular dental visits as ways to improve oral health.
“Too much water is used for other purposes, especially on the neighbor islands, and fluoridation would be wasted,” she said.
When Malina Briakadasha, a single Kauai mom of five kids, heard about the proposed legislation, she grew concerned and immediately called Rhoads’ office to find out how to comment on the topic.
She’s concerned that fluoride in the water could negatively impact her family’s health. She strives to live a healthy life and doesn’t chose to use fluoride, but she also opposes the overall concept of state-mandated water fluoridation.
“I think whether or not you drink fluoridated water is a personal choice and I’m offended that the government wants to make that decision for me,” Briakadasha said. “Our water is pretty pure, we have chlorine in it, but this is adding something completely unnecessary.”
Jennifer Edmonds, another Kauai mom, said she and her family go through fluoride treatments at the dentist every six months and she doesn’t think that there’s a need to add it to the drinking water.
“There is no reason for it to go through your whole body, it just needs to be on your teeth,” Edmonds said. “So far, both my kids are cavity-free.”
According to the latest community water fluoridation reports from the CDC, updated in 2016, about 65 percent of the U.S. population gets their water from fluoridated systems.
Throughout the nation, most states have fluoridation systems in city water, but there are communities that don’t allow it; Albuquerque, New Mexico, for instance banned fluoridated water until June, when the governing board approved supplemental fluoridation of the city water supply.
According to the CDC, District of Columbia and Kentucky lead the nation with nearly 100 percent of their population on fluoridated water systems. Following closely are Illinois and Minnesota with 98 percent, Georgia with 96 percent, and North Dakota with 92 percent.
Some of the states with the lowest percentage of their population on fluoridated water systems are New Jersey with 14 percent, Oregon with 22 percent, Idaho with 31 percent, and Utah with 51 percent.
According to a 2014 report, Hawaii had more dentists per capita than any state except Massachusetts but children here have among the worst rates of tooth decay in the country.
One of the reasons for that is Hawaii’s water supply is not fluoridated, except on military bases.
In 2014, The Pew Center gave Hawaii an F grade in its most recent report on how well the state is protecting children from tooth decay. It’s the same grade Hawaii received the previous two years.
Fluoridation began with the mistaken theory that ingested fluoride was required for healthy teeth. Modern science disproved that. Fluoride is not a nutrient or essentiial. So consuming a fluoride-free diet does not cause tooth decay. Rotten diets make rotten teeth and no amount of fluoride has changed that. Thousands of science-citing professionals urge artificial fluoridation be abandoned world-wide. Here’s why http://FluorideAction.Net/researchers/professionals-statement/text
“There are over 350 published studies on fluoride’s negative effect on the brain: 130 human studies, over 200 animal studies, and 33 cell studies.”
Read this excellent book, “The Case Against Fluoride” authored by three scientists, one an M.D. It contains over 1200 scientific references, over 80 pages.
There is plenty of new research showing the adverse effects of water fluoridation. It is positively stunning how WHO, CDC, ADA and the media refuse to acknowledge it. https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2016/09/LetterLimeback.pdf
Fluoride is a mind numbing and poisonous chemical. It’s actually an industrial waste product. The “benefits” are a complete lie and people here in Hawaii need to fight this tooth and nail. For one, “dental fluorosis” is the damaging of the teeth “caused by fluoride”. By definition fluoride is a drug so why is it dumped in the water instead of dosed? It’s because this chemical is a population control substance. If you have fluoride tooth paste read the side where it says “if swallowed call poison control”. My god, I thought Hawaii was a safe place away from this poison now they want to put it in our water…. HELL NOOO!!!! DO YOUR RESEARCH ON THIS POISON, DO NOT LET THEM PUT IT IN OUR WATER!!!!!!!
LOL That was pretty funny! I mean, it is a parody, right?
As a mom of 5 and 1 of them having a sensitivity to fluoride, I am for sure against this proposal. The dental coverage offered here in Hawaii is the problem not our water.
Is there a bill we can pass to appropriate the funds to help pay for dental care ?
Fluoridation results in slow poisoning over a lifetime which causes premature ageing, thyroid damage, dental fluorosis, lowered IQ, ADHD, brittle bones (broken hips & arthritis), kidney damage, cancer and other health dangers. Exactly why would an ADULT consume it in every glass of water every day of life?
The big money fluoridation scheme is similar to tobacco and asbestos. It took years to reverse the illogical science. It will take some time to reverse the toxic fluoride scheme as well.
Read this excellent book, “The Case Against Fluoride” authored by three scientists, one an M.D. It contains over 1200 scientific references, over 80 pages.
WOW, 80 pages, is it double spaced?
Fluoridation of the water supply is a bad idea. Fluoride should only be used on teeth, If ingested, it is a poison. Use a toothpaste with fluoride if you like but drinking water with fluoride in it doesn’t help your teeth and harms your body. There is no way to distribute fluoride evenly throughout the drinking water supply. Some will get less and some will get more and more is not going to be good for your health. Stay healthy, don’t drink fluoride.
thereelmonte@yahoo.com
I agree with others opposed to adding fluoride to the potable, (domestic) water supply. Flouride is a hazardous material and requires special handling and haz-mat training for those who will be hauling this liquid and installing equipment to inject it into water pipelines. Yes, water treatment operators are already trained to handle other chemicals in the treatment of drinking water but why expose these individuals to another safety hazard is not needed for water quality. The added cost to start up this process is not cheap and and continued maintenance on this equipment only adds to the budget of water treatment facilities and these costs will be eventually passed on to consumer. No thanks to fluoride.
Ever since the 1950’s this controversy has been going on. As usual, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” People who have no understanding of chemistry or biology fear what they don’t understand. Fluoride has been in Americans’ water for over sixty years. The only effect is a reduction in tooth decay. Hawaii needs this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J67wKhddWu4
Your evidence is a movie clip?
Not a good idea for several reasons – controlling dosage. Someobe drinks 1-2 glasses of water a day and another drinks 8-10 glasses a day. What is MDR? What is toxicity level? What does the body really do with the hard chemical fluoride?
A chiropractic spinal correction should take care of all that!
Aloha Kakou,
Flouride is an industrial waste product.
Flouride is known to make teeth brittle.
American Dental Association (ADA) is not for the public. Like the American Medical Association, the ADA is for the well being of their doctors.
FLOURIDE is another chemical in the chain of chemicals used today in our foods, and water, that lead the human body down the road to more and more diseases.
Has your dentist ever told you that each of your little teeth are living entities with 300 yards of Dentine Tubules, similar to blood vessels but running through each tooth? These Dentine Tubules transport the fluid that carry nutrients and oxygen to your teeth, like blood does for the bodies cells. Dental drilling of teeth is destructive to the Dentine Tubules and thus the health of your teeth.
Teeth are not lifeless cubes of ivory.
Drilling out your teeth for cavities, much less the complete death to your teeth by ROOT CANALS, is absolutely destructive to your teeth, however it is the Bread and Butter of dentistry. Root canal makes a dead black tooth and costs $1200, dental tooth crowns (Fake tooth top that covers over the dead tooth) $1,200, and the dead tooth eventually breaks off after the tooth is dead, and a dental surgeon is needed to remove the broken off dead tooth and remove the roots left behind and that is another $500. About almost $3,000, and that is on people where water is fluoridated already.
If dentists were really for saving your teeth they would be protesting soda and candy and sugar that is in every packaged food. Read your food labels. Rotten teeth is a reflection of your body as a whole, rotten teeth, body with disease.
Live, fresh, nutritious, natural food is a source of body nourishment; the LACK OF FOOD that is actually fit for healthy humans, causes dental decay and body diseases.
It is a disservice to our children that they are not taught about their bodies in elementary and high school, the ignorance of ones body feeds both the medical and dental industries, which is all about reactive, after the fact, disease care…allow your oral and body health to run down by not paying attention to PREVENTION and avoiding the causes of cavities and root canals, and let the doctors finish the job, by not restoring health but after the fact dental treatments of filling cavities and performing Root Canals. Dental drilling and root canals are a form of surgery removing vital parts of our teeth, thendentine tubules, unless of course if you like false teeth, like dentures and implants…or prefer to look like a toothless Dufus.
We deserve better dental health care, demand it. It starts with dental Education in elementary and high school and Prevention of the Causes, not a mass population treatment with fluoridating our water where 99.9% of the Flouride goes into the body instead of onto the enamel of the teeth. Toothpaste with Flouride puts Flouride directly onto the enamel of the teeth…why flouridate the whole body by ingesting the Flouride in our water.
If you drink water with fluoridation, the Flouride just passes over your teeth, and is gone from your mouth within minutes as water does the same. But yes it goes into your digestive system and into your blood stream and transfers into the Dentine Tubules that your dentists is destroying with drilling and Root Canals, so why bother.
Prevention is the key here, it starts with education and continues with avoiding sugar drinks and sugar in every food.
Sugar is a Plant Based mild stimulant Drug…(observe little kids after a sugar dose, and then the come down minutes later) though milder for children than other Plant Based drugs like cocaine and opiates.
It’s not a conspiracy, it’s capitalizing on large income. Would you turn down a job that makes $1200 or more dollars for a 1/2 hour. Let’s see, if you are a Root Canal and Dental Crown specialist, that is over $19,000 a day.
And you would take the recommendation of the AMERICAN Dental Association…? They are out for themselves as are their paid lobbyists. Demand education instead and food fit for healthy humans not sickly,ones on multi-medications. Are you on medications, there is a healthy alternative. Get educated…!
Mahalo,
Charles
Quaaaaack, quack, quack, quack!
Bottom line, however beneficial or not Fluoride is, DON’T MESS WITH KAUAI WATER. It has to rank near the top if potable and palatable qualities!
Brah, just give out toothpaste and toothbrushes! Mo cheap!
Fluoride is the waste product from aluminum production and has no place in human healthcare. It is in fact a poison and is actually a subsidy to the aluminum producers.
Besides this, are we so stupid as to accept state enforced, involuntary medication? Whether or not we ingest any substance is not any of the state’s concern…it is purely one of individual choice.
Another really idiotic idea thanks to ignorant politicians.
RG DeSoto
Floride is the waste products of processing aluminum a toxic chemical that cause alzheimer’s disease and also calsifies one’ Pineal Gland that stagnates human’s deep thinking processing for higher intelligences.
That is the reason why the Nazi’s put it in drinking water for their prison camps to keep the Jewish people docile and stupid so they won’t riot and remain like sheep led to the slaughter house of gas chambers. They ran all sorts of human experiementations and Floride and Chlorination was detemined to be of useful control of their large numbers of prisoners during WWII.
Maybe the State wants to do the same using tooth decay prevention as a ruse to control the masses when they start increasing the taxes on fuel, GET and other means to line their pockets so that the masses do not question their policies.
It would appear that the repete is a medical student swallowing all they have to add to his water, Flouride, that lowers IQ and has erased his former ingenuity and originality…an absence that lends to the proof of fluoridation’s effectiveness of imbecility…!
Is that Flouride from the same aluminum that has been scorned for years causing mental disease from deodorant use, wow that’s a roundabout…oh pity, now they want a repete…! Instead of your armpit mode of entry a direct shot to your blood stream via your mouth to stomach to digestive assimilation into the blood stream circulated into your brain for ground zero mental deficiency.
…and they have proof of one right here.
In the years before chlorination of our water did you ever hear of anyone getting sick for lack of chlorine in our water…NOT…!
If we were to follow the money on this one , whose door would it lead us too.
And a big Mahalo to our representative at legislation, Rep. Dee Morikawa for standing up against fluoridation.
When they already have a name for a Disease for fluoridation..
FLOURIDOSIS, it’s time to take notice and go with safety.
Hey Dee, just who on Oahu is pushing for this fluoridating our precious life sustaining water. .
Our foods are poisoned, our crops too, the air is polluted and now the water is too…!
Charlie
The bottom line is, it’s an incredibly horrible idea to allow the Gov’t to drug the population in mass by dumping a chemical into the water supply. We all have a right to make a our own choice. T This is simply tyrannical.
The news reports always claim the non-F states have worse dental decay, even though the facts don’t substantiate that claim. Pew gives you an F if your state doesn’t fluoridate or jump through other hoops.
See 7th slide to compare HI, MA and a couple of other states: http://vce.org/BennAgWaFlu.pdf
Also see this page to see what you actually get more of with fluoridation, diabetes, Alzheimers, etc.: https://pregnancyandfluoridedonotmix.com/lifedecay.html
This is a good money making opportunity for bottle water companies like aloha water or menehune water to sell bottled water with Floride..
Then people can choose to buy floridated water.