As calls to end fluoride in water get louder, changes to the dental health of children in Calgary, Canada, and Juneau, Alaska, may provide a cautionary tale.
Source: Two cities stopped adding fluoride to water. Science reveals what happened
tl;dr: worse outcomes in Calgary:
In Calgary, the team surveyed 2,649 second-graders around seven years after fluoridation ended, meaning they had likely never been exposed to fluoride in their drinking water. Of those, 65 percent had tooth decay. In Edmonton, 55 percent of surveyed children had tooth decay. While those percentages may seem close, they mark a statistically significant difference that McLaren calls “quite large” on the population level.
and Juenua, AK:
Meyer and her colleagues analyzed Medicaid dental claims records made before and after the city stopped fluoridation. They found that the average number of procedures to treat tooth decay rose in children under age 6, from 1.5 treatments per child in 2003 to 2.5 treatments per child in 2012.
