Skepticism about safe levels of fluoride in drinking water is at the center of a new round of debate, fueled by politics and conspiracy theories circulating on social media. But choosing a side as a layperson can be difficult – at best.
“When we talk about fluoride from a public health perspective, the part of the message that often gets lost is the context around exposure,” said Katherine James, PhD, MS, MSPH, associate professor and Climate & Human Health Doctoral Program director at the Colorado School of Public Health.
“We can say, ‘Here's the amount of fluoride a typical child or adult gets from drinking treated water each day.’ But we are missing how fluoride is naturally occurring in private wells and at the same time is found in air pollution, your diet, or other natural releases such as the weathering of rocks or the soil that might be proportionally equivalent to what we get in water.”
In the second part of a series examining fluoride, James brings a public health lens to the conversation as she shares the importance of viewing risk with a nuanced eye, how the approach with fluoride can vary based on geography and why fluoride has attracted notoriety in public health.