I can still hear that old belt-driven dental drill in Dr. Ames’ Main Street office. It was my introduction to the benefits of fluoride, or the lack thereof. 

Reports that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on a mission to undo three-quarters of a century of successful dental care through fluoridated water took me back to those days, as visits to the dentist frequently do.

When I was a child in the 1950s, there were two groups of kids in elementary school — those who drank water containing fluoride and those who drank it that had no fluoride. I fell in the latter group. 

Here’s how it came to be. Everyone here in Isle of Wight relied on water from wells, and there were basically two types of wells — deep, artesian wells and what we generally called shallow wells. 

The artesian wells, which are still very much in use, tapped water from hundreds of feet underground. Much of the water in those aquifers had entered the ground where bedrock surfaces, up around Petersburg and Richmond, what we call the fall line. The water finds its way downhill in layers of sand that are the artesian aquifers of Tidewater. The aquifers slant downward from the fall line to the Atlantic, and water piled on water in them creates pressure, known as artesian. 

In the early 20th century, the pressure on artesian layers was so great that if you punched into an aquifer, water would shoot up through the pipe to well above ground level. Depletion of those aquifer supplies has dropped the amount of artesian pressure so that today water from that source has to be pumped hundreds of feet to the surface.

While that water meanders through the ground, it picks up minerals, including fluoride, and during the early to mid-20th century, dentists began noticing that people who drank fluoridated water had fewer, if any, cavities. They also noticed that some of those who drank fluoridated water had teeth of a brownish color. 

As scientific information about fluoride grew, it became obvious that at low levels, fluoride was a valuable tooth protector, and at too-high levels, it could damage teeth, or at least discolor them. That’s called fluorosis, and it happened to some of our friends back then. It depended on the level of fluoride in the artesian aquifer being tapped.

And then, there were those of us who drank water from shallow wells. Those wells tapped water that entered the ground nearby, known as “perched” water tables. That water never entered the deep aquifers and had no chance to pick up fluoride. Since that was long before the days of fluoride treatments, we simply didn’t receive any fluoride.

And our teeth showed it. Trips to Dr. Wilson Ames’ office after school became a part of my life from elementary through high school. I would walk from James Street down to Main, dreading every step, for I knew what was coming. That old drill would whine and smoke would sometimes come from ground enamel as yet another cavity was filled.

By the time I finished high school, most of my teeth had fillings and while I was in college, most of the fillings had to be redone. 

I’m very fortunate to have lost only one tooth over many years, and the reason is a string of dentists who worked very hard to save them. Fluoride during my youth would have made a big difference.

Today, a significant majority of the public water supplies in the U.S. contain fluoride, but it’s tightly regulated to ensure that a low, but efficacious level is maintained.

That’s true of Smithfield. The town has had a public water system since the late 1800s and the water has always come from artesian wells. Today, the town’s well water is processed in a reverse osmosis plant that guarantees fluoride levels are well within standards set by Virginia and the EPA.

Fluoride has proven to be hugely advantageous in protecting the public’s dental health. Too much fluoride can do damage to teeth and bones, and very large doses can cause other health issues. For that reason, it should be carefully regulated, as it is here, but eliminating it from public water supplies would be a giant step backward in America’s health care. While many Americans could continue to receive fluoride on the advice of their family dentists, millions of other Americans who do not have access to regular dental care would be further endangered by the loss of fluoride. 

Subjecting future generations of children unnecessarily to tooth decay, the loss of teeth and the poorer health outcomes that lack of dental care can cause just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, and I sincerely hope we don’t go down that road.

 

John Edwards is publisher emeritus of The Smithfield Times. His email address is j.branchedwards@gmail.com