May 19, 2012

Health Canada’s Chief Dental Officer Dr. Peter Cooney insists water fluoridation is best way to reduce cavities?

Thunder Bay, Ontario (20-Jul-2009, 8 min. 51 sec.)

Health Canada’s Chief  Dental Officer Dr. Peter Cooney insists community water fluoridation is the best way to reduce dental cavities/caries, during a  City of Thunder Bay (Ontario) council meeting on July 20th, 2009;  under questioning from Thunder Bay Councillor Frank Pullia.

But consider this:

In 1992 Comox / Courtenay and Campbell  River communities in British Columbia,  Canada  stopped fluoridating their water supplies. Two Canadian studies conducted by the same researchers on this same population event could have ended debate about artificial water-fluoridation. How? By publishing all the results together in one place and time.

Why publish data separately, five years apart? Taken together, this data  showed water fluoridation is not successful at reducing dental cavities/caries.  Other factors were responsible for the observed decline in dental caries, not  fluoride. In fact, after fluoridation was turned off, cavity rates went down,  as did dental fluorosis rates caused by too much ingested fluoride.

Gerardo Maupome´, D. Christopher Clark, Steven M. Levy & Jonathan Berkowitz, Patterns Of Dental Caries Following The Cessation Of Water Fluoridation,  Community Dentistry And Oral Epidemiology, 2001, 29: 37–47

Researchers compared prevalence and incidence of dental caries between  fluoridation-ended and still-fluoridated communities in British  Columbia, Canada.  Data was collected on snacking, oral hygiene, exposure to fluoride  technologies, and socio-economic level. The prevalence of dental caries  decreased over time in the fluoridation-ended community while remaining  unchanged in the still-fluoridated community. Quick assumption was made that  multiple sources of alternative fluoride, besides water fluoridation, must have  been responsible for dental caries decline in the fluoridation-ended community.  No mention is made about any attempt to measure dental fluorosis in the  fluoride-ended community to determine if fluoride was still being received  through other sources. Why not, since that data was also available?

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D. Christopher Clark, Jay D. Shulman, Gerardo Maupome´ & Steven M. Levy, Changes In Dental Fluorosis Following The Cessation Of Water Fluoridation,  Community Dentistry And Oral Epidemiology, 2006 34: 197–204

Five years later in the same Danish journal these researchers published the  findings on the prevalence of dental fluorosis after water fluoridation ended.  (Why a Danish journal when these are Canadian studies?) When fluoride was  removed from the water supply the prevalence and severity of dental fluorosis  decreased significantly. The use of fluoride supplements and fluoride dentifrice (fluoride toothpaste) also decreased during this same period.

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Health Canada’s Chief Dental Officer Cooney , as well as Clark and Levy (principal researchers on these  two studies, and contributors on the six member Health Canada 2008 expert panel reviewing water fluoridation) are very well aware of such research, but still  voted unanimously in support of municipal water fluoridation.

Why not tell the public the whole truth? If the public was told the whole truth we would know the questionable ‘merits’ of water fluoridation