Trump’s Day One: RFK Jr. Says Trump Will End Adding Fluoride to Water Supply

RFK Jr., now President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, is on record as saying that the new Administration will order all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from their tap water on January 20, 2025, the new Trump Administration’s first day in office.

Competing claims, pro and on, concerning fluoride in the drinking water have raged on for years, with advocates saying its very helpful for children’s teeth, and detractors saying it’s a neurotoxin that harms children’s IQ.

Well, we don’t claim to have personally studied the fluoridated water system to know who’s right and who’s wrong, but we are observant and notice that just about everyone buys bottled water when they’re out and filters their water at home. And, of course, they do this to remove all the contaminants and all the additives.

What is wrong with pouring fluoride into the water supply? Well, one side of this argument says there’s nothing wrong with it; to the contrary, it helps kids’ teeth avoid decay and cavities. But on the other side, the argument is quite earnest too: While fluoride is an inorganic ion and is the 13th-most abundant element in our earth’s crust, it is not “fluoride,” per se, that goes into our water; rather, it is Hydrofluorosilicic acid (HFA).

According to Pure Holistic Dental, a dental practice in Sugar Land, Texas, “Hydrofluorosilicic acid was once known as a highly toxic waste product from the fertilizer industry, before anyone added it to toothpaste or drinking water. To sell this waste byproduct, HFA was successfully marketed as a rat poison and insecticide.  Now, the same companies who were once fined for dumping toxins into public water supplies are now paid by the federal government for a similar job. HFA accounts for about 90% of the fluoride in US drinking water.” (Source)

Apparently, there is no argument that HFA is toxic. The real question is whether it is toxic at the levels of dilution that are present in the drinking water. And of course, there is no agreement on what a safe level is. But the advocates of fluoride say the levels present in the water supply present no issues, or alternatively, those issues are outweighed by the benefits bestowed on children’s teeth. While some studies have found that children living in areas with fluoridated public drinking water have lower IQ scores and that mothers who have consumed fluoridated water bear children who may have increased risk of ADHD or autism, the advocates call all such studies junk science.

Dr. Judson Wall, a biological dentist in Bountiful, Utah, says,

“It’s important to look at what fluoride is, where it comes from, and what effect it has in the body. On the pro-fluoride side, they argue that fluoride is necessary for good oral health because it kills bacteria and prevents bacteria from growing. The term for that is bacteriostatic.

When fluoride is incorporated into the tooth, it replaces some of the natural ions, and the tooth becomes fluoroapatite instead of hydroxyapatite.

The resulting cases of fluorosis are one of the biggest problems in dentistry right now. The spotting of the teeth is not only unsightly, but it’s also a reflection of what’s going on in the bones.

If you have dental fluorosis, all of your bones are becoming brittle. With the high incidence of osteoporosis and the bone issues that women have in the United States, we don’t need that insult added to injury.”

But, of course, there are fluoride’s advocates. As recently as September 26, 2024, the American Dental Association (ADA) “reaffirmed its stance that community water fluoridation is safe and beneficial to oral health.” In its statement, the ADA said, “it remains “staunchly in support” of community water fluoridation at optimal levels to help prevent tooth decay.

The ADA statement came in response to a decision made by US District Court Judge Edward Chen (in a case known as Food & Water Watch, Inc. v. Environmental Protection Agency), that while he did not “conclude with certainty” that fluoridated water is harmful to public health, there is evidence that fluoride in drinking water poses a potential risk of cognitive decline. “Given the seriousness of reduced IQ, and the ample support in the record that the United States population is at risk of experiencing IQ decrements of over four IQ points, the severity of the hazard at issue weights in favor of finding the risk at issue unreasonable,” Judge Chen wrote in his decision.

So what’s true and what’s not true? We’ll just go back to our earlier observation that most people, given the choice of drinking bottled water or tap water, will opt for the bottled water. Sometimes the public is ahead of the curve. We’ll look forward to Bobby removing this neurotoxin from our water.