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Angry indeed: fluoridation to fight tooth decay, a hot-button issue from the 1950s--when it was attacked as a communist plot--is back on the front burner and not just in Washington State. Fueled by health concerns, cancer fears and a grass-roots campaign that has flooded the Internet with antifluoridation Web pages, citizens across the U.S. are increasingly suspicious of what the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) considers "one of the 10 great public-health achievements of the 20th century." In the past three years, legislation to encourage fluoridation has been defeated or tabled in Oregon, Arkansas, Nebraska...
...much has changed since 1945, starting with our toothpastes. Today fluoride is an ingredient in most brands of dentifrice on the market. Because toothpaste is designed to be spit out, it's a more efficient way to get the decay-fighting ingredient where it is needed and nowhere else. Even some dentists, who see firsthand the benefits of fluoridation, wonder whether people who get fluoride from toothpaste should get it in their drinking water as well...
...risks of water fluoridation are hotly debated, quantifying its benefits is also tricky. In the 1950s, advocates claimed a 60% drop in cavities. But with the spread of fluoride toothpastes and the use of plastic sealants by dentists, decay has plummeted even in regions where there is little or no fluoride in the water. A 2001 CDC study found that by the time they were 12, kids in fluoridated communities averaged only 1.4 fewer cavities than those in non-fluoridated areas. And even in fluoridated cities, severe decay remains rampant among the poor--partly because some 85% of dentists, according...
...toothpaste, while fluoride critics say it shows that children are accumulating too much fluoride overall. The World Health Organization sets a fluoride-safety standard of 1.5 p.p.m.--well below the EPA's 4-p.p.m. rule--partly to prevent enamel fluorosis. And in Western Europe, where the drop in tooth decay in recent decades is as sharp as that in the U.S., 17 of 21 countries have either refused or discontinued fluoridation, contending that fluoride toothpastes offer adequate protection. (Only Ireland adds fluoride to most of its water systems, while Switzerland fluoridates its salt...
...According to Spillane-Hinks, words propel the play’s plot because, in the particular universe of Kushner’s provocative play, “dialogue is action.” Significantly, the only silent character is a young girl dying of cancer, whose physical decay becomes “synonymous with speechlessness...