“School Fluoridators” – the dosing of U.S. children with fluoride at school

Fluoridation of community drinking water first began in the U.S. in January 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. To put this into a U.S. perspective, World War 2 was still raging and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs had not yet occurred.

“Fluoridator” was the term for the device that injected fluoride into a school’s water system. Very little has been written about this miserable public-health scheme. It appears it began in the early 1970s and ended sometime after 1993. As far as we know there has been no acknowledgement of its history in the many schools that installed these devices. There have been some studies that reported overdosing with these devices, see for example Hoffman et al. (1980) and Vogt et al. (1982).

The schools that are listed below came from the Fluoridation Census 1992. Not all schools are listed and not all of the schools have a “start date.”

The “optimal level” of fluoride used in fluoridation schemes ranged between 0.7 – 1.2 mg/L and this was dependent on the annual average of maximum daily air temperature in each state. The higher the air temperature, the less fluoride was put into the drinking water. The “optimal fluoride” level was expected to reduce dental caries and minimize the risk of dental fluorosis (p iv, Fluoridation Census 1992).

For schools, the “optimal level” for fluoride was “4.5 times the optimal fluoride level for communities” (p iv, Fluoridation Census 1992).

However, in April 2015, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) removed air temperature as the basis for “optimal fluoride” levels in community fluoridation schemes. HHS stated

Common sense would suggest the opposite – that the higher the air temperatures, the more fluid one would drink. In one study on children in Texas, the authors found this to be the case: “Children from homes which had air conditioning had a lower prevalence of mottling…” (Butler et al, 1985). The authors of the 2006 report of the National Research Council of the National Academies noted that one high fluoride intake group are “people living in very hot or dry climates” (page 530).

It appears that HHS needed some explanation to drop the levels of fluoride in their effort to reduce the gross prevalence of dental fluorosis in young teenagers, while staving off the inevitable end of fluoridation.

See
• 2015, U.S. Public Health Service Recommendation  for Fluoride Concentration in Drinking  Water for the Prevention of Dental Caries. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. HHS.
• 1995, Recommendations for fluoridated school public water supply system
• 1993, Fluoridation Census 1992. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Division of Oral Health
• 1985, Butler WJ et al. Prevalence of dental mottling in school-aged lifetime residents of 16 Texas communities. American Journal of Public Health 75(12):1408-12.
• 1982, Vogt RL et al. Acute fluoride poisoning associated with an on-site fluoridator in a Vermont elementary school. American Journal of Public Health 72(10):1168-9.
• 1980, Hoffman R el al. Acute fluoride poisoning in a New Mexico elementary school. Pediatrics 65(5):897-900.
• 1976, A Manual for Rural School Fluoridation (particularly for the state of Kentucky). By LW Sprouse & J Brooks for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Public Health Service.

The following are naturally-occurring levels in the school’s drinking water: