PASCO, WA – Blanche Barajas and Gary Bode have very different ideas about fluoridation. She’s pro. He’s against.

As city council members in Pasco and Lynden, respectively, they fought two of seven battles in Washington in the past two years over fluoridation in public water supplies. Those fights reflect a spike in skepticism about the long-time, dental-related practice supported by health experts. Washington already is below the national average in residents served by fluoridated water.

Barajas, who left office in recent weeks after not seeking reelection, grew up in Salinas, California, where she began raising two sons.

Salinas’ water system did not have fluoride. Barajas had to stretch a small family budget to provide fluoride to protect her boys’ teeth. After moving to Pasco 20 years ago, she got heavily involved in the community, becoming a city council member in 2018 and later serving as mayor.

A proposal went to the Pasco City Council last year to eliminate fluoride from the city’s water system because of concerns about the health effects and wanting citizens to make their own decisions about fluoride.

With one seat empty, the council split 3-3 on taking this matter to a public ballot. A follow-up vote on just the council making the decision passed 4-2 to remove the fluoride. Mayor David Milne hesitantly switched sides to apparently put the issue to bed on Nov. 17.

“It’s a disservice to those children. It’s a disservice to those families,” Barajas said.

Meanwhile, Bode has been on the Lynden City Council for 26 years. He has read lots of literature criticizing fluoridation as a health risk — lower IQs, softening bones in senior citizens, and damaging pineal glands, part of the brain that helps regulate sleep cycles.

“There’s a laundry list of studies,” Bode said.

More than two years ago, and minus one member, Lynden’s council began holding hearings and debates on ending fluoridation. It voted 4-2 to remove fluoride, but the mayor vetoed the decision. The council went through the whole process again to get a veto-proof 5-2 vote on April 21.

“This is the most important thing I’ve done for public health,” Bode said.

Health and dental experts say there appears to be an increase in anti-fluoridation efforts involving local governments, although they do not collect statistics for comparison.

Along with Pasco and Lynden, the city councils of Aberdeen and Camas have voted to remove fluoridation from their water supplies in 2024 and 2025. The Longview and Battle Ground councils voted to reject anti-fluoridation efforts. Yakima’s council is pondering the issue.

Washington’s state health department policy is to leave this matter up to local governments. “Some people think it infringes on their autonomy in their decisions on what goes into their bodies,” said state health officer Tao Kwan-Gett of the Washington State Department of Health.

This year, 46% of Washington residents have access to public fluoridated water, according to the department. It did not have percentages for previous years. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that about 72% of Americans had access to fluoridated water in 2022.

The state health department, the Washington State Dental Association and the statewide dental lobbying organization, the Arcora Foundation, are not aware on any coordinated effort to remove fluoridation, but pointed to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s national push to stop fluoridation.

So far, Utah and Florida have banned fluoride in public water systems.

“These (Washington efforts) are grassroots organizing. But the national narrative is driving it,” said Chris Dorow, outgoing president of the Washington State Dental Association and the only dentist in Othello. The natural water around Othello is already high in fluorides.

The use of fluoride in drinking water dates back to Colorado Springs in 1901. Spearheaded by a Colorado Springs dentist, wondering why brown stains showed up in children’s teeth, he and other researchers spent the next 30-plus years trying to figure out why those stains occurred in Colorado Springs and a few other western areas, and not elsewhere, according to the federal National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

During that research, it was found that the brown-stained teeth were stronger and more resistant to cavities than other teeth. Fluorides in the natural water was pinned down as the source of brown stains and stronger teeth in the 1930s. Researchers then tackled finding a fluoridation sweet spot on strengthening teeth without causing brown stains.

Researchers found that balance, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, decided in 1945 to become the first city to fluoridate its public water supply. Fluoridation has a good track record on dental health. The CDC says the proper levels of fluoridation reduce tooth decay by 25%.

Poor oral health can cause pain and handicap a person’s ability to eat, sleep, learn and work, according to Arcora. Untreated oral disease can make chronic health conditions, like diabetes, worse. Medical costs can increase.

Percentages of tooth decay in Washington can vary from city to city. Hispanic, Native American, and Black children have consistently higher rates of tooth decay than their white counterparts, according to Arcora.

Lynden’s Bode pointed to numerous articles that linked fluoride with the loss of IQ points in children. The most commonly cited figures are a loss of 5 to 7 IQ points.

The peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 74 articles on studies on the links between IQ points and fluoride. Authors of the JAMA article determined that there is a high risk of scientific bias in 52 of those studies and a low risk of bias in 22. Forty-five of the articles originated from China.

The links between fluoride and loss of intelligence show up when the fluoride levels in water are above 1.5 milligrams per liter, the JAMA review found.

“There were limited data and uncertainty in the dose-response association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ when fluoride exposure was estimated by drinking water alone at concentrations less than 1.5 mg/L,” the JAMA review said.

“That’s much higher than what we use for public water fluoridation,” said Washington state health officer Kwan-Gett.

The CDC says the recommended level for fluoride in a public water system is 0.7 milligrams per liter. Dorow pointed to the centuries-old concept that the dose of a substance often dictates whether or not it is poisonous, not the substance itself.

“There are no negative impacts at normal levels,” Kwan-Gett said.

Regarding Bode’s concerns about pineal glands and bone health, the state health department emailed a number of observations.

The agency said that while some animal studies suggest that high levels of fluoride could affect the pineal gland, studies in humans are inconclusive and limited. And the American Dental Association says that there is no known effect of fluoride on the functions of the pineal gland.

Additionally, the department pointed to a recently published review of scientific literature that concluded low concentrations of fluoride have no significant harmful effect on bone health. A recent study reported a link between fluoride exposure and bone density and fracture risk, but that was at fluoride levels that are more than twice what is used for community water systems.

This story first appeared on Washington State Standard.