Adding fluoride to American tap water was one of the greatest public health accomplishments of the last century. Nonetheless, there is not much data from the last thirty years assessing the effect of this policy on the American population’s dental health. Research carried out recently, entitled ‘Water Fluoridation & Tooth Decay in American Teenagers & Children’ published in the Dental Research Journal, analyzed links between tooth decay and public water fluoridation, with respect to American adolescents and children.
During this big study, forecasts of the population percentage in each county with water fluoridation, taken from the Disease Prevention and Control Center’s water fluoridation reports, were combined with dental records from a decade of Nutrition Examination and National Health Surveys (2011 to 2014 and 1999 to 2004).
The data indicated that American teenagers and children with better access to water fluoridation were less prone to tooth decay. Countries with governments that made water fluoridation accessible to more than three quarters of their citizens experienced a thirty percent decline in tooth decay in the main dentition and a twelve percent decline in the lasting dentition. This compares to countries with governments that gave under three quarters of the population access to water fluoridation.
These results reflect data from the previous fifty years, indicating that water fluoridation still provides a significant benefit, with regards to dental health, for American teenagers and children. The present study adds to the data, by proving that the advantage is most noticeable early in a child’s life, in the teeth of two to eight year olds.
“This research adds to previously published information and offers more evidence supporting the use of fluoride to promote oral health in the general population”, said the American Dental Research Association (AADR) President Maria Ryan. “The AADR advocates water fluoridation as an effective and safe, evidence focused policy to prevent tooth decay, and this data further strengthens that base of evidence”.