BRADENTON – Pinellas County voted 4-3 Tuesday to stop fluoridation of water to about 700,000 county residents. Public notices are to go out in the fall and the practice will be halted afterward. The cost savings will be over $200,000.

Fluoridation of municipal water supplies has been a popular practice for decades, but studies dispute its effectiveness when added to water and consumed orally, while also linking it to a variety of health ailments like lowered IQ, impaired mental development (brain retardation) and dementia; damage to your kidneys, pineal and thyroid glands resulting in hyperactivity and/or lethargy, chronic fatigue and disrupted immune system; arthritic symptoms and digestive tract (gastrointestinal) problems.

Fluoride is a byproduct of phosphate mining. Hydrofluosilicic acid is an industrial leftover from producing phosphate rock fertilizer and would otherwise be an expensive element for the companies to properly dispose of, rather than a profit center when it is sold to water authorities. With municipalities everywhere scrambling to make budget cuts amid declining revenues, fluoride activists hope that the cost-saving factor of removing it from the water will finally create the catalyst that ends its widespread use.

Many dentists still support the practice and argue that the removal will add to public health costs. They argue that cavity rates have declined since its inception, though data indicates that they've also shown similar declines in societies that don't fluoridate their drinking water. The fact that fluoride became popular in toothpastes and professional cleanings where it is not swallowed around the same time, also makes it more difficult to ascribe its benefits to the practice of drinking it, where it has much less opportunity to impact the surface of the teeth, while being absorbed in much higher concentrations in the body. It is argued that since it is so easily available in so many other low-cost, dental-care related forms in which it doesn't need to be swallowed, removing it from the water supply would defer the choice to the individual.

related:

Fluoride: Disposing of Mining Waste Through Your Body