DALLAS — Despite being recommended by the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and a lengthy list of other medical experts and groups, a Dallas City Council committee recently held a briefing to discuss the city’s practice of adding fluoride to the water supply.
The chair of that committee, Council Member Adam Bazaldua, says the purpose of the briefing was to answer questions and address concerns raised by a few members of the public.
And Bazaldua says he – and the public – have learned a lot through this process.
“I believe that there is a concern that gets conflated with an overconcentration of fluoride, which is nothing near where we are doing with DWU (Dallas Water Utilities). We’re only supplementing up to the recommended level from the CDC,” the District 7 Council Member told us on Inside Texas Politics.
But critics of the briefing say there aren’t “two sides” to this debate.
A Dallas Morning News editorial, for instance, said Bazaldua’s committee heard from two people representing “fringe groups” and a third linked to a “deeply flawed” study, so it questioned why there was a need to study a practice that’s “rooted in decades of research.”
And the Dallas Observer recently ran an article with the headline: “Dallas Continues Its ‘Dumb Conversations’ About Fluoride.”
Bazaldua even told us some of the arguments raised against fluoride are “scare tactics” and “conspiracy theories,” so his goal was to counter those statements, clear up misconceptions and explain why the city believes there is a public good for adding fluoride to the water supply.
And the council member unequivocally told us this:
“I do not see that fluoride will be taken out of Dallas water as long as I’m on council.”