Just up the Lake Michigan shoreline from our Port Washington dental office, the city of Two Rivers recently made a big change to its drinking water. After adding fluoride to it for roughly 70 years, the city council voted in September to stop.

As a holistic, biological dental practice, we believe decisions about oral health should take your overall health into account, too. That’s one reason we’ve long encouraged patients to be mindful of their fluoride exposure; a recent nationwide study offers one more reason why.

Published this past August in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the study looked at prenatal fluoride exposure and cognitive development in more than 2,500 children. The research was part of the National Institute of Health’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes program, better known as ECHO.

The research team used the mothers’ addresses during pregnancy to estimate the amount of their fluoride exposure. The team then looked at how the children performed years later on tests of different types of thinking and learning.

Analysis found a link between prenatal fluoride exposure and lower scores in fluid cognition—the kind of thinking we use to solve new problems, to reason and to adapt to new information.

Yet exposure levels weren’t all that high. In one analysis, the relationship began to emerge at about 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water. What’s the currently recommended level of fluoride in community water here in the US? Exactly 0.7 mg/L.

That’s one reason these results are worth paying attention to: The focus was on levels of fluoride people may actually encounter in real life. Its size and its national scope matter, too. Of course, like all studies, it also has its limitations. It can show us an association, but it can’t tell us that fluoride caused the differences that the researchers observed. Other types of studies are needed to address that kind of question.

The Two Rivers decision was made for its own local reasons. Among the concerns raised there were trace amounts of lead and arsenic in the fluoride product the city had been using. Any naturally occurring fluoride will remain in the water. The city just won’t add any more any longer.

Wherever you live, though, you don’t have to wait for your community to reconsider fluoridation before thinking about your own exposure.

A good place to start is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s, My Water’s Fluoride online tool, which lets you search for information about fluoride in participating local water systems. You can also contact your water utility directly for the most current information.

From there, you can choose fluoride-free toothpaste and other oral care products if that makes sense for you and your family, and talk with a dentist who can help you prevent decay while considering your health as a whole.

Holistic Dentistry of Port Washington is located at 222 N. Franklin St., Port Washington. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call 262-235-4525, email [email protected] or visit HolisticDentistryWI.com.