When Brad Bryan, the chief dental officer at the Mississippi State Department of Health, stood before the Ridgeland, Mississippi, Board of Aldermen on June 16, he had one message: “We really fiercely believe that fluoride is something that helps, especially our children.”
The Board voted then unanimously to move to consider the next stage of the state’s fluoridation discontinuation policy.
But nearly two months later, on Tuesday, Aug. 4, the board reversed course, with a 4-3 majority voting against ending fluoridation and instead to resume fluoridating its water following a presentation from the Mississippi Department of Health.
Ridgeland has not added fluoride to its drinking water for more than three years, mostly because of COVID-19 pandemic-era disruptions to the global supply chain.
“By virtue of not approving the vote to discontinue, we will begin the process of purchasing and contracting materials and equipment necessary to restart the service as quickly as possible,” Ridgeland Mayor Gene McGee told the Mississippi Free Press in an email on Aug. 10.
A page on the Mississippi Department of Health’s website dedicated to fluoridation explains that it “has been proven to protect teeth from decay. It helps rebuild and strengthen the tooth surface (enamel) by replenishing minerals. It strengthens teeth that are still developing in young children, and helps prevent adult tooth decay as gums recede with age.”
Speaking at Ridgeland’s Board of Aldermen meeting on June 16, Bureau of Public Water Supply Deputy Director Karen Walters explained that only around 200 of Mississippi’s 1,200 water systems fluoridate their drinking water.
But, she said, “the state health department is certainly a proponent of y’all participating in the community water fluoridation program.”
Ridgeland Mayor Gene McGee told the Mississippi Free Press in June that, after not fluoridating since the pandemic, much of the city’s equipment was degraded. “We ought to consider, before we spend a quarter of a million dollars redoing it, if it’s really necessary,” he said on June 16.
Ridgeland approved an initial $160,000 for getting the city’s fluoridation equipment back up and running in accordance with the Aug. 4 vote to bring it back, McGee told the Mississippi Free Press. McGee expects the repair process to take about four months, with Board of Aldermen approvals along the way, he told the Mississippi Free Press.
“We are currently investigating the condition of the equipment,” McGee told the Mississippi Free Press in an email. “We anticipate a complete replacement of all saturators, mixers, feed tubes, and entry points, which will essentially result in a complete replacement of the Fluoride delivery system. We will verify equipment needs in the coming days to be certain.”
While plans for repairs are underway, some city officials had hoped Ridgeland’s fluoridation equipment would stay shut down amidst a growing anti-fluoridation movement heavily rooted in unscientific claims.
Misinformation About Fluoride Spurred Opposition
The three aldermen who voted against fluoridation on Aug. 4 included Aldermen Chuck Gautier, Wesley Hamlin and D.I. Smith.
Hamlin previously told the Mississippi Free Press on June 16 that he began researching fluoride last year, after both Utah and Florida banned it from their drinking water. He said in a June 16 interview that he was concerned about the possible side effects of fluoride overexposure, and that he was left unsatisfied with MSDH’s presentation.
Gautier told the Mississippi Free Press that he was worried about the effects of fluoride. “I’m not a doctor, and I don’t think I’m qualified to medicate our residents,” he said on June 16.
Alderman D.I. Smith also said that he was skeptical of adding fluoride back to the water.
“There are certain things that government got no business in,” he told the Mississippi Free Press. Reacting to the presentation from the state health officials, he said that “it offends me that someone who is not a certified pharmacist is prescribing medication that I need to be taking without my consent.”
“We don’t know what’s causing things like rising medical conditions in children and adults,” Gautier told the Mississippi Free Press after the June 16 meeting. “But we know there’s something different than back in the ‘50s, where people didn’t have alarming rates of people being on the spectrum all of a sudden, and kids just—having to medicate them for other things.”
Major public health organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization, as well as multiple studies, have found no demonstrated causal link between fluoride exposure and autism. What has changed since community fluoridation began in the mid-20th century, though, is that childhood cavity rates decreased by 40% to 70% by 1999, the CDC found.
Hamlin pulled up a picture of large sodium fluoride bags on his phone. “They all say ‘toxin,’ with the skull and bones. So for me, I’m like, ‘We’re dumping this in our water system?’ There’s not enough research for me to feel comfortable to allow our city employees to do that,” he said.
Studies have repeatedly found that fluoride is safe and effective when used at recommended levels.
Smith, a veteran of 30 years, told the state health officials in June that he was “very concerned that y’all here are recommending that we put fluoride that comes to China into our drinking water.” It is “absolutely a major security risk,” he added in an interview.
There is no published government figure that describes what portion of U.S. sodium fluoride imports come from China. Responding to that worry at the meeting, Bureau of Public Water Supply Deputy Director Karen Walters said that all fluoride added to the water must undergo American National Standards Institute and NSF testing.
Hamlin and Smith both pressed Walters on fluoride overexposure during her presentation. “It’s when you have it at the right dose,” she said.
Political Climate Animated Anti-Fluoride Movement
Elizabeth Carr, chair of dental hygiene at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, told the Mississippi Free Press in an interview on June 18 that “it’s universally seen that the amount of fluoride that we get in the States is nowhere near what would cause any type of neurotoxicity.”
The CDC reports that around 63% of Americans receive fluoridated water, and the agency ranks fluoridation among the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. Grand Rapids, Michigan, added fluoride to its water some eight decades ago—the first American city to do so—and in ten years saw rates of tooth decay among children fall by 60%. Since 1962, the U.S. Public Health Service has recommended community water fluoridation to stem tooth decay.
But the practice has come under fresh scrutiny thanks in large part to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promoted anti-scientific conspiracy theories and misinformation about fluoride.
Ridgeland is not the only Mississippi community that has recently weighed discontinuing fluoride.
The City of Diamondhead and the Sunrise Utility Association in Forrest County stopped adding fluoride to their water systems last year; the North Lamar Water Association and Lucedale each made the same decision earlier this year, Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps backed an ultimately unsuccessful effort to mandate that the State Board of Health not require public water systems to fluoridate their supplies, mostly on the basis of fluoridation’s cost to local residents.
Today’s fluoride debate began about a decade ago, Carr said, and “the recent political climate gave it credibility.” In the past two years, she added, the conversation “reached a fever pitch” and “it became politically acceptable for them to say, ‘We don’t want to do this.’”
Opponents of fluoridation often point to a 2024 government meta-analysis, which found that high levels of fluoride exposure are associated with lower IQ scores in children. That study did not determine, however, that the fluoride concentration recommended by the U.S. Public Health Service—0.7 milligrams per liter—has any negative effects on IQ.
Carr said that watching water systems across Mississippi move to stop fluoridation “has been very sad.” Cavity rates, she added, “are gonna jump.”
In 2024, just under two-thirds of Mississippi adults reported visiting a dentist or dental clinic in the prior year.
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