By Maureen Jones Archivist Citizens for Safe Drinking Water San Jose
(Re: “Not all smiles for fluoride treatment,” page 3, Jan. 19) Poor children with dental decay need access to a dentist. It is widely written that dentists avoid state-insured children because of very low government reimbursement rates — $.30 to $.35 cents/dollar. The obvious solution is what fluoridated New York City and other fluoridated cities have been doing for years — sending mobile dental vans to the locales of need.
The 1993 Journal of Public Health Dentistry said, “50 percent of U.S. Head Start children have had baby bottle tooth decay.” Published dental literature repeatedly confirms that fluoridated water does not reduce this rampant decay of poor children wrought by sleep-time use of baby bottles and sippy cups. Sugary fluids remain on the backside of upper teeth and destroy the enamel. Fluoridated since 1954, a Denver dentist reports 300 cases of bottle/sippy cup decay a year. Another Denver pediatric dentist stated, “The sippy cup is the worst invention in history.”
The obvious solution is education, education, education.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 25, 2007. Read the original PDF.