Community water fluoridation, hailed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the 20th century’s greatest public health interventions, has significantly reduced cavities and improved dental health in the U.S. since its inception in 1945.
This practice stemmed from observations in Colorado Springs in the early 1900s, where residents with brown-stained teeth, later linked to high fluoride levels, also had lower rates of tooth decay. Over the next several decades, research led by public health researchers confirmed that while excess fluoride caused cosmetic discoloration, lower fluoride concentrations prevented cavities without harmful side effects.
Early Fluoridation Trials
At the National Institutes of Health in the 1930s, Dr. H. Trendley Dean was investigating the epidemiology of dental fluorosis (generally white spots), a relatively new “condition” discovered in the early 1900s, but not understood reasonably well until the 1920s, according to Dr. Bruce A. Dye, Oral Health Equity chair of the Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation and professor of Dental Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
“Dean’s research was becoming focused on determining what levels of fluoride could be in drinking water before fluorosis would occur,” Dye says. “By the time World War II began, he determined that fluoride levels up to about 1.0 ppm in drinking water would not cause dental fluorosis in most people.”
In 1942, Dean’s 21 Cities…
