Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Water fluoridation is considered one of the 20th century's greatest public health achievements.

Yet for as long as there has been fluoride in the water, some have raised concerns about its safety.

In this episode, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Charlotte Lewis, a pediatrician and an expert on infant and child nutrition and oral health at the University of Washington,

about the history of water fluoridation,

its enormous benefits for preventing tooth decay, and the recent wave of interest in whether

fluoridation policies should change. Let's listen. Charlotte Lewis, thanks so much for joining me.

Today, our topic is fluoride, and this is something you have studied for a long time.

And I'm wondering if you could start by explaining to us really basic.

Why is there fluoride in the water?

And how many people have fluoridated water and what are the benefits?

Yeah. Those are some really good questions.

In order to really answer that question, we have to take sort of a historical perspective when we have to go back maybe 100 or so years. And at that time, dental care is, which may be referred to as

dental decay and cavities, were very prevalent,

and they impacted pretty much the entire population. And because of that, there was a lot of

tooth loss that happened in kids. There was toothaches. There were happening related to

very extensive dental decay. That was pretty much a universal thing.

The problems with dental decay continued into adulthood and they left many, many Americans with

...