Florida Surgeon General Ramps Up Anti-Fluoride Crusade in Miami

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is bringing his anti-fluoride efforts to South Florida as part of his statewide effort to convince local officials to stop adding fluoride to their community water supplies.

Last month, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez announced that he'd invited fellow anti-fluoride believer Ladapo to speak to the commission about the safety of water fluoridation. Gonzalez had previously promoted Ladapo's claims that the naturally occurring mineral negatively affects children's neurological health and IQ levels.

"Protecting public health must come first!" Gonzalez added in his post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

On Tuesday morning, Ladapo will present to the Miami-Dade Safety and Health Committee alongside fellow anti-fluoride medical professionals University of Florida professor Dr. Ashley Malin, dentist Dr. Claire Stagg of Indian Harbour Beach, and Coral Springs-based dentist Dr. Maya Assi. (Stagg shared at least one post on Facebook in the past year with conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene.) Ladapo is also set to attend a public meeting regarding fluoridation in North Miami Beach, which has its own water treatment plant, on Tuesday evening.

In the wake of Ladapo's assertion that fluoridation amounts to "public health malpractice" and a so-called community guidance issued by the Florida Department of Health recommending that local governments put a stop to the practice, a number of municipalities across the state have taken up the issue and voted to halt community fluoridation.

This comes despite the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizing water fluoridation as one of the top public health achievements of the 20th Century, not to mention decades' worth of research confirming that adding 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water is safe.

"Community water fluoridation is a cornerstone strategy for prevention of cavities in the U.S.," the CDC asserts on a web page last updated in May 2024. "It is a practical, cost-effective, and equitable way for communities to improve their residents' oral health regardless of age, education, or income."

Dentists now fear that ending community water fluoridation will have widespread ramifications for Floridians.

And as the state's sugeon general pushes claims that fluoride in drinking water is reducing IQ and causing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, public health experts appear hesitant to speak about the issue. The communications departments at both Florida International University's Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work and the University of Florida's College of Dentistry declined to connect New Times with faculty members to provide comment on fluoride's impact on public health.

Dr. Johnny Johnson, a retired pediatric dentist and president of the American Fluoridation Society, tells New Times it's because they are afraid of consequences, including termination, describing academicians at Florida's public universities as "muzzled."

"They're using misinformation to take away one of the ten greatest healthcare benefits of the last century," Dr. Richard Mufson, a North Miami oral and maxillofacial surgeon, tells New Times. "They're taking away something that's benefiting children and adults — and automatically, when you take it away, it results in a higher rate of dental cavities. It's been proven over and over again."

Thank you, Mayor Pfeiffer & Bartow city commissioners, for bringing the community & scientific experts together to discuss ending water fluoridation.

Loved the passionate comments from moms who want to protect their babies & Floridians who insist on medical freedom. pic.twitter.com/7uezFFm0Gf

— Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD (@FLSurgeonGen) February 19, 2025

Fluoridation dates back to the early 20th Century in Colorado Springs, where clusters of residents who exhibited brown-stained teeth were found to have less severe tooth decay. Researchers discovered that the community water contained naturally high levels of fluoride. Decades later, in 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city in the world to intentionally add fluoride to its public water supply; tooth decay among children born after the practice was initiated dropped more than 60 percent.

Time after time, when communities have ceased water fluoridation, cavity rates have skyrocketed and residents' oral health has suffered. In Windsor, Canada, where the city council voted to end the practice in 2013, the percentage of children with tooth decay or requiring urgent care increased by 51 percent between 2011 and 2016.

"When you stop fluoridation, you will begin to get more cavities, larger cavities," Johnson says. "You will end up getting more root canals, crowns, and, potentially, extractions. One cavity in a permanent tooth over a person's lifetime costs over $6,000."

Johnson notes that water fluoridation reaches everyone with a well-calibrated amount of fluoride — a consideration that is especially crucial in low-income communities. "it is a huge public health benefit to everyone," no matter their socioeconomic status or age, the dentist hastens to add.

Despite the improvements in oral health, the anti-fluoride movement has gained traction in recent years thanks to controversial studies linking higher levels of fluoride in water to lower IQ levels in children. Most recently, a January report in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics that analyzed dozens of previous studies "found significant inverse associations between fluoride exposure and children's IQ scores."

Those studies, however, were conducted in areas of the world with much higher levels of fluoride than the U.S. Moreover, the report authors concluded, 52 of the 74 studies had a "high risk of bias."

"[These studies] involve much higher levels," Mufson emphasizes. "They don't tell you that when they spout out these things — you know: 'It causes autism. It causes IQ, neurologic deficits,' No, Dr. Ladapo, no, it doesn't. Show me your data. Show me your studies. That's the way it is. That's what we're battling: misinformation in our world. It's really hard."

Johnson notes that the studies focused on harm and made no mention of the dental benefits.

"There's not a single credibly recognized scientific or health organization in the world that opposes fluoridation," he says flatly, singling out the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics in particular.

Meanwhile, Forida Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly backed his surgeon general, touting patients' rights and deeming fluoride a "forced medication" and claiming anyone who wants it can get it by brushing their teeth.

Johnson counters that fluoridated toothpaste isn't enough because it only works on the tooth's surface.

"Fluoridated water helps those who are the least able to get dental care — the most impoverished families," he tells New Times. "They get twice as many cavities — and you're taking the only preventive measure away from them that they may ever get. They may never see a dentist."

Meanwhile, a "Florida Farm Bill" sponsored by Sen. Keith Truenow of Tavares and backed by Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, would ban municipal water fluoridation statewide.

Mufson says that if fluoridation disappears, lower-income families with less access to dental care will suffer the most.

"Kids will have more cavities," he says. "More of them will end up in hospitals with facial swelling and infection. Some people have died in hospitals as a result, and that's not overstating it. My specialty is oral surgery, and I've taken emergency calls in hospitals for over 25 years, so I've seen directly what a cavity can result in, and in terms of hospital admissions, sepsis, even death."