Trying to add a payment method? You can do this on the 
QuickTake:
As states move to ban fluoride amid national debate over its health effects, cities like Eugene and Springfield had those conversations decades ago. Local voters repeatedly rejected fluoridation, and it hasn’t been seriously reconsidered since.
At his dental clinic, Dr. Matthew Speedy Bahen can often tell whether patients grew up in Oregon just by looking at their teeth.
That’s because most water systems in the state don’t contain fluoride — a mineral that helps strengthen enamel and prevent cavities.
Oregon has the third-lowest fluoridation rate in the nation, and the result, according to Oregon Health Authority reports, is a public health issue: dental decay.
Bahen, who serves on the board of the Coastal Cascades Dentist Society, said fluoridation is a controversial subject that generates more conversation than other fortified food and drink like iodine in salt or vitamin D in milk.
Fluoride’s exclusion from local drinking water is largely out of sight and out of mind.
“It’s not something that we see until the kid opens their mouth,” Bahen said.
A renewed national debate over fluoride has surfaced after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. questioned its safety, pointing to IQ loss. A report from the National Toxicology Program, however, found insufficient data to determine whether fluoride at the recommended level in drinking water has any effect on intelligence.
Meanwhile, some states, including Utah and Florida, have recently banned its use in public water systems.
Such conversations took place in Eugene long ago in the mid-20th century, following Portland’s lead.
Neither the Oregon Health Authority nor the Environmental Protection Agency requires fluoride in public water systems, leaving the decision up to local communities. In Eugene, that decision fell to voters.
In 1953, the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) asked customers to weigh in by postcard ballot, and a narrow majority rejected fluoride. The issue returned to the ballot nearly a decade later, and this time, voters approved it. But a special election the following year reversed that decision and imposed a ban. The same cycle repeated in 1976 and 1977. There hasn’t been a serious effort to revisit fluoridation since.
“Because OHA does not require it, and it has not had lasting success on the ballot, EWEB has never fluoridated the community’s drinking water,” said EWEB spokesperson Aaron Orlowski. “We are committed to following regulations and the will of the community.”
Springfield also does not fluoridate its water.
Those who want fluoride locally can access it through toothpaste or receive sealants from a dentist. But not everyone has access to those options, creating what some see as a public health inequity.
Bahen said the debates over fluoride likely came from good intentions, but it doesn’t account for the needs of the broader population.
“It’s done out of a place of love and concern that parents have when they’re making decisions that affect their children,” said Bahen, but he added, “We are making decisions for a vulnerable population that can’t make decisions for themselves.”
