Now that the Petal Board of Aldermen has been supplied with a list of potential fluoride vendors, city officials are going through the process of contacting those companies for pricing and availability to determine the feasibility of continuing to add that product to the city’s water supply.
That list, which includes nine vendors, was shared at the April 4 board meeting by Petal dentist Dr. Barbara Mauldin, who had previously heard from board members regarding a purported shortage of fluoride, along with a possible steep price increase. Mauldin, a proponent of fluoride, has extolled its many virtues, which is used to help strengthen teeth and prevent tooth decay.
“One of these guys is down in Theodore, Alabama, so that’s not too far to drive,” Mauldin told the board. “I’ve got access to trucks and stuff like that, so we can definitely (make it happen).
“(Also), there’s some pilot programs around the state, where it’s not the granulated form, but it’s just a tablet that is added. It’s kind of a new system that is being tried in some of the fluoridated systems, and I understand it’s easier, more cost-efficient and all the rest of that. I have no idea, because a pilot doesn’t mean it’s out there ready to use or for us to access yet, but I will be glad to let you know.”
The list of potential fluoride vendors is as follows:
- CITCO Water of Bowling Green, Kentucky;
- Hawkins, Inc of Theodore, Alabama;
- Ideal Chemical & Supply Co. of Jackson;
- Industrial Chemicals, Inc. of Vestavia Hills, Alabama;
- Brenntag, with locations in Louisiana and Texas;
- Coast Chlorinator and Pump Co. of Biloxi;
- Dixie Wholesale Waterworks of Louisville; and
- Harcros Chemiclas of Vicksburg.
“We’ve made a few phone calls, and there’s a few catches with some of that,” Mayor Tony Ducker said. “Obviously, if we do decide (to continue providing fluoride), we need it to be available over the long run. A few phone calls that we’ve made, they have some in their warehouses, but once that’s down they don’t know when they’ll get it back.
“So that would be a problem – we don’t want to get in a situation where we have it one month and then don’t have it the next month. So it’s something that’s nice to have, but it’s something that needs to make sense economically.”
Last August, Ducker said the city’s Public Works Department had been paying approximately $96 per bag of fluoride. However, he had heard some rumors that price may go up to $200 or $300 a bag.
“Obviously, that’s just speculation, but there’s a lot of things that have gone way, way up, so it could very well happen,” he said.
Samantha McCain, who serves as chief communications officer for the City of Hattiesburg, said that city gets its fluoride from Industrial Chemical and Supply. To the best of her knowledge, said there has never been a problem procuring that item, and prices are currently normal.
Mauldin said fluoride should never be discontinued, as it beneficially affects every individual, starting as a fetus, then on to the baby, child and adult phases.
“If you take a man, and he was born and raised in a fluoride community, and he leaves that fluoridated water and moves to a non-fluoridated community, by the time he turns (15 to 20 years old), he will begin to show decay,” said Mauldin, who has practiced dentistry in Petal since 1984. “He never had a cavity in his life as a child, or as a growing-up adult, but now he does. Why is that? Because fluoride must be resupplied; osmosis takes it out of the teeth.
“You hear on TV about enamel; well, we can’t put enamel back in your teeth, but we can put fluoride back in your teeth. Calgary, Canada, took fluoride out of the water, and they saw, within one year, a 51-percent increase in decay in children below the age of 6.”
Fluoride in water, along with its inclusion in products like certain toothpastes, has long been used to facilitate dental health. Approximately one-third of city residents don’t receive fluoride in their drinking water, including customers of Barrontown Utility Association.
“People come to me from Barrontown, and I can tell who’s not on Petal water,” Mauldin said. “You know how I know? They’ve got cavities; they don’t have the same density of teeth.
“Please don’t (discontinue) this. If you’re going to do anything for this community that affects every single one of us, (putting fluoride in the water) is that.”
From October 2021 to August 2022, the City of Petal used 65 bags of fluoride; the previous year it used 112 bags. As of Mauldin’s first visit to the board, the city had not been able to obtain fluoride for approximately two months.
To the best of Ducker’s knowledge, the city began adding fluoride to the water in 2011, or thereabouts.
According to the American Public Health Association, water fluoridation has played a major role in lowering the rate of tooth decay in the United States.
Studies show fluoridated water prevents at least 25 percent of tooth decay in children and adults, along with the use of other fluoride products. In addition, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the fluoridation of water to be “one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.”
“I’m not (a doctor) … but I know that it’s had a huge effect on the advancement of humans as a race,” Ward 1 Alderman Gerald Steele said. “It’s not just teeth; there’s other parts of the body that it’s very helpful for.”
Fluoridation does have its opponents, however. The website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov – lists several pros for the measure, but a few alleged cons as well.
Those include the fact that excessive fluoride intake may cause dental fluorosis; water may possibly be contaminated with toxic chemicals while being fluoridated; the effectiveness of fluoridation was not validated by any randomized controlled trial; and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had previously classified fluoride as an “unapproved new drug.”
If the city’s fluoridization were to be discontinued, the board would have to notify the Mississippi Department of Health, as well as the residents of the City of Petal.
