In the 1940's, America was sold fluoridation with the false equivalency that pollutants (hydrofluorosilicic acid or sodium fluoride), when added to public water supplies, acts similarly as naturally fluoridated water to safely reduce tooth decay - but without such evidence, reports Frank Zelko, PhD, Associate Professor, Environmental History, University of Hawaii, in History of Science (December 2019). This article garnered the Alice Hamilton Prize for best article by the American Society for Environmental History, reports the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation (NYSCOF)

Fluoridation "owes more to politics and historical contingency than to the triumph of rational science and enlightened policy," Zelko writes.

Fluoridation chemicals are the fertilizer industry's contaminated waste. Zelko explains the process. To make fertilizer, crushed phosphate rock is boiled with sulfuric acid releasing highly toxic hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride gases into the atmosphere which damaged nearby crops and killed farm animals. So, pollution scrubbers were installed to convert toxic vapors to fluorosilicic acid (FSA), a dangerous but more containable liquid waste.

FSA interacts negatively with metals, producing a flammable hydrogen gas. It eats through glass and concrete. Special polyethylene or rubber-lined tanks transport FSA as hazardous chemicals to be drip fed into public water supplies.

"This is a practice that the American Dental Association and numerous scientists and public health officials describe as 'the precise adjustment of the existing naturally occurring fluoride levels in drinking water to an optimal fluoride level…for the prevention of dental decay,'" writes Zelko.

In 1947, well-meaning but misguided dentists so strongly believed that natural and artificial fluoride were chemically the same (even while purchasing an aluminum company's waste sodium fluoride) that they successfully convinced 50 communities to artificially fluoridate – without any safety or efficacy studies conducted or concluded.

The US Public Health Service caved to pressure and endorsed fluoridation in 1950 - followed by the American Dental Association, the American Medical Association and a host of other high-profile government and professional bodies, reports Zelko

"The same toxicologists who signed off on water fluoridation used identical logic in defending the addition of lead to gasoline. Zelko said it was part of the pre-environmental scientific hubris expressed in the slogan 'better living through chemistry," reports University of Hawaii News.