Some Republican lawmakers are unsettled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s calls for states to stop adding fluoride to drinking water — including most of the dentists in Congress, who spoke directly to the additive improving dental health.
Kennedy, who has previously called fluoride a “dangerous neurotoxin,” said he’s planning to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending the practice. He is also getting the Trump administration involved at the state level on the matter. After Utah passed a bill in late March banning water fluoridation, Kennedy visited and participated in news conferences, praising state officials as leaders in his Make America Healthy Again movement.
It’s left some Republicans in the unusual position of pushing back against the Trump administration given the decades of evidence that fluoride improves pediatric dental health outcomes.