ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1950s, public health and dental professionals attempted to begin fluoridation in communities across America, most often through lobbying of local governments and the water boards that managed community water supplies, but occasionally through referenda in communities that required public approval for the decision. They believed fluoridation to be a scientifically and medically sound public health measure that would improve people’s lives by eliminating expensive, painful, and disfiguring dental cavities. When anti-fluoridationists began their campaign of opposition, pro-fluoridationists were completely surprised. Indeed, the ability of anti-fluoridationists to convince local governments, water boards, and the voting public to reject such a promising health measure blindsided the pro-fluoridationists. At first profluoridationists comforted themselves with the hope that “the ridiculous charges would eventually prove self-defeating, that the public would soon awaken, and that the fluoridation issue would be settled, quietly and sanely, in the best traditions of… American democracy.”2 But this did not happen: opposition to fluoridation did not die down. Some communities that had previously embraced fluoridation rejected it; other communities faced annual challenges. Many more communities never enacted fluoridation, because after ugly public campaigns led by antifluoridationists, voters or elected officials rejected the measure.
