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Dentist seeks fluoride in water

Dentist seeks fluoride in water Dentist seeks fluoride in water

Village of Stratford officials have ignored advice for decades

A Stratford dentist says he has tried for the past 20 years to convince the village of Stratford to add fluoride to its water supply to help residents prevent tooth decay, but village officials won’t do it. They have always told him it’s too expensive.

Dr. Dennis Godar, the dentist who works in the Marshfield Dental Clinic’s office in Stratford, recently mailed a pro-fluoride article from a dental technology journal to Scott Dennee, director of public works at the Stratford Water & Electric department, hoping to get the village to change its mind.

Dennee passed along Godar’s article and request to the Stratford Village Board at a Feb. 9 meeting, but the village policy remains unchanged. Dennee said the village isn’t making any changes at this time.

Godar said his Stratford patients have more cavities compared to those he sees from Marshfield. He said his Marshfield patients have fewer cavities because the city of Marshfield adds fluoride to the water.

“I do more restorative dentistry in Stratford,” he said.

The Wisconsin Dental Association community fluoridation fact sheet states tooth decay remains a significant public health problem in Wisconsin, with an estimated 55 percent of third graders having had cavities.

The organization strongly supports appropriate fluoridation of public drinking water.

“For over 70 years, community water fluoridation has proven to be a safe, effective and economical way to prevent tooth decay,” the association states at its webpage. “The Wisconsin Dental Association and its more than 3,000 member dentist and dental hygienists are committed to promoting quality oral health care and support community water fluoridation.”

The villages of Athens, Edgar and Marathon currently add fluoride to their municipal water to ensure their residents receive the optimal amount of .7 parts per million of fluoride.

The 2019 Consumer Confidence Report states the village of Stratford’s natural amount of fluoride in its water supply was at .2 parts per million in 2017. Dale Grosskurth, Marathon County environmental health and safety director, said only the villages of Stratford, Hatley and Mosinee in Marathon County currently don’t add fluoride to their residential water.

Jerry Frodl, who retired a few years ago as village of Stratford director of public works, said the village never added fluoride to its water in the 28 years he worked for the village water department. Frodl said every two years a mother with young children would ask him if the village could begin adding fluoride to the water, but there was never an overwhelming amount of interest from residents to make the change.

“There are many other ways people can get fluoride like from fluoride supplements and mouth washes, he said.

Frodl said it would probably be a good idea for a municipality like Stratford to have a referendum question during an election to ask residents whether or not they’d want fluoride added to their water, instead of just making them take it.

Chris Groh, executive director of the Wisconsin Rural Water Association in Plover, said there is no state law requiring municipalities to add fluoride to their water. He said it can be expensive and time consuming for municipalities to add fluoride to the water, because an employee would need to monitor the fluoride level each day to make sure residents aren’t receiving too much fluoride which could be harmful and stain people’s teeth.

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