Credit: Shaitaka, Clker-Free-Vector-Images, and stux from Pixabay.

Once upon a time, in a land called America, there was an aluminum giant. Its name was ALCOA. Unfortunately, ALCOA had a really bad habit. Instead of doing its business in a clean manner, the giant preferred to throw lots and lots of its waste around. After a while, it got so bad that a lot of the children living nearby had stained teeth. Needless to say, ALCOA's neighbors were not happy.

Now, wouldn't it be great for ALCOA if its waste no longer caused everyone to get angry at it? Wouldn't it be even greater for ALCOA if everyone also paid it for its waste? For that to happen, they would obviously need to believe that it's worth paying for.

As luck would have it, a few years later, ALCOA's chief chemist made a discovery. This discovery eventually led to the Public Health Service concluding that sodium fluoride, waste from ALCOA, is good for people's teeth in small amounts.

Funnily enough, Andrew W. Mellon, who helped create ALCOA, happened to be in charge of the Public Health Service when it decided to research fluoride's effect on teeth. He ran the Treasury Department until 1932, of which the agency was still a part back then.

In 1947, Oscar Ewing, whose law firm had been counsel to ALCOA for years, was appointed as Federal Security Administrator. He therefore was now in charge of the Public Health Service.

In 1950, the agency then endorsed the fluoridation of community water supplies. It did so even though, a few years earlier, the editor of the American Dental Association's journal, L. Pierce Anthony, reminded everyone that "sodium fluoride is a highly toxic substance." He concluded that the potential benefits of decreasing dental decay in children are smaller than the risk of creating "serious systemic disturbances."

Update

If an academic paper I refer to has been put behind a paywall, it may still be available for free on Sci-Hub (whose domain name may change someday). Also, all links in this article are archived on archive.org and/or archive.today.

Fun Fluoride Facts

1. The estimated lethal dose of sodium fluoride for an adult weighing 70 kg (≈154 lb) is just 5-10 g (≈0.18-0.35 oz).

"Most disturbing, however, is the fact that even bubble-gum and fruit-flavored toothpastes for children contain sufficient amounts of fluoride to kill a child." - Michael Connett

2. Most developed countries don't add any fluoride to their drinking water.

3. Over time, the exposure to around 0.7 mg (≈0.000025 oz) of fluoride per liter of fluoridated tap water can cause quite a few health problems. Not to mention, the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended maximum safe level is actually 4 mg (≈0.00014 oz) per liter.

4. The majority of the fluoride added to water supplies today is not sodium fluoride, but fluorosilicic acid. It's captured in air pollution control devices of the phosphate fertilizer industry, and it "may impose additional risks."