[noefingway]

What I find fascinating about this debate is that only municipalities/cities add fluoride to water. If you are on well water, no fluoride. So any studies comparing the incidence of tooth decay between populations that are on well water and those that are on fluoridated city water?

I get that this was a great public health benefit before fluoride in toothpaste became widely available but is this still the case? Couldn't it be argued that most of the benefit comes from brushing your teeth?

[cma]

Flouride incorporates into the tooth structure in developing teeth before they emerge, I'm not sure how effective that is but it is different than the more topical protection.

Tea has enormous amounts of flouride depending on where it is grown and they aren't banning that yet.

[iterance]

For what it's worth, very few locations and processing styles result in significant doses of fluoride in tea. Within the United States, these types of tea are not typically consumed. For example, Tibetan brick tea is consistently high in fluoride, to the extent that fluorosis is actually somewhat common in certain regions. But it's a bit tricky to even buy a brick (meant for consumption) within the US. Bagged tea, more commonly available, has to be drunk regularly in very significant volumes to have a deleterious effect.

Put another way, for issues to rise to the level of public policy, they have to affect a meaningful number of people in a region. In the US, tea-induced fluorisis is extremely rare.