Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave way to a tour through the South States -Western on Monday inviting States to ban fluorine in supply of drinking water, a move that would have reversed what some medical experts consider one of the most important public health practices in the history of the country.
The announcement came to a press conference in Utah, the first state to issue such a ban on law. The new law of the State will enter into force at the beginning of May, despite the concerns of public health experts who consider the fluorration of the water nucleus to prevent teeth decay.
“It does not make sense to have it in our water supply,” said Kennedy, echoing a position he took during the 2024 presidential campaign. “I am very, very proud of this state to be the first state to ban it, and I hope many others will come.”
The centers for the control and prevention of diseases, which Kennedy supervises the secretary to health, listed the fluorration as one of the 10 great results of public health of the 20th century. After the press conference, Stefanie Spear, deputy head of the staff of Mr. Kennedy said that Kennedy would direct the Task Force for the prevention services of the CDC community to study fluoride and make a new recommendation.
Kennedy appeared at the press conference together with the administrator of the environmental protection agency, Lee Zeldin, who announced that the EPA would have reviewed the research on potential risks for the health of fluorine in water.
The current standard “was recently revised in July 2024, but it has happened a lot since July 2024,” said Zeldin. The revision of security data “would not have happened, if it were not for secretary Kennedy,” he added.
The debate on fluoridation dates back to the 1950s, when the theories of conspiracy turbine if the practice were a communist plot to cause brain damage. Some studies suggest that the excess of fluoride exposure – at levels twice the amount recommended by the federal government – could damage children.
The American Dental Association said that the water fluoruration reduces the dental decay of at least 25 percent in children and adults.
The Tour of Make America Healthy, who will bring Mr. Kennedy through parts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, had the purpose of attracting attention to some of the secretary’s common interests, the initiatives put light that emphasize nutrition and lifestyle choices as tools to combat diseases. At the press conference, Kennedy also praised the recent Utah legislation to ban ultra foods elaborated in school meals and to prevent people from using federal food assistance benefits for the purchase of candies and soda. At the end of last month he announced that the Trump administration would have started to allow states to prevent participants in the additional nutritional assistance program, or Snap, from the use of money to pay the soda.
The first stage of Mr. Kennedy on the tour was the Osher Center for Integrative Health at the UTAH University, which is proud to adopt an “all -person” approach to the care of patients, including an emphasis on sleep, physical exercise and even on the connection of the community.
The Osher Center, put in the background of the Wasatch Mountains, is equipped with a “food pharmacy” for patients with chronic diseases and a “kitchen for teaching” to form medicine students on nutrition.
With the police officers of the Campus stationed around the perimeter, Kennedy has risen aboard the Business Bus, a 40 -foot vehicle that offers community health projections for blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol. He also climbed the back of the mobile food pharmacy, where patients with chronic health conditions bring prescriptions for ingredients such as full rice, courgettes, almond milk and canned pears.
Kennedy visited the center trial cuisine – a modern space with large windows and indoor shrubs – where medical students and dieticians led him through a healthy snack preparation.
Among the events of Mr. Kennedy on the campus, about two dozen demonstrators appeared along the road up to the center, singing and waiting posters with messages such as “Child killer” and, in a nod at the end of the Trump Administration of numerous medical research grants, “Research saves life”.
Kennedy has faced harsh criticisms for his management of the federal government response to a morbillo outbreak in western Texas, which infected almost 500 people and spread in other states.
On Sunday, Mr. Kennedy participated in the funeral of an 8-year-old girl who was not vaccinated-second confirmed mortality from measles in a decade in the United States-and met her family before continuing to Utah.
During his first months in office, the policies of Mr. Kennedy were explained with the great Brouhaha, but the secretary himself has maintained a relatively low profile, in particular for an official with his degree of fame. The White House encouraged Mr. Kennedy to adopt an approach more aimed at the public to his role, but the times of his first big push in the country will require to touch a careful line around the most evident question on the table: the vaccines.
Public health experts say that the epidemic is guided by low vaccination rates. Kennedy, who is notoriously skeptical on vaccine safety, has moved his rhetoric after the girl’s funeral, publishing on X: “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine”.
It was the most definitive statement that the vaccines that support as a preventive tool made, but some public health experts were dismayed that did not explicitly recommend that parents vaccinate their children and did not say that the vaccines were safe. And several hours later he published again on X, praising two doctors who use not proven treatments to take care of hundreds of children with measles.
For months, Kennedy stressed that vaccination is a question of choice of parents and has encouraged people to consider unproven regimes such as vitamin A, which can lead to toxicity, and suggested that bad lifestyle choices were at stake among the victims.
Diet and nutrition “do not offer any advantage to prevent morbillo infection,” said dr. Michael Mina, epidemiologist and immunologist who studied measles.
Healthy foods and exercise can “help limit the consequences of many infections, including measles, but they will not prevent them”, he added. “Prevention is by far the best medicine.”