Image courtesy The Valentine
Richmonders won’t notice it, but there will be something different about the water they drink today,” began a Nov. 10, 1952, Richmond Times-Dispatch article. “This is the date set for the city’s water fluoridation machine to go into operation.”
The “first of the Nile blue powder — [sodium silicofluoride] — began sifting into the water at the filter plant at 9:30 a.m.,” recorded the Richmond News Leader.
Western Henrico County residents also received the anti-cavity chemical while Chesterfield County temporarily held off.
The decision followed years of often vehement debate concerning the nationwide introduction of fluoride into public water systems as a means of preventing tooth decay, especially among children. City health officials, the Times-Dispatch reported the next day, “were agreeably surprised yesterday by the lack of incoming calls about the program.”
Assistant health director Paul W. Bowden cited a boy who called in to ask if the “stuff” in the water would make him cleaner and reduce the need for as many baths. An older person wondered if the fluoridated water might harm his goldfish.
In a February 2025 Richmond magazine piece, writer Tharon Giddens explained how the mineral fluoride combines with outer enamel layers on teeth, which makes teeth less susceptible to decay. “Fluoride is present in most water. Many public water supplies add fluoride to ensure recommended therapeutic levels. The presence of fluoride at optimal levels reduces the occurrence of cavities by 25% in adults and children,” reads the article, which also quotes Mayor Danny Avula, who says the addition of fluoride is a local decision, not a state or federal one.
Following some small experiments going back to the 1900s, fluoridation picked up in the 1930s, and by 1941 dental surveys concluded that towns with fluoridation appeared to possess a direct correlation to a decline in tooth decay among youngsters. Following similar tests, in 1945 Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city in the U.S. to fluoridate its drinking water.
The argument forwarded by 1950s advocates came down to the amount of the mineral used — because too much of anything isn’t necessarily good — and that 1 part per million would not cause injury to tooth enamel or other health issues. Fluoridation was endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association and the Richmond Federation of Parent-Teacher Associations.
However, a few years past the horrors of the Second World War and amid the anxieties about the Communist Soviet Union and China, a government program involving people’s bodies raised trepidation in some members of the public.
On Jan. 29, 1952, the News Leader reported how City Council voted to move forward with fluoridation the previous night. Utilities director J. Edward Metzger explained that the initial outlay for the fluoridation equipment, “on the basis of best estimates now available,” would cost $8,000 (over $96,000 today), and that annual operation would run about $13,000 (now over $157,000). “The costs have advanced materially since the city began its study,” Metzger noted.
One opponent of fluoridation, Andrew Oberg, warned councilmembers that it was “dangerously close to socialism.” He viewed the chemical as a political tactic. “We must submit or go thirsty,” he said, calling it a Trojan horse that might ultimately lead to the introduction of vitamins or Hadacol — a patent medicine of 12% alcohol.
Dr. Edward Ellis Haddock, a new member of council and a practicing physician, made a supporting speech and said he wished he could feel as sure of his ground in voting for everything that would come up in council as he did about fluoridation.
He recalled the rotten teeth that forced him to turn down many draftees during the recent war and said his daily examinations of children indicated the need for some cavity preventative.
Health director E.M Holmes Jr. said scientific investigation and thought was preponderantly in favor of the program adopted by some 140 American cities by that point. Also speaking in favor of fluoride were Dr. Emily Gardner, pediatrician and member of the Board of Health; Dr. Henry W. Street, of the Richmond Area Community Council; Dr. William Grigg, of the Richmond Junior Chamber of Commerce; and Dr. William French, children's dentist and representative of the Richmond Dental Association.
Letters predicting dire consequences soon arrived on the editorial pages of the city’s newspapers, such as one by B.A. Fields in the Feb. 25, 1952, Times-Dispatch. Fields described fluoride as “waste products of aluminum manufacture” and that “fluorine poisoning is a cumulative, no-antidote process.”
The objection went beyond the chemical to cast doubt on its promoters, while Fields quoted from a “sheaf of reprinted references” collecting observations by chemists and physicians who held unfavorable views of fluoridation.
Fields concluded: “Many, many other claims [have been made] that mass fluoridation violates both private and constitutional rights, represents socialized medicine, and moral coercion. Why experiment with danger?”
Richmond’s fluoridation efforts hit a snag in September 1952 when the machine used in the process arrived damaged. In the News Leader, utilities director Metzger related how representatives of the Omega Machine Co. of Providence, Rhode Island, assured him that repairs could be made locally. But Metzger “would take no chances … He demanded a new and undamaged machine.”
Omega complied, though repairs and transportation delayed the scheduled implementation and Metzger needed to quell rumors that fluoridation had already begun.
A decade later, the results of a combined federal-state-city study on the effects of fluoridation on 10,500 children across 23 were released. The data was compared with the results of a 1953 study. The new survey revealed a reduction in the average number of decayed, missing and filled permanent teeth. A published city report noted the differences: “It ranged from 28.9 per cent to 50 per cent for white children and 40 per cent to 62.9 per cent in Negro children.”
While fluoride has flowed here ever since, the anxieties of 73 years ago cling to the culture.
