Credit: Alex Despain
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  • Alex Despain

The director of the Oregon Health Authority has directed his agency to look into whether staffers preparing a survey of children’s oral health had inappropriate conversations with pro-fluoride advocates.

Dr. Bruce Goldberg tells the Mercury concerns raised about Upstream Public Health’s access to OHA staff, first reported by the Oregonian, created questions about the run-up to the study’s release.

“They came up,” Goldberg says. “I think it’s appropriate we look at them.”

The questions arose from e-mails surrounding the release of the 2012 Oregon Smiles Survey, which documented the dental health of the state’s school children. That study proved a flashpoint in the city’s war over fluoride, since it found cavity rates had gone down statewide—even in unfluoridated Multnomah County.

The e-mails show no evidence that OHA workers colluded with fluoride advocates to delay the report—as anti-fluoride political action committee Clean Water Portland had initially suggested—but do indicate the state’s oral health program manager and public health director met with Upstream prior to the study’s release.

And when hard results of the survey came back to the OHA, Oral Health Program Manager Shanie Mason asked her boss, Public Health Director Mel Kohn, whether she should contact Upstream officials about the results.

Later, Mason would write: “I’m also getting a ton of pressure from advocates like Upstream Public Health that have very specific ideas about how we should present our information. Unfortunately for them I’m committed to maintaining the integrity of our work and we’ll be presenting our data in the way that we see most appropriate.”

In response to the e-mails, Clean Water Portland has called on the Department of Justice to investigate. Goldberg said he’s had no indication another agency is checking into the matter.

“I’m having our [human resources] staff look into that to make certain that we behaved as we should,” Goldberg says. “They have not completed their work.”

News of the internal investigation comes as Kohn, the state’s public health director for the past five years, announced Tuesday he would be stepping down from the position in August. Both he and Goldberg say the fluoride controversy had nothing to do with the decision, and that Kohn made the choice to leave on his own.

I'm a news reporter for the Mercury. I've spent a lot of the last decade in journalism — covering tragedy and chicanery in the hills of southwest Missouri, politics in Washington, D.C., and other matters...

8 replies on “The OHA is Investigating Staff Contact with Fluoride Advocates”

  1. It’s very odd that the second “Smile Survey” was not accompanied by a news release touting the accomplishments of government-employee implemented interventions that were highly successful. Instead the report downplays their accomplishments. There’s no smoking gun. But that is very odd.

    Clearly, the recent statistics show that tooth decay rates have gone down since five years ago. That’s something to crow about and to show taxpayers that their money is being well-spent. Instead, the survey is being used to further the agenda of public officials who are committed to fluoridation for their own political gain.

    And where did all that money come from that flowed INTO the coffers of the pro-fluoridationists bank accounts?

  2. The Oregon Health Authority should be advocating for fluoride, because it is healthy. Advocating healthy behaviors is central to its mission.

    It shouldn’t be apologetic about releasing such a study to try to educate anti-science nincompoop voters before a referendum.

  3. What everyone deserves is FREEDOM OF CHOICE and not being forced by the government to consume a drug. It is illegal for a doctor or a dentist to force one to take any drug. It should be illegal for the government as well.
    Any prescribed fluoride would be a clean, pharmaceutical grade drug and certainly not the toxic waste fluoride, Hexafluorosilicic acid , used in drinking water.

    So fluoride is still legal and available. Put as much as you wish in your own glass of water, and leave the rest of us out of it.

  4. It’s a tricky issue. Obviously data should be made available to the public in a clear and unbiased format, but it’s also appropriate for the OHA to promote fluoridation on its own terms, considering their mission.

    Strategizing with advocacy groups towards an election issue can’t be appropriate, but it looks like they didn’t do that.

  6. The head toxicologist of the EPA called for more research on fluoride.

    http://www.fluoridegate.org/the-film/

    FLUORIDEGATE An American Tragedy:
    How did the EPA respond?
    They committed FORGERY – fabricated timecards
    They committed DESTRUCTION OF EVEIDENCE – shredding documents
    They committed OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE –
    They conspired to cover-up the call for more research by terminating the senior toxicologist of the EPA
    He took the EPA to court and won on all counts – except one, that he used the wrong pronoun. He used the word “we’d” when referring to EPA’s activities instead of “EPA”
    The senior toxicologist then had to sue the EPA for HARRASSMENT – and won the case.

  7. i grew up drinking flouridated water. my dentists ocasionally mention me having good enamel. however, i feel like i may not have reached my potential IQ level due to being exposed to it. can’t prove it but makes me wonder. despite the flouridated water i still got a fair number of filling. i think dentist lie sometimes just to make a few extra bucks. they still try to book me for the caps to supposedly cover up the few remaining unmolested molars i do have, saying it’s for prevention. how about i drill a hole in their head to prevent future migrains?

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