Water Purity, Health, and Expertise: Debating Fluoridation in Vancouver during the 1950s (2022)
Evenden, Matthew D. (Author)
Canadian Journal of Health History/Revue canadienne d’histoire de la santé
Volume: 39
Issue: 2
Pages: 311-339
Whether or not to fluoridate community water supplies challenged communities across North America and beyond in the mid-twentieth century. Proponents of fluoridation argued that this public health measure could prevent dental caries at little cost and should be embraced; critics objected to what they considered to be mass medication, and an unwelcome intrusion of the state and experts into matters of personal health. While many communities across Canada participated in this fraught question, and the contours of the debate from place to place shared many features, fluoridation was always a local issue, tied to the community water supply. In Vancouver, a wartime controversy over whether to chlorinate the water supply had shaken faith in expertise and the state. The fluoridation debate thus followed a wider public reckoning over water purity, health, authority, and expertise, and gave the many shared features of the national fluoridation debate a different quality. While fluoridation was embraced in many North American communities, or at least accepted, in Vancouver the foundations of the debate in the 1950s weakened support for this public health measure in defence of pure water and against the advice of experts.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Catherine Carstairs;
(2015)
The Environmental Critique of Water Fluoridation
(/isis/citation/CBB164063111/)
Article
Sellers, Christopher;
(2004)
The Artificial Nature of Fluoridated Water: Between Nations, Knowledge, and Material Flows
(/isis/citation/CBB000750327/)
Book
Erik Swyngedouw;
(2015)
Liquid Power: Contested Hydro-Modernities in Twentieth-Century Spain
(/isis/citation/CBB814785175/)
Book
Freeze, R. Allan;
Lehr, Jay H.;
(2009)
The Fluoride Wars: How A Modest Public Health Measure Became America's Longest-Running Political Melodrama
(/isis/citation/CBB001031629/)
Book
Connett, P. H.;
Beck, James S.;
Micklem, H. S.;
(2010)
The Case against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There
(/isis/citation/CBB001033744/)
Book
Lamoreaux, Philip E.;
Tanner, Judy T.;
(2001)
Springs and Bottled Waters of the World: Ancient History, Source, Occurrence, Quality and Use
(/isis/citation/CBB000102536/)
Article
Rita Padawangi;
(2017)
Building Knowledge, Negotiating Expertise: Participatory Water Supply Advocacy and Service in Globalizing Jakarta
(/isis/citation/CBB197152200/)
Article
Fromherz, Ariane;
(2018)
Debatten um die Trinkwasserfluoridierung in der Schweiz am Beispiel von Basel-Stadt und Zürich seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. (Debates on drinking water fluoridation in Switzerland using the examples of Basel-Stadt and Zurich since the Second World War.)
(/isis/citation/CBB097893719/)
Article
Carstairs, Catherine;
(2008)
Expertise, Health, and Popular Opinion: Debating Water Fluoridation, 1945--80
(/isis/citation/CBB001030863/)
Article
Jacobs, Jeffrey;
(Witner 2011)
The Sustainability of Water Resources in the Colorado River Basin
(/isis/citation/CBB307443241/)
Article
Matthew Hayes;
Noah Morritt;
(2020)
Michael W. Burke-Gaffney and the UFO Debate in Atlantic Canada, 1947-1969
(/isis/citation/CBB417665220/)
Article
Pia Vuolanto;
Harley Bergroth;
Johanna Nurmi;
Suvi Salmenniemi;
(2020)
Reconfiguring health knowledges? Contemporary modes of self-care as ‘everyday fringe medicine’
(/isis/citation/CBB220391015/)
Book
Lynne Heasley;
Daniel Macfarlane;
(2016)
Border Flows: A Century of the Canadian-American Water Relationship
(/isis/citation/CBB087008516/)
Article
Stefano Crabu;
Ilenia Picardi;
Valentina Turrini;
(2023)
Refused-knowledge during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mobilising Experiential Expertise for Care and Well-being
(/isis/citation/CBB291581369/)
Book
Alex Mold;
Peder Clark;
Hannah J. Elizabeth;
(2023)
Publics and their health: Historical problems and perspectives
(/isis/citation/CBB338646865/)
Article
Shobita Parthasarathy;
(2022)
How to Be an Epistemic Trespasser
(/isis/citation/CBB968694595/)
Article
Banister, Jeffrey M.;
Widdifield, Stacie G.;
(2014)
The Debut of `Modern Water' in Early 20th Century Mexico City: The Xochimilco Potable Waterworks
(/isis/citation/CBB001451669/)
Article
Aviram Sharma;
(2017)
Drinking Water Quality in Indian Water Policies, Laws, and Courtrooms: Understanding the Intersections of Science and Law in Developing Countries
(/isis/citation/CBB115411091/)
Article
Spurling, Thomas H.;
(2011)
Donald Eric Weiss 1924--2008
(/isis/citation/CBB001033731/)
Article
Poirier, Valerie;
(2013)
“Polio Hysteria”: La rentrée scolaire montréalaise de 1946 et l'épidémie de poliomyélite
(/isis/citation/CBB001213538/)
The Bridge: Journal of the National Academy of Engineering
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
Canadian Historical Review
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Be the first to comment!