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    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Trump Will Seek to Remove Fluoride From Drinking Water

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    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Saturday that among the first acts of a second Trump administration would be to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” a stunning potential reversal of what is widely considered one of the most important public health interventions of the past century.The statement, posted on social media, is among the more concrete pledges made by Mr. Kennedy — a former independent presidential candidate who is now backing Mr. Trump — in his capacity as a top adviser on Mr. Trump’s transition team. It also raises the specter of an all-out assault on public-health expertise should Mr. Trump win next week’s election, a prospect that has already caused significant alarm among experts across the medical and environmental fields.As president, Mr. Trump would not have the power to order states and municipalities to remove fluoride from their water supplies; fluoridation is a matter of local control.But a presidential pronouncement would inject the White House into a debate that stretches back to the 1950s, when conspiracy theories swirled around fluoridation, with critics claiming it was a Communist plot to poison Americans’ brains — a view that was memorably parodied in Stanley Kubrick’s film “Dr. Strangelove.”More recently, however, there has been scientific debate around the practice, with some studies suggesting that excess exposure to fluoride — at levels twice the amount recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency — could harm infants’ developing brains. But scientists, including those at the federal government’s National Toxicology Program, say more research is needed to understand whether lower exposure to fluoride has an effect.The process of adding small amounts fluoride to drinking water, or fluoridation, began about 80 years ago to prevent tooth decay. That effort, public health officials say, has been extraordinarily successful. A majority of Americans today live in water systems that are fluoridated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists fluoridation as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scared of the Dentist? Here’s How to Cope.

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      Don’t skip appointments and risk your oral health. Try these strategies instead.For Hope Alcocer, the diagnosis was grim: 11 cavities. Inflamed gums. A tooth in need of a root canal.As the list of problems grew, so did her feelings of shame and fear. Shame that she had waited more than a decade to seek care. And fear because she could no longer avoid the dentist.Her anxiety stemmed from an experience as a teenager, when her dentist brushed aside her concerns that she wasn’t numb enough before filling a cavity.The pain made her want to jump out of the chair. “My pain was an 11 out of 10,” she said. “That’s how much it hurt.”Dental anxiety is a common problem. Studies of U.S. adults generally find that around 20 percent of respondents have moderate to high fear of dental care. The severity ranges from mild uneasiness to severe phobia and can be rooted in earlier negative experiences or traumas.The more fearful someone is, the more they postpone care, and the more likely they are to develop painful problems that require expensive or complex treatment, experts say.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hairballs Shed Light on Tsavo Man-Eating Lions’ Menu

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      The Tsavo man-eaters terrorized railroad workers in British East Africa in the 19th century, but their tastes went well beyond human flesh.In British East Africa in 1898, two lions living along the Tsavo River were hungry.This was bad news for the workers building a railroad there. They would retreat to their tents at night and, come morning, some of the men would be missing, the latest victims of big cats that had a hankering for human meat.“Bones, flesh, skin and blood, they devoured all, and left not a trace behind them,” wrote Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson, a British Army officer leading the railroad project.During the nine-month reign of the Tsavo man-eaters, the lions, which like most males of the area lacked manes, devoured around 35 workers. Eventually, construction of the railroad stopped completely until Colonel Patterson shot the two cats.The lions’ bodies were initially fashioned into trophy rugs. In 1925, the Field Museum in Chicago purchased the rugs for display. The two skulls ended up in the museum’s collection.It turns out that the Tsavo lions had a taste for more than men. Using hair fragments preserved in the lions’ broken teeth, scientists discovered DNA from several species. Their findings were published Friday in the journal Current Biology, offering a snapshot of the surprisingly diverse buffet of wildlife once consumed by a top predator in what is today Kenya.In the 1990s, Thomas P. Gnoske, a collections manager at the Field Museum, got a chance to examine the Tsavo lions’ skulls. He noticed hair fragments in the cats’ cracked canine teeth. In 2001, Mr. Gnoske contributed to a paper positing that the lions had developed a preference for human prey because the cats’ teeth were damaged, and our species’ flesh was easier to chew.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Are Dental Amalgam Fillings? What to Know About Mercury Fillings

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      The European Union banned mercury amalgam fillings to protect the environment. Should you worry about protecting your health, too?When the European Union adopted a ban on dental amalgam fillings earlier this year, its aim was to eliminate one of the last remaining intentional uses of mercury in Europe. The regulation is part of the Zero Pollution Action Plan, an initiative that includes removing microplastics, chemical pesticides and even noise pollution from the environment.The ban, which will go into effect at the beginning of next year, can help “avoid the release of approximately 10 tons of mercury into the environment by 2030,” Tilly Metz, a member of the European Parliament who worked on the legislation, said in an email.The E.U. is going a big step further than required by the United Nations’ Minamata Convention, a global treaty adopted by more than 140 countries including the United States, that requires countries to “phase down” the use of dental amalgam. The treaty is named after the Minamata Bay in Japan where, in the mid-20th century, industrial pollution containing mercury contaminated seafood and sickened thousands of people, some fatally.While the new E.U. ban is not focused on the health of the individuals receiving the fillings, millions of people around the world have mercury fillings in their mouths; it’s natural to wonder about what the regulations might mean for your health.What are mercury fillings?Dental amalgam fillings, commonly known as silver fillings, have been used in dentistry since the 19th century. They are approximately half mercury and a half blend of silver, zinc, tin, copper or other metals.More than 100 million Americans have mercury fillings, but they’re being used less and less often. Most new dental fillings in the United States are made of resins and composites that do not contain any mercury.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nara Smith’s Homemade Sunscreen Gives Experts Pause

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      Nara and Lucky Blue Smith make sunscreen and toothpaste from scratch. Experts have thoughts.Last month, the model and influencer Nara Smith said she had recently run out of sunscreen. Instead of buying more, she asked her husband, Lucky Blue Smith, to make some from scratch.Mr. Smith’s process, which Ms. Smith posted to TikTok last month, looked more like a cooking video than anything else. Wearing an unbuttoned shirt and holding a toothpick between his lips, he combined ingredients including coconut oil, shea butter, jojoba oil and zinc oxide powder in a clear bowl.In a certain pocket of social media, Ms. Smith has become known for such do-it-yourself content. It began with her posting recipes to satisfy food cravings, but grew to include videos of her husband making personal care products such as sunscreen, toothpaste and moisturizer from scratch.Some commenters admire the couple’s D.I.Y. cosmetics, while others wonder whether their content is satire. But cosmetic chemists, dentists and dermatologists agree that making beauty products from scratch isn’t always a good idea. Homemade moisturizer presents few risks, but homemade sunscreen is far less likely to offer protection, and D.I.Y. toothpaste may be bad for tooth enamel, experts said.Ms. Smith, who did not respond to requests for comment, has at times nodded to the limitations of her experience. In the toothpaste video, for example, she acknowledged that she is not a professional dentist. But at other times, as in her sunscreen TikTok, she assured viewers that her husband “is a baker, so he makes sure that everything is very precise.”Cosmetic chemistry is not the same as baking, said Marisa Plescia, the vice president-elect of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists. Experts make products according to precise formulas; attempting that process at home when you’re not a chemist can lead to D.I.Y. products that are ineffective, don’t last long or react poorly with your skin, she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More