The city of Shreveport, Louisiana, says that it has run out of fluoride for its drinking water, as disruptions stemming from the ongoing conflict in Iran continue to strain supplies across the United States.
According to KSLA News, Shreveport believes that it could be months before it will be able to replenish its supply of fluoride, which has been added to the city's water system since 1977.
“The raw material to make what we insert comes from the Middle East, and there’s a supply chain problem," Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux said. "Nobody really has any — I doubt that there’s a significant number of cities that have fluoride right now to add to the water."
Concerns over fluoride stockpiles first surfaced in April, when Israeli suppliers were forced to cut back on production as workers were called into military service for the conflict in Iran. Israel is one of the largest exports of fluoride in the world, while the United States is among the world's top five importers of the chemical. Another key factor at play is that sulfur is a key component of fluorosilicic acid — which is used to fluoridate drinking water — and roughly half of global seaborne sulfur exports normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which remains largely closed to most shipping.
Faced with cutbacks from key Israeli suppliers and limited traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, several water districts across the U.S. have been forced to either cut back on fluoride or temporarily stop adding it to drinking water altogether. WXXI News reported in July that plans to fluoridate Albany, New York's municipal supply have been on hold for months due to supply chain issues. Facing a similar shortage, four water districts serving 265,000 people in Maine stopped adding fluoride to drinking water in July, with two still unable to resume fluoridation as of mid-August.
Other pauses have been reported in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Maryland.
“This is a temporary adjustment driven solely by supply availability,” Maryland's Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission said in an April alert.
These shortages come as several conservative-led states have moved to eliminate fluoride from drinking water over health concerns. Leaders in both Florida and Utah banned the use of fluoride in drinking water in 2025, arguing that adding it to public water amounted to “forced medication” without individual consent. Fluoride has been present in U.S. drinking water supplies for decades, and is known to reduce tooth decay, with no known major side effects when consumed in small doses.
