Is Fluoride Facing Phaseout in Your Community’s Drinking Water?

EJ TransitionWatch: Is Fluoride Facing Phaseout in Your Community’s Drinking Water?

By Joseph A. Davis

The incoming Trump administration looks like it will go after the addition of fluoride into the drinking water of the nation’s communities, with fluoride foe Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tapped for a top spot overseeing public health as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Just days before the election, Kennedy said the new administration would push to remove fluoride from drinking water. President-elect Trump has said he supports the idea.

All this without a noticeable understanding of the science, the law or the history of drinking water fluoridation. The public should know the facts. For environmental journalists, that means local stories.

 

Getting the dose right is key

Tooth decay has long been a public health problem, affecting most people, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

But fluoride, the term we use for substances like sodium fluoride, has been scientifically shown to lower the incidence of tooth decay. The demonstrated positive effects of fluoride are the reason why it is added to most commercial toothpastes.

Ingested in higher amounts, however, it can have negative health effects as well, including mottling of the teeth. Other alleged negative health effects have been studied but not demonstrated. Like many other substances, fluoride can be acutely toxic in very large amounts.

Health researchers say the key to optimal health is getting the dose just right: not too little and not too much.

 

Water fluoridation decades-old

Research into the effects of fluoride on tooth decay has been going on since the early 1900s, and the idea of adding it to water to reduce tooth decay started in the 1930s and 1940s.

The first experimental addition to a public water supply was in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By 1951, water fluoridation was adopted as a policy by the U.S. Public Health Service.

And by 1960, it had been widely adopted by U.S. water utilities (since about that time, fluoridation has been a bugaboo of paranoid conservatives — see the 1964 movie, “Dr. Strangelove”).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set the current mandatory limit (called a maximum contaminant level) on fluoride at 4 milligrams per liter under the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1986. The law requires the EPA to review its MCLs every six years.

 

Recently, antifluoride activists won a court

case that ordered the EPA to reevaluate

its rule on fluoride in drinking water.

 

More recently, antifluoride activists won a court case that ordered the EPA to reevaluate its rule on fluoride in drinking water, using the Toxic Substances Control Act rather than the SDWA. The suit came after controversial research by the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program suggested fluoride could harm the IQ of growing kids.

By the way, the federal government has no legal authority to require fluoride in drinking water — not the EPA or any other agency. But some 13 states (plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico) do — they currently have laws requiring utilities to add fluoride to drinking water. Hawaii is the only state to prohibit it.

Not only that, but laws in 37 states allow local governments and utilities to choose for themselves.

 

Story ideas

• Does your state require fluoride to be added to public drinking water systems? Talk to your state regulators.
• What are the main drinking water utilities in your audience area? Do they add fluoride? Talk to local managers about the issue.
• Does fluoride occur naturally in the source water(s) of your local utilities? How much? Is it below or above the MCL?
• Does your utility fully inform customers about fluoride in water (as they are legally required to under the SDWA)?
• What does your local or state health department think about fluoride in drinking water?
• Talk to your dentist and other local dentists about their views on fluoride.

 

Reporting resources

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: The EPA oversees implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, with most enforcement carried out by the states.
• Centers for Disease Control: The main U.S. public health agency.
• National Institutes of Health: This scientific research agency has studied fluoride in water.
• World Health Organization: This science-based international public health agency has recommended a level for fluoride in drinking water.
• American Dental Association: The main professional association for general dentists in the United States.
• Fluoride Action Network: A nongovernmental organization that opposes addition of fluoride to drinking water.
• Food & Water Watch: A nonprofit NGO opposed to fluoride in drinking water.

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 42. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.