Excerpts:

A federal judge says he is “inclined” to bar witnesses from describing fluoridation’s health benefits in a landmark trial on whether EPA must regulate drinking water fluoridation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), saying they are irrelevant to risk evaluation under the law, the latest pre-trial loss for the agency ahead of the June 8 arguments.

… However, Chen also appeared to agree with EPA on plaintiffs’ separate effort to bar testimony on whether the agency’s current activities would allow it to defer rulemaking on fluoridation if the judge were to rule that the substance must be regulated.

As a result, Chen has indicated he will adopt a bifurcated trial structure to consider separate questions on whether fluoride poses an unreasonable risk that must be addressed and when the agency must regulate it.

The judge’s decisions mark the latest as the court prepares to consider environmentalists’ long-running effort to get EPA to use TSCA authority to ban drinking water fluoridation…

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