No area residents came out Tuesday evening to share their thoughts on the City of Park Hills’ practice of injecting fluoride into the town’s drinking water system.
A public hearing was held on the topic prior to the start of the evening’s regular city council meeting. No one came forward to speak on the issue.
The hearing was scheduled after city leaders talked about the possibility of ending the practice of injecting fluoride into the drinking water system at a work session in April and decided to look further into the issue.
City council members did not take any action on the matter Tuesday.
… Officials with the St. Francois County Health Center provided the city with a handout on the issue and a letter in support of continuing the practice of adding fluoride to city drinking water.
City Administrator Matt Whitwell presented the submitted documents to the council right before the meeting started.
… Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) sets the standards for public drinking water systems. Right now, the state maximum for allowable fluoride levels is four parts per million. The state recommendation is that fluoride levels fall somewhere between 0.7 and 1.2 parts per million.Park Hills water consistently tests at one part per million. The figure takes into account the fluoride the city adds to the system.
If the city were to stop injecting the substance into the town’s water supply, the expectation is that fluoride levels would drop to between roughly 0.1 and 0.2 parts per million, Whitwell said Tuesday. Previous estimations indicated that naturally occurring levels were higher.
…A decision to stop adding fluoride to the drinking water supply would save the city in the neighborhood of $18,000 per year.
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