MONROE — The issue of fluoride in municipal drinking water has resurfaced here with city officials, after being hotly debated and narrowly dismissed late last year.
But this time the choice is not fluoride vs. no-fluoride in city water — although that is still very much a thing nationally — it is to tighten up city language that regulates how much of the chemical can be added to the water supply.
“We want our standards to be consistent with the state,” standards on the amount of fluoride added to drinking water supplies, said City Administrator Brittney Rindy.
Currently, the city is fluoridating at the .7 parts per million standard it shares with the State of Wisconsin, she added. Yet the city’s ordinance allows for substantially more fluoride — at 1 to 1.5 ppm. The discrepancy was on the agenda for the Monday, January 25 meeting of the city’s Judiciary and Ordinance Review Committee.
Although Rindy said the change is a housekeeping measure that has no net effect on the fluoride question, she said there must still be a public hearing prior to a final vote and that it could draw heightened public interest.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it did,” said Rindy, noting the packed house who showed up on the fluoride issue last fall.
Indeed, the topic was first added to the council agenda last Autumn — at that time due to growing interest nationally and in political circles, Mayor Donna Douglas said. But the measure was ultimately voted down in committee.
The initial push to eliminate fluoride mirrors the national trend to push municipalities to change their long-held views on the chemical — beyond what it does just for teeth. President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial pick to lead the country’s health initiatives, Robert Kennedy Jr., has said he favors removing the chemical from all municipal drinking supplies nationwide, immediately.
“If there’s even a small chance that this is harmful,” the city should not risk public health putting it in, Ald. Richard Thoman said, during the first public hearing on the topic last October.
A key, federal court ruling and several studies also allude to potential health risks of fluoride in the water. The ruling was generated in large part by a review published by the National Institutes of Health’s National Toxicology Program, which concluded that “higher levels of fluoride exposure” are associated with lower IQ in children.
Yet given that water fluoridation is a local government decision, it is unclear if Kennedy could compel municipalities to do away with it. Still, some experts say the Trump administration could, in theory, use the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 to ban water fluoridation. The TSCA essentially gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate chemicals in the U.S.
Fluoride is naturally found in soil, water, and plants, but the levels are usually too low to prevent cavities. Experts say they can see the positive impact of fluoride when they compare the dental health of children raised with fluoridated water in cities and those, for example, in the country who are drinking well water without the chemical.
Some people are concerned that the different ways children consume drinks and food made with fluoridated water might lead to too much exposure. For example, kids often drink water or eat food cooked with fluoridated water and consume beverages made from it — meaning that their total intake might be elevated.
“Remove the stuff, it’s poison,” said Dan Collins of Monroe, speaking at that first city fluoride meeting.
Original article online at: https://themonroetimes.com/local-news/fluoride-in-water-again-on-city-agenda/