Note from Fluoride Action Network,
Lake Delton is in Sauk County and has a population of approximately 3,000 (reference).
The Lake Delton village board officially voted to suspend fluoridation of the village’s drinking water at its meeting Monday, preempting an April circuit court suit that could end the practice nationwide.
Brenda Staudenmaier, one of the plaintiffs in Food and Water Watch vs. US EPA, which will be heard in Berkeley, California on April 20, attended the meeting to present the organization’s case against fluoridation. Despite the fact that it has been an active practice in the United States for 70 years, fluoridation has become a hot-button issue recently.
“Most of the world does not fluoridate,” Staudenmaier said. “I think there’s 10 countries, there’s 170-some that don’t. So we’re kind of an oddball country for adding this to our water.”
One of the main points in Staudenmaier’s argument was that the fluoridation process is not held up to any level of pharmaceutical scrutiny across the country. According to her, the compound used to fluoridate drinking water is refined fluorosalicylic acid, a waste product of phosphate fertilizer production.
“It comes out of the smokestacks of the industry,” Staudenmaier said. “It can’t be released into the environment because it causes damage to the crops and animals. So the EPA banned it from being directly dumped into our water or put into the atmosphere. They capture it and sell it to the water utilities… it’s not pharmaceutical-grade.”