MIDDLETOWN — A water treatment plant worker mistakenly dumped a “significant” amount of extra fluoride into the local water supply in November and failed to report the accident for several weeks. But officials on Tuesday said there appeared to be no threat to the community.
The worker “input the wrong decimal point,” causing the water treatment facility to “overdose a significant amount of gallons” of fluoride into the water supply over a five-hour period on Nov. 10, Jacob Tawil, the city’s public works commissioner, told the Middletown Common Council last month. The worker then failed to report the mistake to supervisors, Tawil said.
Had the worker reported the overdose, supervisors “would have immediately informed me and we would have taken steps to flush the system,” Tawil said. Instead, the commissioner said he became aware of the problem on Dec. 9, one month after the incident, when water quality testing showed unusually high levels of fluoride.
On Tuesday, the Orange County Health Department issued Middletown’s public works department a notice of violation for what county health officials called a “failure to notify our office within 48 hours of a situation that may pose a risk to public health.” Health officials said in the notice that the threat level remained unclear because “the situation was not reported in a timely manner” and no additional testing had been performed at the time of the incident.
But health officials said residents were likely not exposed to harmful amounts of fluoride. They said residents did not need to begin drinking bottled water, noting that health problems typically occur in people who drink excess fluoride “over many years.”
After testing revealed the overdose, water treatment plant supervisors immediately shut down the fluoride feeding pump, Middletown Mayor Joseph DeStefano told the Times Union. The supervisors later installed a smaller pump and updated the system’s computer control system, DeStefano said, citing health department documentation he provided to the Times Union.
The city planned to send a letter to the 30,000 Middletown, Wallkill and Wawayanda residents who were affected, DeStefano said. The letter had not been mailed as of Wednesday morning.
The responsible worker was disciplined but not fired for failing to report the issue, DeStefano said, though he did not provide details.
The county’s health and public works departments were investigating what happened, Tawil told city officials. State, county and city officials were still working to determine exactly how much additional fluoride was added and whether it led to elevated levels of the chemical ion in the drinking supply.
“We found out that there are certain things that we have to improve in our system so this situation doesn’t happen again,” Tawil said.
Municipalities began adding additional fluoride to drinking water in 1945 to prevent cavities. The chemical, which naturally occurs in most water and soil, helps strengthen a tooth’s surface, making it more resistant to decay, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The agency named water fluoridation one of 10 great public health interventions of the 20th century due to the decline in reported cavities among Americans of all ages.
Original article online at: https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/middletown-water-treatment-fluoride-error-21306984.php