MENOMINEE, MICH. – In a new book released on Oct. 17, Peshtigo native Brenda Staudenmaier describes the resistance she has faced in her campaign to persuade community water systems to stop adding fluoride to the public water supply.
The mother of two who sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after it failed to respond to her request for information about maximum contaminant levels for fluoride wasn’t always as confident as she is today. She wrote about her experience trembling in 2013 as she spoke before the Green Bay Water Commission to share her concerns about hydrofluosilicic acid used to fluoridate water after a friend died of osteosarcoma, one of many health issues associated with fluoride consumption.
“Naively, I believed they’d listen,” Staudenmaier wrote in her chapter in a new book, “Fluoride Harm Suppressed Science and Silenced Voices: A Collection of 21st Century Essays,” published by Heron Lodge Press in Canada and released on Amazon.com.
“I believed that once people saw the science, they would agree that fluoridating the public water supply was wrong. I thought it was a simple misunderstanding. Instead I faced a wall of resistance,” she said.
The book also includes chapters written by scientists, medical doctors, dentists and clean-water activists.
Today, 12 years after her first public comments in Green Bay, Staudenmaier has expressed frustration even as she has celebrated progress made. This includes a change in the City of Peshtigo where the city council agreed in late 2024 to stop adding fluoride to a deep well used for drinking water.
Since then, more states have banned fluoridation and government officials have spoken against it.
What changed the tide was the judgment U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen delivered after reviewing a large body of research on fluoride’s neurotoxicity presented in the Food and Water Watch, et al, v U.S. EPA case.
Chen sided with Staudenmaier and other plaintiffs. Chen ordered the EPA to conduct a review of its maximum contaminant level of 4 mg/liter for fluoride, which is considerably higher than the 0.7 mg/L limit the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) issued in 2015 after lowering it from 1.2 mg/L set in 1962.
New health research linking fluoride consumption with neurological issues, including lowered Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and behavior issues, also is giving new credence to existing research about fluorosis, a disease affecting the teeth and bones stemming from excessive fluoride consumption. Mottled teeth, brittle and broken bones and hip fractures are among the symptoms of too much fluoride, experts said.
The new research hit home for Staudenmaier, who briefly mentions a relative’s behavior issues in her chapter.
“If reducing fluoride exposure can reduce the number of people with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), then less people need to be on medication like Adderall,” as “multiple studies indicate that fluoride exposure increases attention deficits,” she wrote.
What Staudenmaier has confronted in her efforts to reduce use of fluoride in public drinking water according to her chapter is “a well-oiled machine of public health officials, grant-funded operatives, school nurses-turned-propagandists and a dental industry more concerned with appearances than with accountability.”
Despite the uphill battle, Staudenmaier was encouraged when Judge Chen found the neuroscientific research credible, including findings indicating “a 1-point drop in IQ of a child is to be expected for each 0.28 mg/L of fluoride in a pregnant mother’s urine. This is highly concerning, because maternal urinary fluoride levels for pregnant mothers in the United States range from 0.8 mg/L at the median and 1.89 mg/L depending upon the degree of exposure,” according to the judgment.
Staudenmaier recalls the trial in her chapter: “In a courtroom where truth had to rise above industry spin, the world’s leading environmental health scientists stepped forward. They weren’t fringe figures. These were career-long public health experts… Their testimony would reshape the fluoride debate forever and expose the serious neurodevelopment risks of early-life fluoride exposure.”
Major organizations, such as the American Dental Association and the American Fluoridation Society, continue to support fluoridation.
“There is exhaustive professional and scientific consensus by both researchers and doctors that fluoridating community water is extremely important in preventing cavities and is completely safe,” according to the American Fluoridation Society.
Besides writing the chapter, Staudenmaier has continued a letter-writing campaign to those she said are continuing to promote misinformation to save face.
This month, Karen Black of the Eastman Institute for Oral Health at the University of Rochester made an online post aimed at debunk myths about fluoride’s health risks, which noted that the Eastman Institute was home to a fluoride pioneer, Dr. Basil Bibby, who promoted the benefits of fluoride in the 1940s.
In response, Staudenmaier said in an email to Black, “the talking points — claiming ‘high-quality evidence consistently shows fluoridation poses no risk’ — are not only false, they directly contradict the findings presented under oath in federal court… that fluoridation chemicals present an ‘unreasonable risk’ to the developing brain. Your article also dismisses ‘foreign studies’ that reported IQ loss — yet ignores the NIH-funded research from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. that found prenatal fluoride exposure at levels typical in fluoridated communities leads to significantly lower IQ scores in children. Those are not fringe findings — they are among the most rigorous developmental neurotoxicity studies ever conducted on a drinking water contaminant.”
Fluoride also is linked to fluorosis and bone diseases, she points out. Staudenmaier cites a 2025 study in Environmental Health explaining research linking higher lifetime fluoride exposure to an increased risk of bone fractures and bone.
While the U.S. EPA filed a notice of appeal in the Food and Water Watch, et al., case, which is pending in a U.S. appeals court, Staudenmaier has seen the number of people willing to speak out against fluoride grow. “I can see a light at the end of this long road,” she wrote in her chapter. “I am impatient to reach it.”
Original article online at: https://www.peshtigotimes.com/stories/officials-and-business-owners-weigh-in-on-proposed-dispensary-limits,299904