VERNON TOWNSHIP — Meadville Area Water Authority (MAWA) officials downplayed the significance of recent news related to dangers associated with high levels of fluoride and expressed confidence in the safety of the authority’s fluoridation system during their monthly meeting Wednesday.
The comments came in response to a federal judge’s order late last month that directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen its regulations on water fluoridation. The order from U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cites recent research that suggests that continued exposure to high levels of fluoride — slightly more than twice the level recommended by federal health officials — could cause lower IQs in children.
“Simply put, the risk to health at exposure levels in United States drinking water is sufficiently high to trigger regulatory response by the EPA,” Chen wrote in his ruling, which came in a California lawsuit filed by several anti-fluoridation groups against the EPA. Chen also noted that the ruling “does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health.”
MAWA board member Dennis Finton, citing a joint response from the American Association of Pediatricians and the American Dental Association (AAP-ADA), was dismissive of both Chen’s ruling and the government report that prompted it.
“The judge in their opinion didn’t understand the science involved,” Finton said, referring to the AAP-ADA response. “The study was skewed quite a bit but the judge, being his background is more legalese and not scientific, personally, in my humble opinion, I wouldn’t put any stock in the study.”
The fact that fluoride in high quantities can be harmful is no different from other water additives like chlorine or even commonplace substances, Finton noted.
“You have chlorine in the water — if you really crank up the chlorine, that could be lethal,” he said. “Same way with salt, same way with anything.”
Chen’s ruling came about a month after the release of a study that concluded “higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children.” The report from the National Toxicology Program (NTP), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reviewed epidemiological studies from countries including Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Mexico.
The NTP report did not estimate the potential effect on IQ, but some of the studies reviewed said that children who experienced high fluoride exposure had IQs 2 to 5 points lower than average, according to The Associated Press. The report found no evidence of adverse effects on adult cognition due to fluoride exposure.
MAWA Project Manager Bob Harrington cited the American Water Works Association, a trade group for water supply professionals, in echoing Finton’s comments.
“The study was definitely askew in one direction and that further information was needed,” Harrington said. “It was simply a single opinion of one judge. They stand by the fluoride in the water and there wasn’t any call to do anything different.
Harrington told board members that the average fluoride level for water supplied by the authority over the past five years was 0.81 milligrams per liter, a figure that’s in keeping with the 0.82 milligrams per liter daily average reported in the authority’s 2023 annual water quality report. Since 2015, the U.S. Public Health Service has recommended a concentration of 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of drinking water to prevent dental caries.
In a phone interview after Wednesday’s meeting, Harrington said that he had misreported the average fluoride level due to a calculation error that occurred in taking data from the spreadsheet used to track levels. The actual fluoride level for 2023 was 0.71 milligrams per liter, he added. For 2022, it was 0.766 milligrams per liter and for 2021 it was 0.71 milligrams per liter. The water supplied by MAWA naturally contains 0.2 milligrams of fluoride per liter, according to past water quality reports from the authority.
MAWA began adding fluoride to its water in August 2019 after a protracted decision-making process that featured passionate community groups on both sides of the issue and ended with board members voting 3-2 in favor of fluoridation.
“We have a lot of safety thresholds, we have a lot of safety equipment that’s set to lock out pumps and shut down that entire procedure — not even just the fluoride, the whole procedure,” Harrington said, “in the event that we exceed any of our threshold settings, which are all well below any safety issue or concern — well below.”
Original article online at: https://www.meadvilletribune.com/news/water-authority-addresses-recent-fluoride-concerns/article_1f9db5cc-8c07-11ef-a132-ff52ca727f3b.html