- A Hanover Borough town hall meeting saw public comment largely in favor of continuing to add fluoride to the public water system.
- Medical professionals, including local dentists and a physician, spoke in support of fluoridation for public health benefits.
- Opponents of fluoridation expressed concerns over toxicity and argued for individual choice regarding health matters.
- Hanover first began fluoridating its water in 1972, and the practice is endorsed by federal health agencies to prevent tooth decay.
A recent town hall meeting saw three-quarters of commenters express support for continuing to add fluoride to Hanover’s drinking water.
Nonetheless, a series of votes is planned in the coming weeks on the issue.
Fluoride, a naturally occurring mineral, strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hanover’s public water system first began adding fluoride to the water in 1973 after more than two decades of debate at the local level, archives from The Evening Sun show. Since 1950, the practice of water fluoridation has been endorsed by federal officials and a range of health agencies to prevent tooth decay.
Votes on the topic, and further opportunities for public comment, are expected during Hanover’s Water and Sewer Committee at 7 p.m. on May 14, followed by the Finance & Personnel Committee at 7 p.m. on May 20, and finally, the full council meeting at 7 p.m. on May 27.
With Hanover’s four-person Water & Sewer committee having previously voted to recommend removal of fluoride to council during their March 12, 2026, meeting, the committee appears poised to repeat that recommendation, passing the decision up to the Finance and Personnel Committee.
An initial vote on the permanent removal of fluoride had been postponed during the March Finance and Personnel Committee meeting, in which the council requested additional information from staff and further public notice.
The divided 5-5 vote by council resulted in a tie-breaking vote by mayor Heidi Hormel, who voted to postpone while requesting additional opportunity for public notice and input.
What led to the upcoming votes?
Discussions began in November of 2024 after a council member requested that Hanover “establish a position on the continued use of fluoride,” Eric Mains, Hanover’s Director of Planning & Engineering, said during a short presentation on the topic at the public town hall.
No actions or recommendations were made in 2024 or in 2025, he said.
During the March 2026 meeting of Hanover’s four-person Water & Sewer Committee, the committee voted in favor of removing fluoride, with a staff presentation largely focusing on supply, costs, and staff safety.
Mains, in his presentation, described “inherent risks” for staff at the water plant who handle the raw material, although Mains added that, “in full disclosure, risks also exist with other treatment chemicals, such as Chlorine, Permanganate, etc.”
After encountering difficulty in sourcing fluoride in the typical municipal bidding process, Hanover was recently able to source a three-month delivery, which Mains said was expected to last through the end of August 2026 before Hanover will have to reevaluate procurement.
The supplier of that delivery, Univar Solutions, told The Evening Sun in a statement that the company is currently experiencing no shortage in supplies of fluoride and can meet the demand of its customers.
For 2026, the cost of adding fluoride was projected to be around $32,218, Mains said. That number was $8,000 below the $40,000 estimate staff had given council during the March 2026 council meeting.
The $32,218 estimate also includes labor, maintenance and the cost of caustic soda, an alkaline substance added to balance out the acidity in fluoride and maintain proper pH levels in the water system, Mains said.
Two pumps that are used to add liquid Fluoride to the water system will soon require replacement, and would each cost around $6,000 to replace, according to the presentation.
Politics cited as influence on supply
Around the region, several municipalities have heard officials discuss an apparent shortage in fluoride supplies, giving a range of beliefs as to why fluoride has become more difficult or expensive to source.
Supply prices are expected to increase, Mains said, due to reduced sources of fluoride in the United States, along with the impact of tariffs and the military conflict in Iran on international sources.
Similar conversations have been ongoing in other municipalities, including in nearby Franklin County, where officials told Chambersburg Borough council that some of the shortage was “politically driven” as fluoride producers in the United States had “slowed down production” in 2025 due to producers “expecting a federal ban” to be instituted under the Trump administration following the 2024 election.
That ban has not materialized as of April 2026, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump administration defending the use of fluoride in litigation and expressing that the EPA “does not make policy recommendations to state or local systems” on fluoride use.
Acting CDC Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, appointed by the current administration in Feb. 2026, told a House subcommittee in March that fluoride is “essential for oral health” and suggested that the key to public health is to ensure that the “right dose is delivered in the right way” to avoid any impacts from higher levels of the substance.
The supplier of Hanover’s most recent fluoride delivery, Univar Solutions, previously told The Evening Sun that their company is not experiencing any shortage.
“We do have ample supply for future orders,” said Dwayne Roark, the vice president of corporate affairs, marketing and communications for Univar Solutions.
Roark expressed that Univar is currently supporting Hanover on a “spot/quoted basis,” which consists of three-month quotes for fluoride, and has been in frequent communication with officials.
“We want to be clear that Univar Solutions does have supply,” said Roark, who said the company is ready and able to provide for “any customers who are in need of this valuable product.”
Univar did not respond as to why the company did not bid on the initial 2026 bid request for Hanover Borough.
Town hall largely sees support
The town hall meeting, which was held on Wednesday, April 29, was described as a “listen-and-learn” session for Hanover council to gather public comment on the potential removal of fluoride.
Of the ten members of Hanover council, two members, Barb Rupp and Brian Fuentes, were not in attendance at the town hall.
Council heard public comment from 24 individuals during the meeting, with 16 voicing support for the use of fluoride, five voicing opposition to the use of fluoride, and two not voicing a specific opinion in either direction.
Narrowed down to those identified as customers of the water system, 13 Hanover water ratepayers voiced support, four ratepayers voiced opposition, and two ratepayers did not give a specific opinion.
As a whole, the town hall meeting saw roughly three-quarters of public comment in support of maintaining the use of fluoride.
Among those who spoke on the topic in public comment were three Hanover dentists and one Hanover physician, all of whom urged the council to listen to the advice of medical professionals to maintain the use of fluoride for public health.
First to speak in public comment was local physician Dr. Robert Henke, who has worked in Hanover as a family medicine doctor for 43 years.
“I wish I had fluoride as a child,” Henke said, “I have a mouthful of silver and now multiple crowns. My children grew up here in Hanover, and they have good teeth because they drank Hanover water.”
Henke expressed that fluoride’s addition to water is just one example of many other commonly fortified foods and beverages, such as the addition of folic acid to most bread and vitamin D in most milk.
Henke pushed back against those who fall back on telling others to “do your own research,” stating that “nobody’s really doing their own research” but rather reading “articles that have been written.”
“Doing your own research is not listening to an internet influencer talking about a study that’s been out,” he continued, expressing that few on the internet are actually conducting their own scientific studies, but are instead attempting to make sense of existing studies.
Henke then discussed a 2023 study, which he noted had frequently been cited by critics of fluoride who talk of potential concerns over IQ scores.
That study, Henke said, was not new research but was a “meta-analysis” of data from 74 previous studies, none of which were conducted in the United States, and many of which involved countries that do not add fluoride to their water, but instead have levels of naturally-occurring fluoride in their groundwater that far exceed the levels recommended for public health.
Adding on to Henke’s comments, Hanover dentist John Grimes later expressed that the 2023 study had undergone two revisions by its authors, one of which admitted “fallacies” in its conclusions due to researchers not being able to determine whether fluoride was the factor that resulted in their conclusions, and a second revision that recommended the study “not be used to change public policy.”
Grimes then referenced a recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, April 13, 2026, which reviewed 60 years of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study that has followed and documented a random sample of over 10,000 men and women in Wisconsin.
The 2026 study cross-referenced the location, IQ scores, medical records, and educational performance of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study participants with the dates in which their individual community water systems had begun water fluoridation, finding no evidence that fluoridation was associated with lower IQ scores or cognition issues later in life.
“Take your medical advice from professionals,” Grimes urged, noting the experts available at Hanover’s own hospital, UPMC Hanover.
“There’s a hospital here that has toxicologists, that has neurologists, that has pediatricians, if you have real concerns about safety, please come have one of them come and speak.”
Among the five speakers who voiced opposition to fluoridation, several made allegations of toxicity, including local estate attorney Muriel Crabbs, who previously rented the Bare Center in the Guthrie Memorial Library to hold an anti-fluoride presentation in Feb. 2026 that some Hanover council members attended prior to the subject arriving at the March meetings.
Crabbs’ remarks predominantly referred to fluoride as a poison, and stated that “we don’t want to be a bunch of unintelligent individuals.” She concluded her remarks, adding that she would be giving her presentation to additional Hanover organizations.
While the potential exists for fluoride to be toxic in extremely high doses, according to the Cleveland Clinic, it would require consuming an amount of fluoridated water that would kill a human by water intoxication before the ingested amount of fluoride ingested would become harmful or deadly.
In the most recent water quality report issued by Hanover’s water system, tests showed 0.65 parts per million of fluoride in Hanover’s drinking water, which is monitored through tests taken three times a day each day.
At the measured ratio of 0.65 parts per million, one gallon of Hanover’s public water currently includes roughly 0.0000832 ounces of fluoride, a number that works out to roughly one one-thousandth of a single drop of liquid from an eyedropper.
Third Ward resident Robert Holt, an avid attendee of Hanover’s public meetings, expressed in his remarks that he wasn’t arguing science in his opposition to fluoridation, but rather felt that officials should “leave people to make their own choices about their own health and their own fates.”
Holt also expressed frustration that Hanover officials had spoken largely about the financial implications and health impacts for their staff, rather than discussing the health of their constituents.
“We never heard anybody on the borough staff talk about the safety of the citizens,” Holt said to council, “we just heard about how much money the borough could save and the health risks to staff.”
Austin Graham, a Hanover resident who spoke in favor of fluoridation, told the council that while he tends to lean towards limited government, he expressed that removing fluoride would not remove the healthcare needs of local children.
Instead, he argued, it would only shift that intervention from something currently “controlled, consistent, and monitored” and replace it with “something that people have to figure out on their own.”
“Which carries more risk for my kids and for the community?” he asked the council. “A controlled, regulated level in our water supply, or a patchwork system where everyone is on their own with different levels of knowledge, time, and resources?”
Instead, Graham urged council to continue the use of fluoride as a simple system that works “quietly in the background and doesn’t require perfect behavior from everyone to be effective.”
On the topic of financial costs, Helen Hawkey, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Oral Health, urged Hanover’s council to consider applying for one of the organization’s grants, citing a $25,000 grant that opens in August and could fully cover the costs of replacing both of the $6,000 pumps mentioned in the staff presentation.
Hawkey added that the York-Adams region is estimated to have around 35 dentists per 100,000 residents, a number she said was roughly half of the recommended ratio of 60 dentists per 100,000 residents.
How to attend upcoming meetings
Discussions on fluoride are expected to continue in three public meetings in May, Hanover officials have said.
The first meeting, the May meeting of Hanover’s Water and Sewer Committee, will be held at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 14, 2026. Water & Sewer meetings are not typically livestreamed or recorded.
The second meeting, the May meeting of the Hanover Borough Finance and Personnel Committee, will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, and is typically livestreamed on the Hanover Borough municipal Facebook page, with recordings later available on CommunityMedia.net.
Then, on May 27, the full May meeting of Hanover Borough Council will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 27, 2026. The full council meeting is also livestreamed, with recordings available on CommunityMedia.net.