Tag: MCL

The NRC’s report “Fluoride in Drinking Water” vindicates the EPA Union’s expressed concerns about fluoride toxicity dating back to 1986, when we defined severe dental fluorosis as an adverse health effect as the NRC just did. The NRC Committee also found that it was likely that there is an increase in bone fractures and increased risk of Stage II skeletal fluorosis among people drinking water at the 4 milligrams of fluoride per liter (mg/L) level. Again, our union has been saying this for years.

EPA may challenge the recent move by the union representing EPA’s professionals to join environmentalists in a suit over Safe Drinking Water Act health standards for fluoride, sources say, using the argument that the group has no “standing” to intervene because the workers are part of EPA itself. The National Federation of Federal Employees 2050 local has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council seeking a vastly strengthened fluoride drinking water standard.

The newer debate over fluoride in drinking water – which questions whether Mother Nature fluoridates water too heavily for good health in some parts of the country – has given rise to what an Environmental Protection Agency workers’ union calls a “precedent-setting” case of strange bedfellows.

In an unprecedented move, the Environmental Protection Agency’s union of professional employees, Local 2050 of the National Federation of Federal Employees, attempted to file an amicus curiae brief in a lawsuit against the agency itself in 1986. The lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was initiated by the Natural Resources Defense Council. It charged that the agency had ignored scientific evidence of adverse health effects when it set the recommended maximum contaminant level (RMCL) for fluoride in drinking water at 4 ppm.