A US Federal Court has ruled water fluoridation to be an "unreasonable risk" to the health of children…and Australia’s fluoridation rate is up to 57% more! Now the EPA, which regulates fluoridation in America, must take action to eliminate this risk.
After a first-of-its-kind 7-year legal battle, a United States federal court has just ruled that fluoride (water fluoridation) creates an “unacceptable risk” to our children. The United States District Court of the Northern District of California has ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to take regulatory action to eliminate the “unreasonable risk” to the health of children posed by the practice of water fluoridation.
The court found that scientific evidence of fluoride’s health risks when ingested at levels currently prescribed for drinking water – especially to the developing brains of infants – requires stricter regulation of the chemical’s presence in drinking water under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
In the United States the fluoridation rate is a maximum 0.7mg of fluoridation chemicals per litre of water. In Australia the rate is normally around 0.7mg to 0.8mg/L, but it can be as high as 1.1mg per litre, as stipulated by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). Australia’s fluoridation rate is therefore up to 57 per cent higher than the maximum rate in the US!
This historic ruling could have a significant impact on the widespread, long-held practice of adding fluoride to drinking water in the United States, Australia and a few other countries. Although around 75 percent of Americans and about 90 percent of Australians receive fluoridated water, LESS THAN 5 PERCENT of the world’s population receives fluoridated water and most European nations have long rejected fluoride because of toxicity and lack of effectiveness in reducing tooth decay.
The verdict is a significant loss for the EPA and other promoters of fluoridation, such as Australia’s NHMRC, because the court found their claims of safety – made for over 75 years, are in fact not supported by evidence.
Senior Judge Edward Chen wrote, “the Court finds that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter (“mg/L”) – the level presently considered “optimal” in the United States – poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children…the Court finds there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response.”
“In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water of the United States.”
The ruling did not specify exactly what measures must be adopted by the EPA, but under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), once the court rules that a chemical poses an unreasonable risk, the EPA is obligated by law to restrict or eliminate the risk.
Judge Chen described a range of options for regulating fluoridation, including banning it, but he warned:
“One thing the EPA cannot do, however, in the face of this Court’s finding, is to ignore that risk.”
The Fluoride Action Network’s attorney, Michael Connett, said, “The Court has done what EPA has long refused to do: applied EPA’s risk assessment framework to fluoride. It’s a historic decision. And, as we await EPA’s rulemaking proceeding, policymakers would be well advised to ask: “Should we really be adding a neurotoxicant to our drinking water?”
Read the full ruling HERE.
Initial US media coverage
The US media were quick to report on this court ruling, while Australian media have completely ignored the news and continue to repeat the same old fallacy that fluoride is safe and effective.
-CBS News: Federal Court Rules Against EPA in Lawsuit Over Fluoride in Water
-Bloomberg Law: EPA Must Reduce Fluoride’s IA Risks to Children, Court Says
-The Defender: Fluoride in Water Poses ‘Unreasonable Risk’ to Children, Federal Judge Rules
-Dr. Bicuspid: U.S. Court – Fluoride in Water Risky, Must be Addressed
–CNN: Fluoride in Water Poses Enough Risk to Merit New EPA Action, Judge Says
-Reuters: EPA Must Address Fluoridated Water’s Risk to Children’s IQs, US Judge Rules
-The Hill: Judge Orders EPA to Address Potential IQ Impacts of Fluoride in Drinking Water
–Politico: Fluoride Ruling Pushes EPA for Regulatory Action
-Associated Press / ABC News: Fluoride in Drinking Water Poses Enough Risk to Merit New EPA Action, Judge Says
-The Guardian: End of fluoridation of US water could be in sight after federal court ruling
Some notable excerpts from the ruling:
pg 3: There is little dispute in this suit as to whether fluoride poses a hazard to human health. Indeed, EPA’s own expert agrees that fluoride is hazardous at some level of exposure. And ample evidence establishes that a mother’s exposure to fluoride during pregnancy is associated with IQ decrements in her offspring.
pg 5: The pooled benchmark dose analysis concluded that 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. Not only is there an insufficient margin between the hazard level and these exposure levels, for many, the exposure levels exceed the hazard level of 0.28 mg/L.
pg 6: The EPA’s default margin of error requires a factor of 10 between the hazard level and exposure level due to variability in human sensitivities…Here, an even greater margin (100x) is owed because the methodology (which yields the 4 mg/L hazard level) uses the lowest observed adverse effect level (“LOAEL”); this methodology adds an additional level of uncertainty (and hence the application of a 100x rather than 10x margin). But even if only the default 10x margin is required, the safe level of fluoride exposure would be 0.4 mg/L (4 mg/L (hazard level) divided by 10). The “optimal” water fluoridation level in the United States of 0.7 mg/L is nearly double that safe level of 0.4 mg/L for pregnant women and their offspring.
pg 77: The scientific literature in the record provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present; fluoride is associated with reduced IQ. There are uncertainties presented by the underlying data regarding the appropriate point of departure and exposure level to utilize in this risk evaluation. But those uncertainties do not undermine the finding of an unreasonable risk; in every scenario utilizing any of the various possible points of departures, exposure levels and metrics, a risk is present in view of the applicable uncertainty factors that apply.
pg 78: There is significant certainty in the data set regarding the association between fluoride and reduced IQ. Namely, there is a robust body of evidence finding a statistically significant adverse association between fluoride and IQ. A large majority of the 72 epidemiological studies assessed by the NTP Monograph observed this relationship including all but one of the 19 high-quality studies, see ¶¶ 34-36, and literature published after the NTP Monograph cutoff date observed the same relationship, see ¶ 37 – and countervailing evidence, for various reasons described previously, are of little impact on this repeated, and consistently observed association between fluoride and reduced IQ, see ¶ 39.
pg 76: Approximately two million pregnant women, and over 300,000 exclusively formula-fed babies are exposed to fluoridated water. The number of pregnant women and formula-fed babies alone who are exposed to water fluoridation each year exceeds entire populations exposed to conditions of use for which EPA has found unreasonable risk; the EPA has found risks unreasonable where the population impacted was less than 500 people.