California Federal District Court Rules Current Water Fluoridation Levels Pose Unreasonable Risk of Injury
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has issued a decision in Food & Water Watch, Inc. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency (you can read the complete court opinion here: Court Opinion in Water Fluoridation Case), holding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must re-evaluate the fluoride levels in water. The Court found 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 intelligence quotient (IQ) in children. It should be noted that this finding does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health; rather, as required by the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the Court found there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response. The court did not dictate precisely what that response must be, but noted the TSCA leaves that decision in the first instance to the EPA. The court added that one thing the EPA cannot do, however, is to ignore the risk found by the court to exist. The EPA has not yet said if it will appeal the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This court action was first filed in April 2017 and has dragged on for over 7 years.
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