That's Absolutely Right --This Hazardous Industrial Waste Product Isn't Needed in Our Drinking Water

When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. talked about removing fluoride from U.S. drinking water, the media went crazy. Guess they didn’t hear about the EPA scientists who warned about fluoride decades ago.

Talking to the press, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. trampled on a still-sacred cow when he said, “We don’t need fluoride in our water.”

It was not the first time Kennedy, whom president-elect Donald Trump has indicated will play a role in the administration dealing with health initiatives, brought up the topic of water fluoridation.

In an earlier X post, when RFK, Jr. mentioned water fluoridation in the same breath as “arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease,” he sent the so-called “fact checkers” into a frenzy.

But as far as facts go, those diseases (and more) have all been genuinely associated with this chemical, a hazardous industrial waste product currently added to the municipal water delivered to over 72 percent of the U.S. population — a practice originating with a supposedly “scientific” claim of the beneficial effects of fluoride in preventing tooth decay first made back in the late 1940s that was not only never proven, but since thoroughly discredited.

Also not mentioned in any detail by major media outlets is the recent pivotal California federal court decision based on the acknowledged hazards of water fluoridation, especially related to its causative role in lowering IQs in infants and children.

As Judge Edward Chen wrote in his Sept. decision: “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…

“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…” 

That finding, in and of itself, does not “ban” water fluoridation, but rather requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “engage with a regulatory response.” In other words, the EPA has been mandated to revisit and revise its regulations on fluoride added to drinking water.

“An ideal environmental solution.”

It’s no secret that the type of fluoride added to water — hydrofluosilicic acid (HFSA) — is a hazardous waste product of the phosphate fertilizer industry. As explained by Dr. Paul Connett, director of the Fluoride Action Network in this short video, the HFSA collected from industrial pollution control scrubbers can’t be dumped anywhere due to its toxicity. But it can be sold. And, amazingly, it is — to municipal water facilities all over the U.S.

In 1983, an EPA official wrote in a letter that such an arrangement was “an ideal environmental solution to a long-standing problem.”

Even though media reports on the Kennedy threat to fluoride’s status as a favored toxic chemical made sure to mention the fact that the mineral is “naturally occurring,” they conveniently forgot that such natural leaching into ground and surface water would result in unmeasurable or trace amounts of this toxic chemical. Plus, since the fluoride added to drinking water is an unpurified waste product, it contains other toxic substances such as arsenic and helps facilitate lead leaching from pipes.

And if you’re wondering whether all this toxic exposure is worth that reduction in tooth decay we keep hearing and seeing attributed to it, statistics tell another story.

The United States is one of a handful of nations that currently allows water fluoridation. Countries such as Japan and almost all of Western Europe do not. Looking at tooth decay rates between countries that have adopted this practice vs. those that don’t, the World Health Organization found there is no marked difference in the data. In fact, some anti-fluoride countries even have lower rates of tooth decay than fluoridated ones.

Since the FDA considers fluoride to be a drug (the agency has clearly stated that it’s not an “essential nutrient” and not necessary for health), that means a huge number of citizens – many with no natural teeth – are being covertly dosed with a drug via their drinking water, something they may know nothing about, let alone have said is OK. That can be especially disastrous to the health of anyone with kidney disease, which this toxin is likely to exacerbate.

Here, there and everywhere

Ironically, one of the more obvious side effects of ingesting too much fluoride during the first eight years of life is visible damage to tooth enamel, a condition called dental fluorosis. Characterized by white spots or streaks, brown stains, or pitting of the enamel, the rates of this permanent and unsightly condition have skyrocketed during the last 20 years, corresponding with the addition of fluoride to many municipal water supplies.

Along with exposure to fluoride from water, there’s its use in many brands of toothpaste (that now bear a mandatory poison label), mouthwashes, and dental treatments, as well its presence as a de facto additive in processed foods and beverages made with fluoridated water. So it’s not difficult to ingest significant amounts of fluoride from sources other than your tap water. The most recent numbers of dental fluorosis rates put out by the CDC found that 65 percent of adolescents suffer from it in some form, which jibes with a 2021 published study citing a 70 percent rate of kids with dental fluorosis in the U.S.

Whereas the CDC has emerged as an actual promoter of fluoridation (having labeled it “one of the greatest public health achievements in the 20^th century”), the EPA’s role, by contrast, is to regulate the levels of fluoride allowable in drinking water (something the aforementioned court decision has now required it to overhaul). And not coincidently, some of the most outspoken critics of fluoridation have been top scientists from that agency.

Rarely, if ever mentioned, for instance, is the fact that in 1997 the union representing toxicologists, chemists, biologists, and other professionals working at EPA headquarters voted unanimously to cosponsor an initiative to reverse a California law calling for the mandatory fluoridation of certain locales.

“It is our hope,” said a statement accompanying that vote, “that our co-sponsorship of the Safe Drinking Water Initiative to prohibit fluoridation will have a beneficial effect on the health and welfare of all Californians by helping to keep their water free of a chemical substance for which there is substantial evidence of adverse health effects and, contrary to public perception, virtually no evidence of significant benefits.

“As the professionals who are charged with assessing the safety of drinking water, we concluded that the health and welfare of the public is not served by the addition of this substance to the public water supply.”

All of which should help to clarify why “We don’t need fluoride in our water”— and why attempts to ridicule that statement just don’t hold water.

To learn more about the history of water fluoridation check out A Consumer’s Guide to Toxic Food Additives.