A court has ruled in favor of a lawsuit against the EPA, stating that water fluoridation puts children’s health at risk and must be regulated.
Advocates against water fluoridation have won a precedent-setting victory this week following the United States District Court of the Northern District of California’s ruling that fluoridation presents an "unreasonable risk" to children's health.
The battle between the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been ongoing since 2016, when a group of non-profits and individuals petitioned the EPA to end the addition of fluoridation chemicals into U.S. drinking water due to fluoride's neurotoxicity.
Recent research has shown that while fluoride is effective at preventing cavities in children, it is also linked to lower IQ levels in children.
The EPA rejected the initial petition, however. The groups then sued the EPA in federal court in 2017, and a two-phase trial took place in June 2020 and February 2024.
This week, the court announced its decision, ruling that fluoridation of water at 0.7 mg/L — the level currently considered “optimal” in the United States — poses an “unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.”
The court found that the risk of injury to children is sufficient enough to require an EPA regulatory response.
“The scientific literature in the record provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present; fluoride is associated with reduced IQ,” wrote the court in the final ruling. “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.”
The court also noted that the size of the affected population is vast: approximately 200 million Americans have fluoride intentionally added to their drinking water at a concentration of 0.7 mg/L. Many others are meanwhile indirectly exposed by consuming commercial beverages and food manufactured with fluoridated water
Additionally, approximately two million pregnant women, and over 300,000 exclusively formula-fed babies, are exposed to fluoridated water.
“While the EPA can appeal this ruling, any delay or attempts by the EPA to do so will only result in more children being harmed, particularly those with low income who cannot afford expensive reverse osmosis or distillation filtration of their tap water,” said FAN in a statement.
This ruling is the first time a citizen's petition has gone to trial, and the first time a citizen group has won a trial against EPA under TSCA Section 21—the Citizen Suit provision.
“This is a precedent-setting legal decision,” FAN said. “This will create opportunities for citizen and environmental watchdog groups to use the same process to force the EPA to do their job and effectively regulate chemicals that are harming the public."
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