First Towns in US Suspend Water Fluoridation After Judge’s Ruling on Fluoride’s IQ Risk

Yorktown and Somers appear to be the first towns in the United States to have ceased adding fluoride to water after a judge’s ruling this week.

A woman fills up a glass with water, in a file photo. Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

Two municipalities in New York state moved to suspend water fluoridation in light of a federal judge’s ruling earlier this week ordering the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address potential risks that fluoride could pose to children’s intellectual development.

An announcement issued by Yorktown Supervisor Ed Lachterman’s office, which referenced U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s ruling on Sept. 24, stated that the Westchester County city would suspend the practice of adding fluoride, which some health officials say is beneficial in fighting cavities, to its tap water.

“In light of this federal ruling and the long-standing concerns expressed by many Yorktown residents, I have decided to suspend water fluoridation as a precautionary measure,” Lachterman said in the Sept. 26 statement. “Our priority is the safety and well-being of our community, and we believe it is prudent to pause fluoridation to further assess its potential impacts.”

The supervisor of the town of Somers, located near Yorktown, said that the suspension of fluoridation in Yorktown means that Somers won’t have fluoridated water, either.

“Removing fluoride from Somers’ drinking water would give residents the freedom to choose their own sources of fluoride, ensuring personal control over their health decisions. Additionally, concerns about potential long-term health risks from fluoride exposure support reevaluating its use in public water systems. Somers applauds Yorktown for making this decision,” Somers Supervisor Robert Scorrano said in the statement.

In August, the Northern Westchester Joint Water Works started adding the chemical compound to Yorktown’s tap water for the first time in seven years, the town stated. Fluoridation was reinitiated after upgrades were carried out at two local water treatment plants to meet higher health and safety requirements.

The two facilities, the Amawalk and Catskill treatment plants, added hydrofluorosilicic acid to the tap water with a target dosage of 0.7 milligrams per liter, according to the city.

Yorktown and Somers appear to be the first municipalities in the United States to have ended water fluoridation after Chen’s ruling in which he sided with multiple advocacy groups and directed the EPA to address the risks of adding fluoridation to drinking water. The agency is required to ensure that there is a margin between the hazard level and the exposure level, he wrote.

“If there is an insufficient margin, then the chemical poses a risk,” the judge wrote. “Simply put, the risk to health at exposure levels in United States drinking water is sufficiently high to trigger regulatory response by the EPA [under federal law].”

His order also cited “scientific literature in the record“ that ”provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present” and that could demonstrate “fluoride is associated with reduced IQ.”

But Chen, on multiple occasions, stressed that his ruling doesn’t stipulate that fluoridated water can, with certainty, cause lower IQ in children.

“This order does not dictate precisely what that response must be,” the judge also said, referring to what the EPA might do to address the potential risk.

Since 2015, federal health officials have recommended a fluoridation level of 0.7 milligrams per liter of water. For five decades before that, the recommended upper range was 1.2 milligrams per liter. The World Health Organization has set a safe limit for fluoride in drinking water of 1.5 milligrams.

The towns’ decisions also come about a month after the federal National Toxicology Program found that there is a link between higher amounts of fluoride exposure and a lower IQ in children. The agency used studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.

It found that exposing children to high levels of fluoride, which it defined as 1.5 milligrams per liter, was “consistently associated” with a lower IQ in kids. It also made reference to other possible neurodevelopmental problems associated with the compound but suggested that more evidence is needed.

The federal agency’s report reads, “This review finds, with moderate confidence, that higher estimated fluoride exposures ... are consistently associated with lower IQ in children.”