EPA ordered to address risks of fluoride in water linked to children’s IQ

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been ordered to address how fluoride in water could risk children’s intellectual development.

Edward Chen, a U.S. District judge in San Francisco, California, said on Tuesday that although it is unclear if the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ (intelligence quotient) levels in kids, there is increasing research that it could be an unreasonable risk.

Chen ruled that the EPA must take steps to lower that potential risk, but did not clarify what the process would look like.

In August, the National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), released a report that stated “with moderate confidence” that there is a connection between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The report marks the first time a federal agency has determined such findings. It was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoride in drinking water alone.

The court case started in 2017, but Chen paused proceedings in 2020 to await the results of the National Toxicology Program report. He did, however, hear arguments about the case earlier this year.

You may have heard of fluoride at the dentist’s office or read it as an ingredient on your toothpaste bottle. That’s because fluoride repairs and prevents damage to your teeth by replacing minerals lost from bacteria in your mouth that produce acid when you eat or drink.

Low levels of fluoride can also be found in your drinking water and has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century. Federal officials supported water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay in 1950 and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste entered the market several years later.

The EPA, a defendant in the 2017 lawsuit headed by Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, argued that it wasn’t clear what impact fluoride exposure might have at lower levels. However, the agency is required to ensure that there is a margin between the hazard and exposure levels.

And “if there is an insufficient margin, then the chemical poses a risk,” Chen wrote in Tuesday’s ruling.

“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, he wrote.

EPA spokesperson Jeff Landis told The Associated Press that the agency was reviewing Chen’s decision. No further comment was given.

According to 2022 water fluoridation statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), nearly two-thirds of Americans receive fluoridated drinking water.

Federal officials have recommended a fluoridation level of 0.7 milligrams per liter of water as of 2015. This is a decrease from the recommended upper ranger of 1.2 milligrams from the 50 years before that. Meanwhile, the EP has a longstanding requirement that water systems cannot have over 4 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water. For comparison, the international safe limit for fluoride in drinking water as stated by the World Health Organization (WHO) is 1.5 milligrams.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.