Dallas has stabilized fluoride levels in its drinking water, but critics argue that health risks persist.
Dallas Water Utilities records obtained through a Texas Public Information Act request show that the city’s three treatment plants have largely maintained fluoride levels around 0.7 milligrams per liter since late 2024, an improvement over the fluctuations seen last year. The consistency marks a shift after years in which plants frequently overshot or fell short of federal guidelines.
Although some of the most dramatic spikes and dips had already waned by early December 2024, records suggest a turning point in the early part of that month, coinciding with The Dallas Express’s report on the city’s fluoridation problems. In the following months, daily readings drew closer to the 0.7 benchmark, with extreme highs and lows disappearing altogether and deviations shrinking to narrow margins.
The data, spanning September 2024 to September 2025, indicate that most daily fluoride readings at the tap were between 0.6 and 0.8 milligrams per liter, well within the city’s desired range of +/- 0.2 milligrams per liter, as previously expressed to The Dallas Express by City Communications Manager Nick Starling. At the East Side Water Treatment Plant, for example, there were 17 deviations in 2023-2024 but none in the most recent report.
Still, fluoride skeptics argue the program itself is unsafe and should be ended.
“I and others have fought for over 12 years to get the Dallas City Council to stop the Fluoridation Program,” local activist Regina Imburgia told DX via email. “The HFS the DWU adds to our tap water to raise the Fluoride Level is contaminated with arsenic and lead. The Fluoride in the tap water concentrates when you boil water for tea or reduce a soup, you now have a double dose of these poisons.”
Imburgia pointed to a 2024 federal court ruling that found fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.” She said she was “amazed to see after a decade the DWU finally figured out how to do their job more efficiently,” but maintained “the risks clearly outweigh the benefit of water fluoridation.”
Starling told DX in a recent email that the city is still monitoring federal regulatory action. “DWU follows the recommended fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L, consistent with the public health guidelines established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” he said. He added that the city’s level of fluoridation is well below the EPA’s “maximum contaminant level of 4 ppm.”
Dentist and researcher Griffin Cole echoed Imburgia’s concerns in a statement to DX. Given the 2023-2024 records, Cole felt it would be “nearly impossible to achieve and sustain” the CDC’s recommended level of water fluoridation in the long run.
“Secondly, and more importantly, that level lacks robust scientific grounding and mirrors the original arbitrarily assigned range of 0.7 – 1.2mg/L set decades ago,” Cole said. “Furthermore, continuing to dose our drinking water with any amount of fluoride additives contributes to increased neurodevelopmental risks for children, a risk we should not accept at any cost.”
The City of Dallas spends at least $500,000 to fluoridate the tap water, as previously reported by DX.
Dallas has so far improved control at its East Side plant, raising the mean from 0.64 milligrams per liter in 2023-2024 to 0.67 in 2024-2025 while cutting variability nearly in half, according to the newly released records. The Bachman and Elm Fork plants remained stable, although both experienced more days offline this year, with Elm Fork recording a 20-day outage in December.
Starling explained in this latest exchange that this increase in precision was achieved “further narrowing the operating ranges for fluoride residuals” and “adjusting SCADA system alarms to trigger earlier alerts when fluoride levels begin to deviate from the desired range.” As for the outages, Starling said they “reflect scheduled maintenance,” and that the other water treatment facilities pick up the slack when one is offline.
DX reported last year that some treatment plants had elevated fluoride levels above 1.0 milligrams per liter, with one reading as high as 1.28, raising concerns about over-fluoridation. The most recent data showed fewer extreme highs, with only one instance topping 0.9 milligrams per liter.
Fluoride was first added to American drinking water in the 1940s to combat tooth decay, a practice that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has described as one of the great public health interventions of the 20th century. Opponents, however, argue that new scientific evidence has shifted the debate, and the city council should reconsider the practice.
“The Dallas City Council has the authority to vote to end it,” Imburgia said. “They have been given more than ample documentation to support this policy change, but sadly, they will not.”