One American state legislature has made history by banning a water program that has become nearly universal in the past half century.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said he would sign a recently passed bill prohibiting the addition of fluoride to drinking water systems, the Associated Press reported.
“It’s not a bill I care that much about,” Cox reportedly said, “but it’s a bill I will sign.”
However, this was not his first comment on the matter. Cox said he and many other Utahians grew up in communities that do not have fluoridated water.
“You would think you would see drastically different outcomes with half the state not getting it. …We haven’t seen that,” Cox said during an interview with ABC4 in Salt Lake City. “So it’s got to be a really high bar for me if we’re going to require people to be medicated by their government.”
These actions come after a Federal Judge in California ordered the EPA to take regulatory action against water fluoridation in 2024, as it poses an “unreasonable risk” to human health at recommended levels, as The Dallas Express reported. Some of these risks include decreased IQ in children.
There is also widespread speculation that other federal agencies may take action against fluoride, irrespective of whatever the EPA does. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sworn into office in February, has also expressed skepticism about water fluoridation.
Jurisdictions in Texas have taken similar action, although not on the same scale.
“After careful consideration and thorough evaluation of scientific research, public opinion, and the potential health and environmental impacts, we have concluded that it is in the best interest of our community to discontinue the practice of water fluoridation effective December 1, 2023,” Shean R. Dalton, general manager of Brushy Creek Municipal Utility District, wrote to the residents of the small Central Texas town in 2023.
Pro-fluoride advocates say the mineral is essential for public health.
The CDC’s website reads, “CDC named fluoridation of drinking water one of 10 great public health interventions of the 20th century because of the dramatic decline in cavities since community water fluoridation started in 1945.”
Fluoride was first added to water at the urging of various federal health agencies and to dental products, such as toothpaste, in the middle of the 20th century because some scientists believed it prevented dental caries, commonly known as cavities.
Most tap water in metropolitan areas, including almost all in DFW, is fluoridated.