The fluoride issue has moved from conspiracy theories of the 1940s and 1950s, claiming it was a communist plot or a government mind-control trick, to today's science-based debate. The outcome of a court case involving fluoridation could have serious ramifications for EPA rules in the years to come.
Background Fluoride research began in 1909 when Dr. Frederick McKay came to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to study the native residents, many of whom had brown-stained teeth (from mottled enamel), including 90% of the locally born children. Oddly, the researchers determined that these teeth were remarkably resistant to decay; after many years of investigation, the connection between the mottling and resistance to decay was found to be due to the naturally high fluoride levels in the drinking water. Public health organizations wondered whether adding fluoride to drinking water, at levels below that responsible for mottled enamel, would help fight tooth decay. In 1945, the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, agreed to test this theory and became the first city in the world to fluoridate its public water supply. Researchers followed approximately 30,000 schoolchildren over 15 years. They reported that the cavity rate among Grand Rapids children born after fluoride was added to the drinking water dropped by more than 60 percent. Over the years, water fluoridation has spread across the US; today, approximately 75% of the US population receives fluoridated water. The Lawsuit "to protect the public and susceptible populations from the neurotoxic risks of fluoride by banning the addition of fluoridation chemicals in water." In 2016, six organizations petitioned the EPA, under the Toxic Substances Control Act, claiming neurotoxicity to be a hazard of fluoride exposure and that the amount of fluoride regularly consumed by many people "exceeds the doses repeatedly linked to IQ loss and other neurotoxic effects." The EPA denied the petition in 2017, and subsequently, the organizations behind the petition sued EPA, resulting in a lawsuit in 2020. According to the executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, one of the organizations behind the petition and lawsuit, "This case may be groundbreaking for environmental legal cases and at least as important, it is…