ADA files amicus brief supporting EPA’s appeal of fluoride court order

Judge directed agency to further regulate community water fluoridation following lawsuit

The American Dental Association filed an amicus brief July 25 in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s appeal of a court order directing the agency to further regulate the fluoridation of public water systems.

The January appeal came after a group of citizens sued the EPA when it denied a petition to stop community water fluoridation. The petitioners claimed fluoride, even in the small amounts added to public drinking water, diminishes neurocognitive health. Judge Edward Chen with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in their favor, ordering the EPA to “engage with a regulatory response.”  

In its brief, the ADA argues the court should have considered the dental and oral disease risk reduction attributed to community water fluoridation when determining if the practice presented an “unreasonable risk” under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The act states that plaintiffs must establish that the chemical substance under consideration “presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors, including an unreasonable risk to a potentially exposed or susceptible population, under the conditions of use.”

Instead, the court considered community water fluoridation’s disease reduction effects as a “nonrisk factor,” even though the EPA argued that risk reduction is considered a risk-related factor under the act.

In its brief, the ADA also points out that the act explicitly requires consideration of risk to a “potentially exposed or susceptible population” and highlights a 2000 surgeon general report that found those suffering the most with dental and oral diseases were “the poor of all ages.”

“Based on its interpretations of the Amended TSCA, the Court did not take into account in reaching its unreasonable risk decision the immense weight of scientific evidence supporting the critical importance of community water fluoridation in reducing the human health risk of the ‘“silent epidemic” of dental and oral diseases’ in America today, nor did it assess the risk-related implications for susceptible populations. This failure to consider key evidence resulted in a deficient unreasonable risk determination,” the ADA said in its brief.  

The ADA also argues the plaintiffs did not meet the Toxic Substances Control Act’s standard requiring them to establish — by a preponderance of the evidence — that the chemical substance “presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health … under the conditions of use.” The conditions of use are 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water. The brief outlines evidence from several sources that does not establish a link between low-level fluoride exposure, as seen in the U.S., and “an unreasonable risk of injury to health.”

The ADA previously sent letters to the EPA encouraging the agency to appeal the court order in January and to continue its appeal in March.

For more information on community water fluoridation and ADA advocacy, visit ADA.org/fluoride.