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Environmental Working Group: Plans for fluorination put children at risk

Posted by: Maven on August 20, 2007 at 7:53 pm

From AScribe:

More than 64,000 children a day in Southern California will be exposed to an unsafe dose of fluoride when the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) begins adding fluoride to drinking water in October, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

The water district’s plan to add fluoride to the water it supplies to 18 million customers in most of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, and parts of San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties will put 14.5 percent of children under 1 year old, and 12.5 percent of children 1 to 2 years old, over the recommended fluoride exposure limits published by the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS’s) Institute of Medicine and endorsed by the American Dental Association. In Los Angeles County alone, more than 40,000 children age 2 and under will exceed the safe dose.

EWG dietary information from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and tap water fluoride data from the Centers for Disease Control to model total fluoride exposures from tap water, food and toothpaste for children age 2 and under. It is a conservative estimate because it only counts children in the three largest counties served by MWD, and because some of the 26 local water agencies served by MWD already add fluoride to water after they receive it from the district.

The full report is available at www.ewg.org. It will be formally released at 10:30 a.m. today at a news conference at the New Otani Hotel, 120 S. Los Angeles Street in downtown LA. “The value of fluoride in toothpaste to dental health is clear,” said Bill Walker, EWG’s vice president for the West Coast. “But a substantial and growing body of peer-reviewed science strongly suggests that adding fluoride to tap water is not the safest way to achieve the dental health benefits of fluoridation.”

The group maintains that children drinking fluorinated water are at risk for developing fluorosis, a condition where teeth are stained and tooth enamel permanently damaged.

To read the full text of this article from AScribe, click here.

To read the Environmental Working Group’s report on fluorinated water supplies, click here.

August 20, 2007 · Filed Under Drinking Water & Bottled Water

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