Children's Health Defense
After Utah last month became the first state to ban water fluoridation, local water managers now face a dilemma: How should they dispose of the remaining fluoride?
Mainstream media, dental associations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other proponents of water fluoridation repeatedly state that the “miracle mineral” fluoride is a “naturally occurring” mineral.
But the fluoride added to town water supplies is far from natural.
Naturally occurring fluoride is calcium fluoride. The fluoride added to water is the byproduct of phosphate fertilizer production, sold off by chemical companies to local water departments across the country.
The byproduct comes in the form of hydrofluorosilicic acid, which is used by most large cities to fluoridate their water.
Hydrofluorosilicic acid is considered a hazardous substance and must be disposed of following strict environmental regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Scott Paxman, general manager of the Weber Basin Conservancy District, which provides water to over 700,000 Utah residents, told The Defender that he reached out to the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to inquire about fluoride disposal.
DEQ told Paxman that once the May 7 deadline to end fluoridation in Utah kicks in, any water districts that still have fluoride in their facilities will be subject to regulation as generators of hazardous waste — requiring them to follow an expensive and time-consuming set of regulatory requirements to get rid of their hydrofluorosilicic acid.
Paxman said he was outraged that his water conservancy district would be classified as a hazardous waste generator. “We aren’t hazardous waste generators,” he said. “We are just middlemen.”
He said that for years, water operators in Utah had been raising concerns about the hazards of the acid that they saw firsthand in their facilities and the health risks they and the public faced from fluoride exposure.
Water operators like Paxman were active in the campaign to end fluoridation in Utah, he said. Now they were not getting the guidance they needed to dispose of the chemicals.
‘They have no idea how toxic this stuff is’
Paxman said DEQ’s first suggestion was that the water districts run out the fluoride by stepping up the feed rates of fluoride into the water. The agency pointed out that they could go as high as 4 milligrams per liter (mg/L) — which is the current maximum contaminant level (MCL) enforceable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The 4 mg/L maximum contaminant level was challenged in the recent landmark lawsuit against the EPA for failing to appropriately regulate the chemical. The EPA lost, and the judge in the case directed the agency to enact new regulations. The EPA is appealing the ruling…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (childrenshealthdefense.org)
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