Rob Blais (letter to the Advocate, Aug. 12) implies that a class action lawsuit should be considered for our city council for allowing fluoride in our water.
He bases this mainly on a 530-page study by the U.S. National Research Council titled Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards (2006).
So I had a look. The main conclusion of the researchers? It was the following:
“In light of the collective evidence on various health end points and total exposure to fluoride, the committee concludes that EPA’s [maximum contaminant level] of 4 mg/L should be lowered.”
They didn’t say what it should be lowered to, but I seem to recall that our drinking water is around 0.7 mg/L.
All of the other scary stuff in the study relates to regions where the groundwater has naturally high levels of fluoride in it (i.e. much higher concentrations than we have in our drinking water).
Maybe Blais should spend less time pondering lawsuits, and more time reading the studies that he selectively quotes from.
Evan Bedford
Red Deer