The Fluoride Controversy

Date: 02/25/2001

STATEMENT OF Dr. J. WILLIAM HIRZY
NATIONAL TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION CHAPTER 280
BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON WILDLIFE, FISHERIES AND DRINKING WATER
UNITED STATES SENATE
JUNE 29, 2000

Good morning Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this Subcommittee to present the views of the union, of which I am a Vice-President, on the subject of fluoridation of public water supplies.

Our union is comprised of and represents the professional employees at the headquarters location of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington D.C. Our members include toxicologists, biologists, chemists, engineers, lawyers and others defined by law as "professionals." The work we do includes evaluation of toxicity, exposure and economic information for managements use in formulating public health and environmental protection policy.

I am not here as a representative of EPA, but rather as a representative of EPA headquarters professional employees, through their duly elected labor union. The union first got involved in this issue in 1985 as a matter of professional ethics. In 1997 we most recently voted to oppose fluoridation. Our opposition has strengthened since then.

Summary of Recommendations

1) We ask that you order an independent review of a cancer bioassay previously mandated by Congressional committee and subsequently performed by Battelle Memorial Institute with appropriate blinding and instructions that all reviewers independent determinations be reported to this Committee.

2) We ask that you order that the two waste products of the fertilizer industry that are now used in 90% of fluoridation programs, for which EPA states they are not able to identify any chronic studies, be used in any future toxicity studies, rather than a substitute chemical. Further, since federal agencies are actively advocating that each man woman and child drink, eat and bathe in these chemicals, silicofluorides should be placed at the head of the list for establishing a MCL that complies with the Safe Drinking Water Act. This means that the MCL be protective of the most sensitive of our population, including infants, with an appropriate margin of safety for ingestion over an entire lifetime.

3) We ask that you order an epidemiology study comparing children with dental fluorosis to those not displaying overdose during growth and development years for behavioral and other disorders.

4) We ask that you convene a joint Congressional Committee to give the only substance that is being mandated for ingestion throughout this country the full hearing that it deserves.

The Subcommittees hearing today can only begin to get at the issues surrounding the policy of water fluoridation in the United States, a massive experiment that has been run on the American public, without informed consent, for over fifty years. The last Congressional hearings on this subject were held in 1977. Much knowledge has been gained in the intervening years. It is high time for a national review of this policy by a Joint Select Committee of Congress. New hearings should explore, at minimum, these points:

1) excessive and un-controlled fluoride exposures;

2) altered findings of a cancer bioassay;

3) the results and implications of recent brain effects research;

4) the "protected pollutant" status of fluoride within EPA;

5) the altered recommendations to EPA of a 1983 Surgeon Generals Panel on fluoride;

6) the results of a fifty-year experiment on fluoridation in two New York communities;

7) the findings of fact in three landmark lawsuits since 1978;

8) the findings and implications of recent research linking the predominant fluoridation

chemical with elevated blood-lead levels in children and anti-social behavior; and

9) changing views among dental researchers on the efficacy of water fluoridation