Utah Becomes First State to Ban Fluoride in Public Drinking Water

U.S.

March 28, 2025

Originally posted by: Children's Health Defense

Utah became the first state to ban the addition of fluoride to public drinking water after Gov. Spencer Cox signed the law late Thursday night. The ban will take effect on May 7.

Rep. Stephanie Gricius, who sponsored the bill, said in an email to The Defender that she was thrilled the governor signed it. She said:

“The proper role of government is to provide safe, clean drinking water, not mass medicate the public. While we have banned it from being added to our water systems, we have also increased access to fluoride tablets through the pharmacies so any Utahn who wishes to take it may. But it will now be a decision each individual can make for themselves.”

The new law bans water fluoridation, but also gives pharmacists new authority to prescribe fluoride supplement pills. Typically, such pills can be prescribed only by a dentist or physician.

“What Utah has accomplished is historic, a huge step forward,” said Rick North, board member of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), which won a landmark ruling in a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the agency’s failure to appropriately regulate the chemical.

North said Utah’s law “is a milestone for public health in the country and part of a nationwide trend toward removing this toxin from our water.”

Cox signed the bill amid growing opposition to water fluoridation across the country, driven by new research published in top journals showing that fluoride exposure is linked to lowered IQ in children and other negative neuro-cognitive effects — even at fluoridation levels currently recommended by the public health agencies.

The research also indicates that water fluoridation has little to no effect on dental health.

Utah provided a ‘working scientific study’

Dentist Griffin Cole, conference chairman of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, said Utah provided a “working scientific study” showing that fluoride had no positive effects on dental health because almost half the state already didn’t fluoridate its water.

“They were able to look at decay rates in areas that were fluoridated and areas that weren’t,” he said, “and there was no difference.”

Cox similarly pointed this out in comments to ABC4 Utah earlier this month.

“You would think you would see drastically different outcomes with half the state not getting it and half the state getting it,” Cox told ABC4. “I’ve talked to a lot of dentists. We haven’t seen that. So it’s got to be a really high bar for me if we’re going to require people to be medicated by their government.”

Kathleen Thiessen, Ph.D., who co-authored the 2006 National Resource Council study on fluoride toxicity, said she hopes more states will follow Utah’s example.

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She added:

“The evidence over 20+ years indicates an increased risk to children’s health from exposure to fluoride prenatally and during infancy and early childhood, especially for neurodevelopment. Reduced IQ in children has been found for exposures in the range expected with community water fluoridation. Infants fed formula prepared with fluoridated tap water have some of the highest exposures in the population, at an extremely vulnerable developmental stage.”

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland also said that she hoped that Utah’s new law would be a catalyst for further state removals of fluoride. “CHD applauds Utah on this momentous action to remove fluoride from water. As a result, we will likely see significant health improvements there.”

Brenda Staudenmaier, another plaintiff in the fluoride lawsuit, said she was glad to see states making moves to protect their citizens, “particularly the most vulnerable groups — developing fetuses and bottle-fed infants — who are at greatest risk of fluoride neurotoxicity.”

Staudenmaier said that focusing on fluoride for 80 years had “created blind spots with unintended consequences,” and she hopes that now dental associations will “use their large membership to focus on increasing Medicaid reimbursements, ensuring that low-income individuals have access to dental care.”

Staudenmaier added:

“They should advocate for reducing sugar in public school breakfast programs, promoting breastfeeding to support proper mouth development in children, raising public awareness about how mouth breathing impacts decay risk, and encouraging the use of xylitol gum after meals for children with sensory issues and vitamin D supplementation.”

Moms Against Fluoridation, another plaintiff whose mission is to ban fluoridation nationally, also celebrated the news: “By banning adding this ‘drug’ to the water, citizens in Utah have now reclaimed a real freedom — they can choose for themselves whether to take fluoride.”

“The peer reviewed science is now so clear and so abundant that drinking fluoridation chemicals injures health and fails to reduce tooth decay. Water fluoridation has joined the list that includes lead, asbestos and DDT,” the organization added.

FAN Executive Director Stuart Cooper said, “Government-funded science is clear that fluoridation is causing harm to our children on par with lead and arsenic. Utah is the first state to make the practice illegal, but they join Hawaii and 98% of Europe in rejecting the practice.”

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CDC, AAP, ADA continue to support fluoridation despite new evidence

The growing body of research showing fluoride’s toxic effects gained national attention when a federal judge ruled in the lawsuit brought by FAN, Mothers Against Fluoridation, Food and Water Watch and others against the EPA that water fluoridation at current U.S. levels poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health and that the agency must regulate it.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s 80-page decision outlined the scientific evidence that fluoride exposure is linked to reduced IQ in children. The EPA announced that it planned to appeal the ruling days before President Joe Biden left office.

Major medical associations and public health agencies — including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Dental Association (ADA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — continue to support adding fluoride to drinking water on the grounds that it helps prevent cavities.

They are supported by the mainstream press, which typically refers to fluoride as a “naturally occurring mineral” and downplays the negative effects of fluoride on children’s health.

Fluoride does occur naturally, but the fluoride added to public drinking water is a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer production — as documents from the fluoride lawsuit confirmed — sold off to public water supplies.

Research that the ADA, AAP, and mainstream outlets cite to support their claim that fluoridation has a significant impact on dental health is outdated. An updated Cochrane Review published in October 2024 found that adding fluoride to drinking water provides very limited dental benefits, if any, especially compared with 50 years ago.

“Fluoridation was thought originally to work both systemically and topically,” said dental researcher Dr. Hardy Limeback, professor emeritus and former head of Preventative Dentistry at University of Toronto. “By swallowing a small amount of fluoride each day it would incorporate into developing teeth of growing children and act as a future reservoir for when the enamel was dissolved by the acid made by bacteria that cause cavities. But there was never enough fluoride to do that.”

Limeback added:

“Eventually researchers showed that fluoridation works topically by building up fluoride in dental plaque, which is then released during demineralization/remineralization cycles by cavity-causing bacteria. The CDC confirmed the topical mechanism was the main mechanism. But with the introduction of so many other sources of fluoride from the 1960s onward (toothpastes, mouthwashes, dental materials), fluoridation had less and less effect to the point that today it had almost no effect.”

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