Fluoride not on tap in Palmer

PALMER — As of last week, the city is no longer adding fluoride to its water.

“There’s still fluoride in the system, it will take awhile until it’s down to its natural level,” Palmer Mayor DeLena Johnson said. “It’s down to about half of what it was.”

Even when all the city added fluoride is out of the system, water coming out of the pipes will still have fluoride.

The city has five wells. Well 1, which produces 1 percent of city water, has .71 parts per million of fluoride; Well 5, which produces 97 percent of the city’s water, has .18 ppm. Palmer had been adding enough of it to kick that level up to 1 ppm. The state recommends a level of 1 to 1.2 ppm. Stopping the fluoridation of city water in Palmer ends a 44-year program that began in 1967.

Johnson said that a vote by the city council last Tuesday was 6-1 and involved very little debate. Not even every city council member spoke to the ordinance. Johnson said that, for her part, she shared what she’d learned in a conversation with her personal dentist.

“He told me that 10 years ago he would have been very adamant about retaining the fluoride,” Johnson said. “Current research is that value is from topical applications and not actually ingesting it or drinking it.”

The lone vote in favor of retaining the fluoride came from councilman Ken Erbey who, Johnson said, actually spoke to a similar conversation — but with different advice he’d had with his own dentist.

Johnson said that is indicative of where the debate is around the country as a whole.

“Right here at our level it’s the same kind of split within the dental community,” she said. “It’s about 50/50 as to what the recommendations are.”

Palmer’s move puts it in the company of larger Alaska cities that have made the move this decade.

In Juneau in 2007, the city council there voted to stop adding fluoride to city water after a two-year study of the issue. In Fairbanks this summer, that city council made a similar move after a fluoride task force recommended ceasing fluoridation.

According to a memo accompanying Palmer’s ordinance, America is actually in the minority on the fluoridation issue: “Ninety-nine percent of western continental Europe has rejected, banned or stopped fluoridation due to environmental, health, legal or ethical concerns. Only about 5 percent of the world population is fluoridated and more than 50 percent of those people live in North America.”

The memo also notes that although people have filed lawsuits against cities to stop fluoridation, appeals courts have consistently held that municipal fluoridation programs are legal.

At any rate, haulting the practice in Palmer will save the city something on the order of $4,000 a year. In 2010, it cost $4,340 and this year it cost $4,429. Both of those numbers include a $300 estimate for labor costs.

“You talk about how much time it takes for people to add it and to monitor it; it’s a toxic chemical so they have to suit up when they do their procedures,” Johnson said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.