If U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary-designee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has his way about removing fluoride for the country’s water systems, residents in Soddy-Daisy can say they were ahead of the curve.
The North West Utility District, which supplies water to the Soddy-Daisy, Sale Creek, Falling Water and Mowbray Mountain areas, voted on July 20, 2016, to eliminate fluoride from its water treatment process.
News reports from the time say the idea came from the utility’s then-general manager, David Collett, who cited studies such as one in the respected medical journal Lancet that called fluoride part of a “pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity.”
North West Utility District officials didn’t make a snap decision, though. They studied the issue for two months and solicited comments from customers.
“No matter what we do,” utility board president Phyllis Marr said at the outset of the information gathering, “there are going to be some people upset. We’ve just got to have as much information as we can to make an educated decision.”