If La. removes fluoride from water, officials should tackle ‘Cancer Alley’ next

The results were the same for another Fesi bill to authorize the over-the-counter sale of ivermectin at pharmacies without a doctor’s prescription. As with the anti-fluoride bill, ivermectin supporters had ample info to support their viewpoint (we’ll get back to this too).

Yet despite this apparent pro-science and pro-research mindset, overwhelming evidence of higher rates of cancer and other chronic ailments in communities along the Mississippi River’s petrochemical corridor in Louisiana are routinely ignored – if not doubted – within conservative circles.

Just three years ago, a peer-reviewed Tulane Environmental Law Clinic study found the estimated cancer risk was highest in the River Parish communities right next to point sources of pollution. Most of these settlements are predominantly Black and low-income, inhabited in part by the descendants of slaves who toiled on the plantations where refineries and chemical plants now stand.

The same study found the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) issued permits to allow industrial pollution emissions at rates 7 to 21 times higher among Black communities than in predominantly white ones.

According to 2024 health data research from Human Rights Watch, people living in areas with the worst air pollution in Louisiana, including much of “Cancer Alley,” had rates of low birthweight more than double the state average (11.3 percent) and more than triple the U.S. average (8.5 percent). Preterm births were nearly double the state average (13 percent) and nearly two-and-a-half times the national rate (10.5 percent).

State officials are not willing to acknowledge the disparities.

“LDEQ does not use the term Cancer Alley,” a department spokesperson told Human Rights Watch last year. “That term implies that there is a large geographic area that has higher cancer incidence than the state average. We have not seen higher cancer incidence over large areas of the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.”

Now let’s go back to last week’s Senate committee hearing to see if we can’t connect that statement to why state officials can’t – or won’t – acknowledge verified scientific facts that are staring them in the face.

That includes state Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham, who was by Fesi’s side to support both of his bills. Regarding the removal of fluoride from drinking water, Abraham said there “probably is a direct correlation between fluoride intake in pregnant ladies and lower IQs in their babies.” Crowley chiropractor Sandra Marks, who also testified in favor of the bill, made the same claim and cited a Harvard School of Public Health study.

What Abraham and Marks didn’t share was that the Harvard study involved children in China with high overexposure to fluoride. They implied lower IQs were linked with exposure to permissible levels of fluoride in the U.S.

Jeanie Donovan, New Orleans deputy health department director, shared details on the Harvard research with lawmakers when testifying against Fesi’s bill. She also pointed out the lack of any reliable scientific research that connects fluoride with thyroid disease.

“We have many, many health issues in our city and in our state that we should address and that we should be spending time and money to address,” Donovan told the committee, making it clear that fluoride overexposure was not one of them.

Anne Jayes with the Louisiana Public Health Institute and Dr. Robert Delarosa, a Baton Rouge pediatric dentist for 41 years, both cited a University of Queensland study that found children with access to properly fluoridated water had higher IQs.

Marks, who said her research was sourced through Meta AI, also sounded the alarm over skeletal fluorosis, which can result in bone density changes and an increased risk of fractures. What she failed to mention was the bone disorder involves exposure to excessive amounts of fluoride.

Jayes later pointed out the potentially dangerous fluoride levels in the study Marks cited were 21 to 28 times the recommended amount for drinking water systems, and that skeletal fluorosis studies themselves have been “widely challenged for their poor quality.”

Annette Droddy, executive director of the 1,900-member Louisiana Dental Association, noted to the committee a trend of states reversing their bans on fluoridated drinking water, including Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Tennessee.

Calgary, Alberta, removed fluoride from its water in 2011 but restored it in 2023, Droddy said. The reversal came after health officials noted a 700 percent increase in children hospitalized for dental inflections and abscesses.

In Louisiana, only 39 percent of the population is provided fluoridated water through their public utility – well below the 72 percent national average, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Removing fluoride will compound issues for the nearly 500,000 children in Louisiana who don’t see a dentist regularly, even though they qualify for dental coverage through Medicaid, Droddy said. Without fluoridated water, she said the state will have to ask the federal government for more money to cover a likely increase in children’s dental problems.

“Why would we take away the best public health measure of the 20th century?” Droddy said.

Yet Fesi stuck to his guns in his closing statement for Senate Bill 2, doubling down on the debunked low IQ and thyroid claims – and adding autism for good measure without any supporting evidence.

On Fesi’s other bill, Abraham provided what he called a “guesstimate,” saying “a fairly large percentage of the population of the United States takes ivermectin on a daily basis.”

The most recent number available for daily ivermectin use in the U.S. is 185,550 people, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Hospitals.

That’s only 0.05 percent of the national population; it’s not nothing but certainly not “a fairly large percentage” of Americans. That poor grasp of health data might be cause for concern among Abraham’s patients – animal and human.

The surgeon general and other backers of Fesi’s bill frequently mentioned “health freedom” during the Senate committee hearing. That concept apparently doesn’t apply to neighbors of industrial facilities who no doubt would like freedom from toxic exposure linked to chronic ailments and a significantly lowered quality and length of life.

Fesi also referred to fluoride as “toxic waste,” something that communities along the river could probably help him better define.

If Louisiana leaders are going to pull fluoride out of our drinking water, it stands to reason they should show equal concern for the health of residents in “Cancer Alley.”