Joshua Paladino and his family. Courtesy | Facebook
Acting Mayor Joshua Paladino said his top priority is to remove fluoride from the city’s water, and City Manager David Mackie said he will support the plan’s execution.
Paladino, a 28-year-old Hillsdale College graduate, has placed this objective at the top of the list of priorities after former mayor Adam Stockford ’15 resigned in December and Paladino became mayor. He said he intends to rethink the city’s approach to water quality entirely.
“If your people are sick — mentally, physically — then the government is not doing its job,” Paladino told The Collegian in a December interview. “That obligation is increased by the fact that the city government manages its own utilities, so that obligation is directly on us. I don’t see any federal or state requirement that we have to put fluoride in the water, and I think we now have mounting evidence that this is harmful.”
Douglas Dobrozsi, director of Hillsdale College’s scientific laboratories and a former pharmaceutical engineer, said the science community is re-thinking adding fluoride to drinking water. He cited multiple recent studies, including those from the European Public Health Association and the American Medical Association, that he said showed how high fluoride during pregnancy or early infant life impaired neurological development.
Fluoride can occur naturally in water in Michigan and, when added to drinking water, can prevent tooth decay and provide other health benefits, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls water fluoridation one of the most important public health accomplishments of the 20th century.
But Dobrozsi disagrees.
“The history of municipal water fluoridation begins at a time when dental cavities were a very big health problem,” Dobrozsi said. “It really wasn’t all that carefully thought through, an opinion I can offer as a drug delivery scientist, with the benefit of hindsight. Fluoride is regulated as a drug by the Food and Drug Administration. So it is not being dramatic to say a drug is being added to the water supply.”
Paladino said he needs the support of Hillsdale city officials for any major action.
According to David Mackie, city manager and director of the board of public utilities, the city is committed to working with Paladino and the city council.
“The City of Hillsdale meets all state and federal water quality standards,” Mackie said. “Mayor Pro-Tem Paladino has expressed his interest in exploring ways to further improve our water quality. He has also emphasized the importance of collaborating with the council to establish goals and priorities for the city. City staff are committed to supporting the council as they define the direction and initiatives that will best serve our community.”
Compared to the national average, the fluoride level that the city reports annually is around 0.5 mg/L, which is below the 0.7 mg/L threshold that the — the generally acceptable maximum in the U.S. for fluoride supplementation, according to Dobrozsi.
Paladino said this number is still too high.
“I don’t see any federal or state requirement that we have to have any fluoride in the water,” Paladino said. “I think we now have mounting evidence that this is harmful enough to remove. So that’s going to be a top priority.”
In addition to fluoride, Paladino said he is also concerned about other foreign substances in Hillsdale’s water supply, such as trihalomethanes. According to the National Library of Medicine’s Encyclopedia of Toxicology, trihalomethanes are chemicals generated as a by-product of chlorine treatment of water.
Paladino said he is concerned about the trihalomethane chemical, chloroform, as there is no legal limit to how much of this substance could be in Hillsdale residents’ water. The chemical has been associated with inhibited kidney function, among other side effects, according to the Encyclopedia of Toxicology.
Paladino said the acceptable level of chloroform in drinking water is around four parts per billion, and Hillsdale’s number is closer to 34 parts per billion.
“Trihalomethanes as reported on the city’s water quality report are on the higher side compared to other municipalities in Michigan,” Dobrozsi said. “The city must test for them and there are maximum allowed levels which on a pretty small number of tests the water in Hillsdale did exceed.”
Paladino said this is a reason to begin reforming the city’s approach to water quality and stated that he supports a sediment filtration-based approach, which would use physical filters to purify resident’s drinking water. Paladino also said he is interested in exploring the possibility of an additional wave-based purification element, using ultraviolet rays to further purify water.
“I would just like to get chemicals out of our lives as much as possible,” he said.
Paladino said improving Hillsdale’s water quality is the first step to revitalizing the City of Hillsdale.
“I want to shift the goal posts of success slightly, or maybe quite a bit,” Paladino said. “And one of the top things I want to focus on is the health of the citizens. The power of a mayor is to secure the common good, and one of the central things to this will be the health of our citizens.”
Paladino also said he hopes to implement the other points of his plan. Ending Special Assessment Districts and funding homeless housing through private charity are part of Paladino’s policy priorities for the rest of his term. Paladino told The Collegian last month he plans to run for mayor at the August special election.
“I’m trying to figure out how everything works and implement what is best for the citizens as a whole,” Paladino said. “We’re not trying to create a tourist destination. We’re trying to create a good place for people to live, to work, to worship, to raise families, to educate themselves and their children.”
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