(The Center Square) — Gov. Ron DeSantis says he’ll sign a pair of health-related bills, including one that banned the addition of fluoride to public drinking water and another that prohibits weather modification activities.
Both measures have been branded as “conspiracy theories” by critics, but DeSantis says both are critical to the health and well-being of Floridians and the state’s environment.
During a news conference Tuesday in Miami, the second-term GOP governor said he’ll sign both bills as soon as they make it to his desk. Both were approved by big majorities in both chambers.
“But if you look, there are movements, private businesses, and their view is we can save you from global warming by injecting different things in the atmosphere, blocking the sun, doing all this stuff, and that is not something we’re going to do in Florida,” DeSantis said. “First of all, we’re the Sunshine State. We want to have the nice sunshine. So I think that this is something that there are interests and entities out there that want to do some of this, and it’s not something that is appropriate for the state of Florida. I don’t think it’s probably appropriate period anywhere.”
Senate Bill 700 redefines a water additive “to mean any chemical or additive which is used in a public water system for the purpose of meeting or surpassing primary or secondary drinking water standards, removing contaminants, or improving water quality.”
While the bill doesn’t ban the addition of fluoride to public drinking water, it prohibits the use of any chemical or additive that isn’t required for disinfection or water quality.
The bill codifies guidance from Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Lapado that was issued in November that recommended “against community water fluoridation due to the neuropsychiatric risk.”
He compared the resistance of doctors, dentists and other public health leaders to removing fluoride from the public water supply as like Linus and his blanket in the Peanuts comic strip.
“They’re doctors, dentists, public health leaders who are holding on to fluoridation, like that blanket,” Lapado said. “I mean, it doesn’t matter what the evidence shows, right? Whatever the studies show about potential harms and children and and pregnant woman and who knows about the rest of us, they’re just holding on to it.
“And it’s OK when you’re a kid. But we’re grown ups here. We’re adults. We’re responsible for, you know, for the lives of other people. We need to make good decisions so you just, you know, it’s really cute when you’re a kid, but you can’t hold on to that blanket as a grownup.”
SB56 was sponsored by Sen. Ileana Garcia, R-Miami, who briefly needed medical attention before returning to the lectern to finish her remarks.
Garcia’s bill prohibits “geoengineering and weather modification activities.” These could include any injection, release or dispersion of a chemical or a compound for the “express purpose of affecting the temperature, weather, climate, or intensity of sunlight.”
“These are not natural occurrences. They’re deliberate interventions in complex natural systems,” Garcia said. “The potential negative consequence of widespread unchecked weather modification and geoengineering are deeply concerning. Introducing foreign substances into our atmosphere can have unintended and far reaching effects on our weather patterns, potentially leading up to unpredictable droughts, floods and disruption to agricultural cycles.
“The long term impacts of our ecosystems, our air quality and even our health are largely unknown but devastating. We’re talking about fundamentally altering the very systems that sustain life, often with limited understanding of cascading consequences.”
The bill has been called a “chemtrail bill” by detractors, making reference to the oft-debunked conspiracy theory that contrails from aircraft at high altitudes are spraying potentially harmful chemicals on people below, but DeSantis pushed back on that assertion, saying that contrails seen in the sky from aircraft are normal and aren’t part of Garcia’s measure.
