Surprise: RFK Jr. Used to Sell Bottled Water With Extra High Levels of Fluoride

Shortly before Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the former third-party candidate told NBC, “I think fluoride is on its way out. I think the faster that it goes out, the better.” Kennedy wants fluoride out of tap water because, despite the fact that it’s been widely credited with keeping people’s teeth in their mouths and bones intact, he baselessly believes the mineral to be “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” Which makes it pretty, pretty, pretty rich to learn that not only did Kennedy once sell bottled water containing fluoride, but that the product shilled by his company had nearly double the amount of fluoride recommended by the EPA, and well over the amount typically found in tap water.

Yes, The New Yorker reports that in 1999, Kennedy and a partner founded Keeper Springs bottled water, which—setting aside the issue of fluoride—was deeply ironic, given that he was on a mission to clean up polluted waterways with his nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance. As a professor of hydrogeology and water-resources management at Oregon State University would later note in a blog post entitled “Waterkeeper Alliance’s Bottled Water Boondoggle,” the “negative aspects” of the product Kennedy was selling included “plastic bottles. Expense. Transportation costs and GHG emissions. Undermining support for public water supply systems. And so on.” Another awkward detail: According to The New Yorker, one of Keeper Springs’ bottler and distributors was Nestlé, which had “allegedly been exceeding its annual permitted allotment [in San Bernardino National Forest] by more than fifty-four million gallons,” or “more than a million bathtubs too many.”

As for the matter of fluoride, which Kennedy has gone after with a zeal nearly on par with the one he reserves for safe and effective childhood vaccines, well:

According to a 2009 chemical analysis, there was fluoride in Kennedy’s bottled water. Each serving of Keeper Springs, this analysis determined, contained up to 1.3 milligrams of the mineral per litre. That’s a higher concentration than is found in most tap water.

Here’s where things get even more ironic: While health experts actually agree that consuming excessive levels of fluoride over a long period of time can cause health problems—including lower IQ levels in children—numerous organizations say that there are zero risks at the level recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency. Which is 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of drinking water, i.e. nearly half of what was reportedly found in Kennedy’s bottled water. (A spokesperson for Kennedy declined Vanity Fair’s request for comment.) Last month, The New York Times reported that “a recent analysis by the federal government’s National Toxicology Program found that fluoride levels at or above 1.5 milligrams per liter—more than twice the EPA recommended level—are ‘consistently associated with lower IQ in children.’”

Anyway, according to Chris Bartle, who cofounded Keeper Springs, Kennedy did not appear to take issue with fluoride in the water they were selling. “I never heard it mentioned,” he told The New Yorker.

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