North Bay has an exceptional PFAS drinking-water problem. Ontario identifies North Bay as the only known drinking-water system in the province that consistently exceeds Health Canada’s 30 ng/L PFAS objective because of historic contamination. In 2025, treated water entering North Bay’s distribution system measured 64.2, 66.0, 47.0 and 49.8 ng/L across four quarterly samples.
One of Canada’s largest published municipal tap-water datasets examined 463 samples from 376 Quebec municipalities. Total PFAS had a median concentration of 2 ng/L and a 95th percentile of only 13 ng/L. Higher isolated municipal results have been documented elsewhere in Canada, but North Bay’s treated water has remained around 50–65 ng/L year after year, combining unusually high concentrations with persistent exposure through a municipal drinking-water system.
Health Canada’s 30 ng/L sum-of-25 objective is not a toxicological line below which PFAS suddenly becomes harmless. Other major authorities regulate some of the compounds dominating North Bay’s water much more stringently. The U.S. EPA maintains legally enforceable limits of 4 ng/L each for PFOS and PFOA, with health-based goals of zero, while Sweden’s drinking-water standard, effective January 2026, limits PFOS + PFOA + PFHxS + PFNA combined to 4 ng/L. Those four compounds totalled at least approximately 40–57 ng/L in North Bay’s 2025 treated water even before assigning any concentration to PFNA below the laboratory detection threshold, roughly 10 to 14 times Sweden’s PFAS4 limit. PFOS alone averaged approximately 30.5 ng/L, compared with the U.S. EPA’s 4 ng/L limit. The standards are derived differently, but 30 ng/L is clearly not the most protective serious international benchmark.
Health Canada itself identifies PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS and PFNA as among the most toxicologically potent PFAS and recommends significant mitigative action such as treatment when they dominate water approaching or exceeding 30 ng/L. They are precisely the compounds accounting for much of North Bay’s contamination.
Pregnant women and families preparing infant formula should not have to first declare themselves “concerned” before government clearly tells them what is in their water. Public-health communication should state the exposure, state the uncertainty and reduce the exposure. The burden of solving a municipal drinking-water problem should not be shifted onto individual households buying filters.
The firefighting-foam releases behind this contamination began more than 50 years ago around the airport and military lands. PFAS contamination in Lees Creek was documented by 2012; fourteen years later, measurable PFAS is still being delivered to North Bay homes.
The City and Department of National Defence have committed $8.25 million to pilot testing and detailed design for PFAS treatment at the North Bay Drinking Water Treatment Plant. The work includes testing treatment media while designing the permanent system, but the present schedule does not reach a tender-ready package until the end of 2027.
That is not urgent enough.
Granular activated carbon and ion exchange are established PFAS-removal technologies. Pilot testing should optimize North Bay’s permanent system, not force engineering, regulatory preparation and procurement work that can proceed concurrently to wait behind it. I will move that Council require a public critical-path schedule identifying the additional engineering, regulatory and procurement resources necessary to target a tender-ready package by January 31, 2027, with every genuine technical or regulatory barrier to that deadline identified publicly.
Fluoride deserves separate scrutiny because it is not added to make water microbiologically safe. It is added to produce a dental-health effect after consumption, and residents cannot opt out of a municipal supply the way they can decline toothpaste.
North Bay’s 2025 Annual Water Report recorded a formal laboratory fluoride result of 0.62 mg/L, with 204 point-of-entry samples ranging from 0.56 to 0.80 mg/L. At 0.62 mg/L, two litres supplies 1.24 mg daily before food, tea, toothpaste or mouthwash are counted. Exposure varies with water consumption, age, body weight and diet, while kidney function affects fluoride clearance and retention. The city cannot adjust the dose for an individual resident. Compliance with the legal limit measures the water, not the person drinking it.
A 2025 JAMA Pediatrics systematic review and meta-analysis by National Toxicology Program scientists found that, across 13 individual-level studies, every 1 mg/L increase in urinary fluoride was associated with a 1.63-point decrease in childhood IQ. A separate cross-sectional study of 616 children found every 1 mg/L increase in water fluoride associated with a 0.10-unit reduction in relative mitochondrial DNA, while children with dental fluorosis averaged 15 percent lower levels than children without it.
Fluoride’s anticaries effect works mainly through contact with the tooth surface, which is why residents who want fluoride can obtain it directly from toothpaste. Standard carbon filters do not remove it; reverse osmosis, distillation or specialized filtration do, leaving the cost and maintenance burden with households that do not want it.
My policy judgment is that artificial fluoridation should be discontinued based on cumulative exposure, long half life and informed consent, not on any claim that North Bay’s water exceeds the legal fluoride maximum. Most European countries do not fluoridate drinking water; the practice remains concentrated in Ireland and parts of the United Kingdom and Spain.
A safe modern water system does not require it.
Fluoride and PFAS can both create long-lived body burdens through different mechanisms. Approximately 99% of retained fluoride is found in calcified tissues; WHO has described a slower skeletal-clearance phase averaging about eight years, while the U.S. National Research Council has discussed an approximate 20-year whole-body half-life once fluoride is incorporated into bone. Several major PFAS likewise have biological half-lives measured in years.
City of North Bay — Annual Water Report 2025. Primary source for North Bay’s 2025 treated-water PFAS measurements: quarterly totals of 64.2, 66.0, 47.0 and 49.8 ng/L; PFOS 35.6, 38.1, 23.5, 24.7; PFHxS 13.1, 12.0, 11.2, 10.6; PFOA 4.6, 6.5, 5.0, 5.4; PFNA below 2 ng/L. The same report gives the formal fluoride result of 0.62 mg/L and 204 point-of-entry fluoride samples ranging from 0.56–0.80 mg/L. City of North Bay — Water Quality Reports
Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks — Minister’s Annual Report on Drinking Water, 2024. This is the source for the unusually strong provincial statement that North Bay is the only known Ontario drinking-water system that consistently exceeds Health Canada’s PFAS objective due to historic contamination. It also explains that other Ontario systems are generally below the objective or have had only transient exceedances. Ontario Minister’s Annual Report on Drinking Water
Environment and Climate Change Canada / Health Canada — State of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances Report. Primary federal source for the Canadian comparison: 463 tap-water samples from 376 Quebec municipalities, total PFAS ranging up to 108 ng/L, with a median of 2 ng/L and 95th percentile of 13 ng/L. This is what makes the comparison with North Bay’s persistent ~50–65 ng/L particularly meaningful. Government of Canada — State of PFAS Report
Health Canada — Objective for Canadian Drinking Water Quality: PFAS, 2024. Establishes 30 ng/L for the sum of 25 PFAS, recommends concentrations be maintained as low as reasonably achievable, and explicitly says the objective was developed considering analytical and treatment achievability rather than representing a simple toxicological safe/unsafe boundary. It also identifies PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFNA as among the most toxicologically potent PFAS and recommends significant mitigation such as treatment when those compounds dominate water approaching or exceeding the objective. Health Canada also identifies GAC, anion exchange and membrane filtration as the most effective established treatment technologies, with >90% removal possible for certain PFAS. Health Canada — PFAS Drinking-Water Objective
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for PFAS. Establishes enforceable drinking-water MCLs of 4.0 ng/L for PFOA and 4.0 ng/L for PFOS, with health-based MCLGs of zero for both. This directly supports the international comparison in the section. U.S. EPA — PFAS Drinking-Water Regulation
Swedish Food Agency — Drinking-Water Chemical Parameters, PFAS4. Sweden’s official limit applying from January 1, 2026 is 4.0 ng/L for PFAS4, defined as the sum of PFOS + PFOA + PFNA + PFHxS. This is the exact comparator being used against North Bay’s approximately 39.7–56.6 ng/L minimum PFAS4 concentrations in 2025. Swedish Food Agency — PFAS4 Standard
Ontario MECP — North Bay Drinking-Water System Inspection Report. Particularly useful local evidence: the provincial inspection report states that past CFB fire-training foam contaminated Trout Lake, that North Bay’s existing drinking-water treatment is not capable of removing PFAS, and that raw and treated PFAS concentrations have been consistently about 60 ng/L. This is one of the strongest sources for the persistence argument.
City of North Bay / Department of National Defence — PFAS Water-Treatment Contribution Agreement and Council Report. Establishes the $8.25-million funding request/agreement for pilot testing and detailed design at the North Bay Drinking Water Treatment Plant, including a six-month treatment-media pilot, with the existing project schedule producing a tender-ready package by the end of 2027.
Department of National Defence / City of North Bay — PFAS Remediation History. DND and the City state that PFAS-containing firefighting foams were used at 22 Wing/CFB North Bay and former Jack Garland Airport training areas from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s, identifying those activities as the principal historic source of contamination.
North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit — Perfluoroalkylated Substances in Water: Medical Officer of Health Report and Recommendations, August 2017. Official contemporary record showing that PFAS were found in the 22 Wing Underground Complex in 2012, that some water discharged to Lees Creek, and critically, that PFAS were also found in Lees Creek upstream of that discharge, demonstrating that the underground complex was not the only contributor. It records that the Health Unit was not notified by DND until December 2016.
Investigative Journalism Bureau, University of Toronto — North Bay PFAS investigation, 2025–26. Based on approximately 2,000 pages of access-to-information records, the investigation identifies the first PFAS test of Lees Creek it located as occurring in 2012 and documents DND testing between 2012 and 2016. Use this specifically to support the careful phrase “the earliest presently documented year”, rather than claiming nobody tested before 2012.
Health Canada — Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality: Fluoride, Technical Document. This one source supports several of your fluoride statements. North Bay’s exposure comparison can be derived from Health Canada’s adult estimates: adults in fluoridated communities receive an estimated 41.8–55.5 µg/kg/day, using a 70-kg adult, equivalent to approximately 2.9–3.9 mg/day. It also states that approximately 99% of total body fluoride is localized in bones and teeth, that fluoride can be mobilized from bone through the much slower process of bone remodelling, and that renal function influences fluoride clearance. Health Canada recognizes reverse osmosis and distillation as residential fluoride-removal technologies. Health Canada — Fluoride Technical Document
U.S. National Research Council, National Academies — Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards, 2006. Strong authoritative source for long-term skeletal persistence. The NRC says greater than 99% of fluoride in the mammalian body resides in bone and discusses a pharmacokinetic model in which the whole-body half-life once fluoride is in bone is approximately 20 years. Its pharmacokinetics chapter separately notes human observations in which bone fluoride concentrations declined by about 50% over 20 years, while cautioning that this should not necessarily be interpreted as a simple constant half-life. National Academies — Fluoride in Drinking Water
WHO/UNEP/ILO — Environmental Health Criteria 36: Fluorine and Fluorides. Independent support for skeletal persistence: the WHO-sponsored expert review describes a slower bone-clearance phase with an average half-life of about eight years due to osteoclastic bone resorption and notes limited human evidence of approximately a 50% decline in bone fluoride over 20 years after exposure ceased.
Taylor et al., JAMA Pediatrics, 2025 — “Fluoride Exposure and Children’s IQ Scores: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” The actual peer-reviewed paper behind the IQ paragraph. It included 74 studies. In 13 individual-level studies, every 1 mg/L increase in urinary fluoride was associated with a 1.63-point decrease in IQ; among low-risk-of-bias studies the estimate was 1.14 points. For drinking-water studies, the overall association was null below 1.5 mg/L, while it remained inverse when analyses were restricted to low-risk-of-bias studies. The authors explicitly describe the evidence below 1.5 mg/L from drinking water alone as limited and uncertain. DOI 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.5542. PubMed — Taylor et al. 2025
Zhou et al., Environment International, 2019 — “Low-to-moderate fluoride exposure, relative mitochondrial DNA levels, and dental fluorosis in Chinese children.” Cross-sectional study of 616 children aged 7–13. This is the source for the association between increasing drinking-water fluoride and lower relative mitochondrial DNA levels and the lower mean mtDNA measure among children with dental fluorosis. DOI 10.1016/j.envint.2019.03.033.
CDC — Recommendations for Using Fluoride to Prevent and Control Dental Caries in the United States. Useful because it explicitly states that modern evidence indicates fluoride’s predominant anticaries effect is posteruptive and topical, operating principally through fluoride maintained in plaque and saliva after teeth erupt.
Health Canada / National Academies — Fluoride essentiality. Health Canada’s technical review says attempts to demonstrate fluoride’s essentiality for growth and reproduction have not succeeded and now bases fluoride requirements on its dental-caries benefit; National Academies material likewise states fluoride is not considered an essential nutrient, despite its caries-prevention benefit.
European Commission / WHO European Observatory — Water fluoridation in Europe. The European Commission reports that Ireland and selected regions of the UK and Spain are the European jurisdictions using artificial water fluoridation, while the WHO European Observatory similarly states that most European countries do not add fluoride to drinking water.