Latest news with #HouseBill182
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
A sweeping child welfare and foster care bill wins NC Senate committee approval
Rep. Allen Chesser (R-Nash) discusses a child welfare bill (Photo: Lynn Bonner) An expansive bill overhauling the child welfare system that aims to increase stability for children in foster care won approval from a Senate committee on Thursday. House Bill 612 provides for increased oversight of local child welfare office decisions by the state Department of Health and Human Services. It sets out timeframes for court hearings on plans to move children in foster care to permanent homes. Courts would be allowed to authorize post-adoption contact agreements between biological and adoptive parents. Legislators have discussed comprehensive changes to child welfare and foster care laws for years. 'It's a long time coming,' Rep. Allen Chesser (R-Nash), one of the bill sponsors, told the Senate Health Committee during a Wednesday hearing. 'I think it's one of the most bipartisan issues we have.' When they discussed the bill Wednesday, the Senate committee members heard concerns from a lawyer and adoptive parents that the bill would discourage infant adoptions. The bill gives a biological father up to three months after a child's birth, when he is not married to the child's mother, to acknowledge paternity or attempt to form a relationship with the child before his parental rights are terminated. If a possible father finds out that a woman has fraudulently concealed her pregnancy or a child's birth, he would have up to 30 days after finding out to acknowledge paternity before his parental rights are terminated. 'From an adoptive parent perspective, this bill is frankly terrifying,' said Natalie Carscadden, an adoptive parent. 'Imagine the anxiety that comes when a person who's never met or shown any interest in a child suddenly appears in requests for custody up to a three-month time span after that child is born. This would upset the status quo and put significantly more legal risk on potential adoptive families.' In the committee discussion Thursday, Chesser referenced a court decision on a father's right to act within a 'timely manner.' 'What we are doing is defining what a timely manner means,' he said. The Senate combined the measure with three other bills that have passed the House: House Bill 795, which extends financial assistance for guardians who are related to children who won't be adopted or returned to their parents. Payments through the Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program could start when children are 10. Under current law, children have to be 14 or older. House Bill 162 would have cities and counties require criminal background checks for any person they plan to hire who would work with children. House Bill 182, which would allow judges to issue permanent 'no contact' orders against people convicted of violent crimes.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ohio lawmakers debate whether to ban fluoride from public drinking water
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Some Ohio Republicans want to ban fluoride in public drinking water, because they say it's a matter of personal choice. 'I think it's important for an individual to be able to choose what sort of supplements they're taking, what sort of medical care they're doing, things like that,' Representative Levi Dean (R-Xenia) said. Dean, the freshman lawmaker, is behind House Bill 182. The legislation is short and to the point: 'No public water system shall add fluoride to the water supplied by the system.' Right now, there is a certain fluoride level that public water must be at. Some plants need to dampen it, some need to hike it up. Dean says those systems should not have that say. Columbus Public Health terminates some employees early due to federal funding cuts 'Your neighbor or the government shouldn't be able to tell you what you have to ingest into your body,' he said. 'If you want to apply fluoride, this bill still allows you to do that. It's just saying you can't force someone to swallow and ingest fluoride by putting it into the water stream.' Dean said this bill came about after he heard from some local elected officials 'who were interested in removing fluoride from the water,' but were not allowed to under Ohio law. Then, he said he heard the same from his constituents. 'They didn't want to have fluoride,' he said. 'They wanted to have personal choice.' What about the health benefits of fluoride? Dr. Matthew Messina, DDS and Associate Professor an The Ohio State College of Dentistry said in short, it helps stop tooth decay. 'Fluoride helps because it makes tooth enamel harder or stronger, more resistant to the acid, which reduces the risk of decay,' he said. Messina said controlled amounts of fluoride in drinking water helps 'build strong teeth for a lifetime.' He said one of the big benefits of having it in public water is that it reaches everyone. Former Ohio governor speaks about current political climate Dean argues, for the people who want it, it is in many toothpastes and mouth washes. 'I don't know why they wouldn't just brush their teeth with fluoride, which most of them probably already do,' Dean said. 'That's a better application in general.' 'We've been trying to tell people for generations to brush their teeth. But there's a sizable percentage of the people that still don't brush their teeth every day. So, this is a way that helps them get the benefits of fluoride in the water,' Messina said. But he said he thinks back to when fluoride was taken out of public water in Calgary, Alberta, Canada back in 2011 and where they are now, nearly a decade and a half later. 'They have discovered an increase in the prevalence of [tooth] decay in the community,' he said. There are more cavities which leads to unfortunately more dentistry being done. And so, they're seeing the cost of dental care going up.' Messina said fluoride in public water was 'hailed as one of the best and one of the most successful public health efforts in the 20th century,' and said going would mean that 'everybody would have to step up their game,' when it comes to oral hygiene. 'A huge achievement like that is something that we just don't ever want to risk going back from,' he said. Dean said under this bill, those who wanted to add fluoride to water themselves would not be stopped and said he already has an idea for a tweak to the legislation too. 'We could in the bill have an amendment to say, 'hey, your leftover reserve can be distributed to individuals who want to come and pick it up and then add it to their own water stream and drink it if they'd like,'' Dean said. 'Fluoride was added to water because it produced a tremendous effect in reducing decay in some of our most vulnerable populations,' Messina said. As far as leadership goes, Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said he does not know whether he thinks fluoride should stay in water. 'Lots of people have been talked about that over the last few years and they were dismissed. And now there appears to be some science that says too much fluoride, including adding fluoride, is bad for folks. So, I mean, I not a scientist, I'm not a chemist,' Huffman said. 'We're going to sort of litigate that question, not in the courtroom, in the legislature here, over the next couple of months. So, I don't know the answer to your question.' On the other side of the aisle, Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) said as someone who has a background in public health, she thinks the bill is 'misguided.' 'I see this as a basic human right in the United States of America,' she said. 'I think the expectation of every household in this country is that you have access to clean tap water in your household. And anything that threatens that, I'm going to be opposed to.' The bill is assigned to the Ohio House Natural Resources Committee and awaits its first hearing. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ohio Republican lawmakers want to ban adding fluoride — which prevents tooth decay — to water
Drinking water photo from the Ohio Governor's Office. A group of Ohio Republican lawmakers is moving to ban the state and public water systems from adding fluoride, which prevents tooth decay and cavities, to water. The Buckeye State is known for its water benefits, dentist Dr. Matthew Messina said. 'We've had that kind of a profound increase in public health that comes from modern dentistry and fluoride is a part of that,' Messina said. Naturally occurring in water, fluoride is a mineral that years of research has shown strengthens teeth and prevents cavities and tooth decay. As the four-decade-long serving dentist explains, most public water systems add fluoride. 'It's hailed as one of the top public health measures in the last century, because really, for a very low cost and very low amount of effort, the massive benefit that this produces for the community is tremendous,' he said. He has worked in communities that didn't have fluoride, he said, and the difference between children from cities and ones from rural areas that didn't have public water fluoridation was night and day. 'We got a chance to see rampant dental decay in children,' he said. 'It was like going back to the dark ages, so I really hope we'd never go back there again.' There has always been a back-and-forth for decades on fluoride, much like vaccines. In recent years, there has been a campaign to push back on the mineral in water. Although U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not a doctor, he has claimed that the mineral is toxic. 'Fluoride is an industrial waste,' he wrote on X. The effort has trickled down to Ohio. State Rep. Levi Dean, R-Xenia, has proposed House Bill 182, which would ban public water systems from adding fluoride. 'It just says that individuals can then choose whether they want to ingest it or not — it's not forced on them,' Dean told me. Current law requires water systems to fluoridate water if the natural content is less than .8 milligrams per liter. 'It's just for some people for health reasons or just even for individual freedom reasons, they don't want the local governments to force this into their drinking water,' he said. Dean and his GOP cosponsors want to prohibit this. He argued that fluoride is bad for you. We asked him where he got this idea from since dozens upon dozens of research papers for decades disagree. He cited a recent research study sharing that fluoride may be linked to lower IQ in children. A study published by JAMA Pediatrics in January did a review and meta-analysis of whether exposure to fluoride was associated with kids' IQ scores. The authors found that there is a link between slightly lower IQ in children that have more exposure to the mineral. But Messina explained that this research article is being taken out of context. 'It brings up a study of parts of the world where naturally occurring fluoride levels are much higher than in most of the United States, and they're higher than the target levels that we have set,' the dentist said. Looking into the paper, the authors acknowledged that a majority of the studies they looked at were considered 'highly biased,' none of the data is from the United States, and that there was 'uncertainty in the dose-response association.' When the fluoride in the water was less than 1.5 mg/L, the link wasn't apparent. As mentioned, Ohio has a cap of .8 mg/L. 'Now, there's disagreement on the concentration of where that starts and how, but that's why I think it should be up to the individual to choose what levels they engage with fluoride at,' Dean said. The lawmaker argued that if people really want fluoride, they can buy toothpaste, tablets, or drops. 'I'm not arguing with the fact that it could be beneficial to some people for dental health,' he said. 'I'm arguing with the fact that should we be ingesting it, if the benefit is for your teeth, shouldn't you be applying it just to the teeth and not consuming it?' Toothpaste has significantly more fluoride than water does, which is why you are told to spit it out, according to the CDC. The Republican continued that this is about Ohioans having a choice — just like he does, as he uses fluoride-free toothpaste. 'What kind of concerns do you have with Ohio considering to remove fluoride from all public water?' we asked Messina. 'Well, if Ohio did that, we would be stepping back in time,' he responded. 'We have a known beneficial, preventative part of our tool kit, and for us to continue to go forward without that — we're really leaving one of our best weapons behind.' Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, seemed interested in the proposal because when asked if the state should keep fluoride in public water, he acknowledged that he 'didn't know.' 'Fluoride naturally occurs in water, I just found that out this week,' he said. 'They started adding it.' He said that people over the past few years have been 'dismissed.' 'Now there appears to be some science that says too much fluoride, including adding fluoride, is bad for folks,' he said. 'I'm not a scientist, I'm not a chemist… We're going to sort of litigate that question… in the legislature here over the next couple of months. I don't know the answer to your question.' House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, whose background is in public health, was not thrilled to hear about the bill. 'I entirely support fluoride in water,' she said, noting that the benefits are clear in dental health. We asked her if she saw this as an effort to privatize water. 'I see this as a basic human right,' she continued. 'I think the expectation of every household in this country is that you have access to clean tap water in your households.' Gov. Mike DeWine, who is routinely against non-doctors making health decisions, is not commenting on this bill yet. Knowing the governor, this would not be out of the realm of a possible veto. He consistently states that he supports science, vaccines, best practices of doctors in gender-affirming care, prevention of tobacco for kids and the stopping of medical WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
