Yesterday Water Fluoridation received three major body blows. The first was political; the second was professional and the third was scientific.
1. The political body blow: Children’s Health Defense Calls for End to Fluoridation
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nonprofit team published a must-read article yesterday condemning artificial water fluoridation as “A Forced Experiment That Needs to End.” While the Children’s Health Defense is primarily devoted to reducing exposure to mercury, part of its mission is to demand scientific integrity and expose public health policies that are harming children. Click below to read the article:
Here is a link to the media release that FAN put out today on this major development. Please forward this media release to your local media outlets.
2. Professional body blow: A popular dental blog questions the need for fluoride in dentistry.
While the American Dental Association and the American Fluoridation Society claim there is an absolute consensus amongst dentists that fluoride and fluoridation are “safe and effective,” we know this to be a myth. Hundreds of dentists have signed FAN’s professional statement calling for an end to fluoridation, and a week doesn’t go by without another dentist somewhere publicly questioning the safety and benefits of the practice. In fact, I doubt the ADA has ever anonymously polled its own membership on their support for fluoridation out of fear of what might result.
This week, Dr. Mark Burhenne, DDS of Sunnyvale, California published a fairly comprehensive and well-researched article on his popular dental blog weighing the pros and cons of using both topical and non-topical fluoride, along with available alternatives.
In this major article, entitled “Ask the Dentist: Is Fluoride Safe?” he calls fluoride “a known toxin” that “most people don’t truly need…especially when its ingested via the water supply,” and concludes that “with safer alternatives available, it’s just not worth the risk.”
3. The Scientific body blow.
One of the world’s leading neuroscientists reviews the neurotoxicity of fluoride and sites the latest US government-funded studies by Bashash et al, 2017 and 2018.
Dr. David Bellinger is one of the world’s leading neuroscientists. He is recognized as the leading authority on lead’s neurotoxicity. This week in the important journal Pediatric Medicine he published a review (Environmental chemical exposures and neurodevelopmental impairments in children) of the chemicals known to, or suspected, of damaging the child’s developing brain. He included fluoride in that list. In his introduction he wrote:
The central nervous system (CNS) is especially vulnerable to perturbation by environmental chemicals. Six of the 10 chemicals on the WHO’s list of chemicals of greatest public health concern adversely affect the brain (air pollution, arsenic, dioxin- and dioxin-like compounds, lead, mercury, and pesticides), with some evidence suggesting that two of the remaining four might do so as well (cadmium, fluoride). (our emphasis)
In the section devoted to fluoride he cities the Chinese IQ studies and the US government-funded studies by Bashash et al., 2017, 2018.
A review of nearly three dozen studies conducted in China, mostly ecologic in design and comparing children from a low-exposure village to a high-exposure village, concluded that exposure to water with greater fluoride concentrations is associated with lower IQ scores (66). Such studies provide only weak evidence, however, lacking data on internal exposures (i.e., blood concentrations of fluoride in individual participants or severity of dental fluorosis). Also the villages compared likely differed not only in water fluoride concentrations, but in also in terms of other factors that might affect the distributions of their IQ scores (e.g., socioeconomic status, access to medical care, quality of schools, etc.). Recently, studies that address these limitations have been reported. In a relatively small pilot study in China, negative associations were found between fluorosis severity, reflecting lifetime exposure, and children’s scores on some neuropsychological tests (67). Similar findings were reported in India (68), while in a Mexican study, children’s prenatal fluoride exposure (concentration in maternal urine during pregnancy) were inversely associated with IQ scores at ages 4 and 6–12 years (69). Increased exposure to fluoride has also been linked, ecologically, to ADHD prevalence in the U.S. (70) and, in a cohort study, to increased ADHD symptoms in Mexican children (71).
66. Choi AL, Sun G, Zhang Y, et al. Developmental neurotoxicity of fluoride: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Environ Health Perspect 2012;120:1362-8.
67. Choi AL, Zhang Y, Sun G, et al. Association of lifetime exposure to fluoride and cognitive functions in Chinese children: a pilot study. Neurotoxicol Teratol 80. 2015;47:96-101.
68. Khan SA, Singh RK, Navit S, et al. Relationship between dental fluorosis and intelligence quotient of school going children in and around Lucknow district: a cross-sectional study. J Clin Diagn Res 2015;9:ZC10-5.
69. Bashash M, Thomas D, Hu H, et al. Prenatal fluoride exposure and cognitive outcomes in children at 4 and 6-12 years of age in Mexico. Environ Health Perspect 2017;125:097017. 82.
70. Malin AJ, Till C. Exposure to fluoridated water and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) prevalence among children and adolescents in the United States: an ecological association. Environ Health 2015;14:17.
71. Bashash M, Marchand M, Hu H, et al. Prenatal fluoride exposure and attention de cit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD. symptoms in children at 6-12 years of age in Mexico City. Environ Int 2018;121:658-66.
According to FAN’s director, Paul Connett, “What we have here is yet another leading neuroscientist acknowledging what government authorities and the media in countries which practice fluoridation are trying so hard to ignore or downplay, namely that fluoride – at doses experienced in fluoridated communities – has the potential to lower the intelligence of our children.”
Stuart Cooper
Campaign Director
Fluoride Action Network
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