When Casey Hannan stated–during a March 17th lobby day training webinar for members of theAmerican Association for Dental Research and the Friends of National Institute for Dental and Cranial Research–that studies reporting the lowering of IQ occurred at much higher levels of fluoride than occur with fluoridated water, it was embarrassing.  It was also a stark example of how indefensible falsehoods about fluoride’s neurotoxicity are used from the top-down to mislead dentists, state and federal health officials, and policy makers who repeat and act upon them without verifying their accuracy.

Hannan’s exact words:

“the bottom line is that the NIEHS published studies and others published around the world were looking at levels which are much higher than the recommended 0.7 mg/liter that the U.S. has” (see his answer to a question at 36 minutes)

This statement was clearly embarrassing for those who know the science. For example, the key studies by Bashash (2017 & 2018), Green (2019) and Till (2020) were either done in fluoridated communities at 0.7 ppm, or in the case of Bashash at equivalent doses (received from other sources).  Two additional studies, one in California (Uyghurturk, 2020) and the other in Canada (Till, 2018) found women living in fluoridated communities had urinary fluoride levels significantly higher than those living in non-fluoridated communities and their levels were equal to those causing harm in these other studies.

In fact, the National Toxicology Program recently classified 27 different human brain/fluoride studies as high quality (low risk of bias).  Of the 27 studies, 25 found statistically significant adverse neurotoxic effects and only 2 found no significant effect.  None found a beneficial effect.  Of the 25 finding adverse effects, 11 found effects below 0.7 mg/L and 4 found effects below 1.5 mg/L.

So the real question – especially for the new Biden administration – was Hannan’s statement embarrassing for the CDC itself?

After all, Hannan is the director of only small division at the CDC – the Oral Health Division. This division has two key missions: to promote water fluoridation and fund construction of its infrastructure. And hand-in-glove with the American Dental Association, it has been doing that for decades.  The CDC has even partnered with private industry, using your tax dollars to develop new fluoridation products for rural water systems and private wells to expand the practice to every corner of the country (and likely beyond).

But what the CDC doesn’t do is carefully follow any health effects that may accrue from this practice. That science it leaves to other agencies. Nor does this 30 strong division have any specialists in toxicology and risk assessment capable of doing so. However, the 30,000 strong CDC has many specialists that could be following this practice and the health risks it may pose, but apparently none have been appointed to do so.

That is the real embarrassment for the CDC i.e. promoting the benefits of a practice without careful consideration of its risks. 

Additional evidence of this comes again from Hannan, representing the CDC in a letter to the Public Utilities Commission in Loveland, Colorado this past week, he said in a section entitled A Safe Intervention:

“Documented risks of community water fluoridation are limited to dental fluorosis, a change in dental enamel that is cosmetic in its most common form.“

The title of the section by itself ought to be embarrassing for Hannan to write, because while under penalty of perjury during deposition for our TSCA trial he admitted the CDC has no safety data whatsoever on fluoride and the developing brain.  Also keep in mind that Rivka Green, co-author of the IQ study published in JAMA Pediatrics said in an interview widely available to the public that the data showed “there was no safe level” of fluoride exposure during pregnancy, and that “60-80%” of fluoride consumption for pregnant women in fluoridated communities “came from fluoridated water.”

Hannan’s baseless claim of no documented risks from fluoridation purposely hides recent human studies that found thyroid impairment (Peckham, 2015 & Malin, 2018), increased risk of ADHD (Riddell, 2019 / Bashash, 2018 / Malin, 2015), and sleeping disorders (Cunningham, 2021 / Malin 2019).  And this is just the very tip of the iceberg of the documented risks.

The CDC currently receives millions of taxpayers’ dollars and it is time that key U.S. Senators and Representative sitting on their respective appropriations committees question further funding of the CDC’s Oral Health Division until a group of specialists at the CDC be appointed to review fluoride’s impact on the brain and tissues other than the teeth. Meanwhile, not a penny more of taxpayers’ money should be wasted on promoting a practice that may be damaging the brains of our children.

I urge anyone who has any doubts about the urgency of this matter to read the OpEd by Drs. Linda Birnbaum (former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Bruce Lanphear and Christine Till. The latter two are key authors of two of the neurotoxic studies identified above (Green, 2019 and Till 2020).

Paul Connett, PhD
Director
Fluoride Action Network