February 9, 2021, a day that will be remembered by U.S. historians of fluoridation and public health:

Up to February 9, 2021, the following four were the major players involved in fluoride’s neurotoxicity:

1. The National Toxicology Program

The NTP spent four years performing a systematic review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity, also referred to as a monograph.

Their first two draft reviews were released in 2019 and 2020. Both drafts contained the following,

“NTP concludes that fluoride is presumed to be
a cognitive neurodevelopmental hazard to humans.”

But on February 9, 2021, the NTP reversed course and stated in a private statement, not released to the press or to the public, that it would not complete its systematic review. Instead, NTP wrote that it would do a “state of the science” document on fluoride’s neurotoxicity. The Fluoride Action Network learned of NTP’s private statement after lawyers representing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the TSCA trial submitted it into the record on February 22, 2021. This submission led to a February 24, 2021, article in InsideEPA which noted that this document would not include conclusions, thus it will have no “teeth” compared to a systematic review.

For more see, National Toxicology Program: Cowed by dental interests? by Fluoride Action Network, April 19, 2021

2. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine

The NASEM were the peer-reviewers of NTP’s reviews – see 2020, 2021. They issued their second draft review on February 9th, 2021, the same day the NTP ended its systematic review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity. NASEM used two groups of peer reviewers,

•The NASEM committee to peer review NTP’s monograph; and
•A second set of peer reviewers to peer review the NASEM committee’s reports.

3. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The EPA regulates the allowable levels of contaminants in drinking water, under the enforceable MCL (Maximum Contaminant Level). They are mandated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to ensure that drinking water is safe to drink. The SDWA applies to every public water system in the United States. The EPA has never performed an assessment of the risks that fluoride poses to pregnant women, the fetus, and bottle-fed infants living in fluoridated communities. EPA is currently in federal court in a trial due to a 2016 Citizens’ Petition made under Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act. The Petition requests EPA to prohibit the purposeful addition of fluoridation chemicals to U.S. water supplies due to fluoride’s neurotoxicity at doses within the range now seen in fluoridated communities.

4. The Trial under the Toxics Substances Control Act

The purpose of the TSCA trial, which is still ongoing, is to ban the purposeful addition of fluoridation chemicals into America’s drinking water due to fluoride’s neurotoxicity. A 2016 Citizens’ Petition to the U.S. EPA initiated the trial.  After a 7-day trial in Federal Court took place in June 2020 the Judge requested both sides to fulfill certain requests, which included the outcome of NTP’s systematic review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity. On February 9, 2021, the NTP ended its systematic review without any explanation to the public. They said they will produce a “state of the science” document, that will have no conclusions. The court knows of this because this document was entered into the trial. The Court will wait until the NTP releases its report.

After February 9, 2021?

The only avenue today to have the U.S. EPA respond to the potential of the lowering of the IQs of millions of American children is underway in the TSCA trial.

Currently no U.S. federal agency is concerned about the science of  this issue, including the four recent studies —Till et al. (2020), Green et al. (2019), Bashash et al. (2017), Bashash et al. (2018) that reveal fluoride’s potential, at the level introduced into America’s drinking water via drinking water fluoridation schemes, to harm the brains of our children.  The only hope today is the action by citizen groups that brought forward the lawsuit against the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

June 30, 2021. (EC)

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