Since the start of fluoridation in the 1950’s, many independent scientists have voiced their reservations about the safety of dosing everyone in a community with fluoride. This early opposition culminated in an official statement from the US Environmental Protection Agencies employees’ union, representing approximately 1500 scientists, lawyers, and engineers in Washington, D.C. calling for a moratorium.
Around the same time, the Connetts and other co-founders of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) set out to actively educate independent scientists and medical professionals about the dangers of fluoridation, and recruit them to speak out publicly in opposition to the practice. These efforts led to over 4,000 professionals, including hundreds of doctors and dentists, signing FAN’s Professionals Statement Against Fluoridation.
These recruitment efforts have continued, and our professional network has continued to expand. This expansion has accelerated since 2017 with the publication of NIH (National Institute of Health) funded studies on fluoride’s neurotoxicity. Now more and more prominent scientists and officials are speaking out and we have summarized some of these below – but first a quick summary of our fundraising efforts for this December.
Fundraising Update
As of this morning, we have raised $10,980 from 174 donors on our way to our goal of raising $120,000 from 1,000 donors by midnight on December 31st. This is a good start and we thank all of you who have donated so far and again to those who donated in the Spring. See below for how to make a donation. Thank you!
The Growing Chorus of Independent Experts Warning the Public
• The former director of both the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program of the National Institutes of Health, Toxicologist and microbiologist, Linda Birnbaum, PhD, co-authored an op-ed appearing in the Environmental Health News entitled, It is time to protect kid’s developing brains from fluoride. It highlights the mounting evidence that fluoride is impairing brain development, and compares the response from the public health community to its delayed response to the obvious harm caused by lead.
• Bruce Lanphear, MD, MPH, is a physician, clinical scientist, professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and an award winning researcher who has been a member of two National Academies of Science Committees, is a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead Review Panel, and is renowned for his research on low-level lead exposure and many other environmental neurotoxins. His nonprofit scientific organization, Little Things Matter, created a short video describing the history of water fluoridation and highlights “new research that has found fluoride is toxic to the developing brain.”
• In a recent 12-minute podcast, the editor of the Journal of American Medial Association’s Pediatrics, a Seattle physician, stated publicly he would not want his wife drinking fluoridated water if she were pregnant. The co-host, who is the Editor of the entire JAMA network and also a physician, raised the important issue of how low income women cannot avoid fluoride while pregnant.
• The abstract of the 2020 study that linked the use of fluoridated water in making infant formula to a lowering of IQ was re-published in the Journal of Pediatrics, in their column of “Current Best Evidence: Translating best evidence into best care.” It was submitted for publication in the column by researchers Howard Hu, MD, MPH, ScD and Morteza Bashash, PhD, MS.
• A recent review of fluoridation by Danish scientist, Harvard professor, and neurotoxicity expert Philippe Grandjean, MD, DMSc, concluded that:
…there is little doubt that developmental neurotoxicity is a serious risk associated with elevated fluoride exposure, whether due to community water fluoridation, natural fluoride release from soil minerals, or tea consumption, especially when the exposure occurs during early development.
• A recent letter published in Pediatric Research by the co-authors of the JAMA Pediatrics fluoride/IQ study, stated:
Over the past 75 years, health authorities have declared that community water fluoridation-a practice that reaches over 400 million worldwide-is safe. Yet, studies conducted in North America examining the safety of fluoride exposure in pregnancy were nonexistent. When a Canadian study reported that higher fluoride exposure in pregnant women was associated with lower IQ scores in young children, critics attacked the methodology of the study and discounted the significance of the results. Health authorities continued to conclude that fluoride is unequivocally safe, despite four well-conducted studies over the last 3 years consistently linking fluoride exposure in pregnancy with adverse neurodevelopmental effects in offspring…The tendency to ignore new evidence that does not conform to widespread beliefs impedes the response to early warnings about fluoride as a potential developmental neurotoxin. Evolving evidence should inspire scientists and health authorities to re-evaluate claims about the safety of fluoride, especially for the fetus and infant for whom there is no benefit.
• Dr William Ghali, MD, the former scientific director of the O’Brien Institute for Public Health at the University of Calgary, and Dr. Aravind Ganesh, MD strongly admonished attempts to downplay the relevance and importance of emerging evidence of fluoride’s neurotoxicity while presenting their report on water fluoridation to the Calgary City Council
• Award-winning toxicologist and a Diplomat of the American Board of Toxicology, Steve Gilbert, PhD–and his non-profit organization, the Institute of Neurotoxicology & Neurological Disorders–have produced a must-read statement opposing artificial fluoridation on his website Toxipedia. The four-page statement opposing fluoridation concisely examines the science, ethics, and history of fluoridation, and calls for direct action: “Discontinue water fluoridation, which will greatly reduce fluoride ingestion.”
• One of the world’s leading neuroscientists, David Bellinger, PhD published a review article in the journal Pediatric Medicine where he included fluoride in a list of chemicals known or suspected to interfere with the neurodevelopment of children. The Harvard professor also wrote an editorial piece that accompanied the JAMA Pediatrics fluoride/IQ study where he provided an overview of recent fluoride/IQ research and gave the following warning:
The hypothesis that fluoride is a neurodevelopmental toxicant must now be given serious consideration…It is instructive to recall that the hypothesis that subclinical lead exposures pose a neurodevelopmental hazard was bitterly contested in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was only the weight of evidence that eventually accumulated that led to the now widely held consensus that no level of lead exposure is safe…If the hypothesis is true, the implications are worrisome. Exposure to fluoride has increased substantially in recent decades…If the effect sizes reported by Green et al and others are valid, the total cognitive loss at the population level that might be associated with children’s prenatal exposure to fluoride could be substantial.
With your support, FAN can help amplify, defend, and multiply these voices of scientific integrity.
How to Make a Tax-Deductible Donate:
- Online, using our secure server.
- If you should experience difficulty in donating online, or would like to donate over the phone, please call Network For Good at 1-888-284-7978 and press option 3 to make your donation.
- Or by Check, payable to the Fluoride Action Network. Mail your check to:
Fluoride Action Network
c/o Connett
104 Walnut Street
Binghamton NY 13905
Thank you,
Stuart Cooper
Campaign Director
Fluoride Action Network
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