“You don’t want to have to backtrack when you’ve made claims like that.”

An expert for plaintiffs in the fluoride lawsuit, toxicologist Kathleen Thiessen scrutinizes CDC’s claim that fluoridation is one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century in an interview with Children’s Health Defense in which she shares her thoughts on the recent publication of NTP’s meta analysis on fluoride neurotoxicity in JAMA Pediatrics.

“The real evidence shows that it’s probably one of the 10 leading contributors to poor health in this country.”

Teaser:

“If EPA had done its job responsibly even back in the 1980s, we wouldn’t be worrying about this issue. EPA has not allowed the margin of safety it should have had. It should have acted on this a long time ago.”

“If the existing standard had a sufficient margin of safety, that would be below the level recommended for water fluoridation. If the enforceable standard were lowered were it ought to be, somewhere down near zero, then there would be no water fluoridation. You have to have a margin of safety.”

Margin of safety is a 500-year-old principle of toxicology that states, “the dose makes the poison,” and we now know that the toxic dose can vary from person to person. Humans have lots of variability. Individuals who are most sensitive to a toxic substance can suffer the same adverse effect as those with average sensitivity, but at a dose that is 10 times lower. In toxicology, a safety margin of 10x is widely recognized as necessary to account for this variation in sensitivity.

Based on the NTP’s systematic review and meta-analysis, which analyzed 74 studies of fluoride and IQ—22 of which were rated high-quality—fluoridation has a woefully inadequate margin of 2x. And that’s assuming one ignores several high-quality studies finding effects around 0.7 mg/L, the concentration in fluoridated water, which would leave no margin at all.

Full interview:

Thanks to Children’s Health Defense for a great interview.