Does Your Water Department Know? Does the EPA Know?

For years, the question of bad health resulting from fluoride has been dismissed as wild-eyed “conspiracy theories”. In fact, studies have been around for some time indicating that fluoride can have adverse health effects. When you find out what they are via this article, and when you learn that in a super-hushed move, CDC lowered the recommended fluoride levels in drinking water, you’ll see the “debunking” and “conspiracy theorist” labeling tactics of perception control are beginning to fail. This article gives you what you need to inform your City Council and Water Department that they need to adjust the fluoride levels in your drinking water.

After a huge online activist campaign in 2018 to raise awareness on the studies showing that fluoride decreases IQ, CDC quietly changed the recommended fluoride levels. Did you miss the huge online activist campaign? Me, too. Because it was a spontaneous, autonomous effort by individuals sharing scientific studies.

Studies like this systematic review of 27 studies by Dr. Grandjean and colleagues:

Background: Although fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in animal models and acute fluoride poisoning causes neurotoxicity in adults, very little is known of its effects on children’s neurodevelopment. Objective: We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies to investigate the effects of increased fluoride exposure and delayed neurobehavioral development.

Results: The standardized weighted mean difference in IQ score between exposed and reference populations was -0.45 (95% confidence interval: -0.56, -0.35) using a random-effects model. Thus, children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses also indicated inverse associations, although the substantial heterogeneity did not appear to decrease.

Conclusions: The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment. Future research should include detailed individual-level information on prenatal exposure, neurobehavioral performance, and covariates for adjustment. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22820538/

Or this one, by Nakamoto and Rawls:

Abstract:

Fluoride, one of the most celebrated ingredients for the prevention of dental caries in the 20th century, has also been controversial for its use in dentifrices and other applications. In the current review, we have concentrated primarily on early-life exposure to fluoride and how it may affect the various organs. The most recent controversial aspects of fluoride are related to toxicity of the developing brain and how it may possibly result in the decrease of intelligence quotient (IQ), autism, and calcification of the pineal gland. In addition, it has been reported to have possible effects on bone and thyroid glands. If nutritional stress is applied during a critical period of growth and development, the organ(s) and/or body will never recover once they pass through the critical period. For example, if animals are force-fed during experiments, they will simply get fat but never reach the normal size. Although early-life fluoride exposure causing fluorosis is well reported in the literature, the dental profession considers it primarily as an esthetic rather than a serious systemic problem. In the current review, we wanted to raise the possibility of future disease as a result of early-life exposure to fluoride. It is not currently known how fluoride will become a cause of future disease. Studies of other nutritional factors have shown that the effects of early nutritional stress are a cause of disease in later life. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29763350/

Since then, numerous other studies have shown that IQ and fluoride exposure in children:

Associations between Urinary, Dietary, and Water Fluoride Concentrations among Children in Mexico and Canada https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/8/4/110

And this one

Critical windows of fluoride neurotoxicity in Canadian children https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935121006095

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s online resource, The Defender, published this essay

Fluoride Is Toxic to Developing Brains, New Studies Find

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fluoride-is-toxic-to-developing-brains-new-studies-find/

All of this progress has been made in spite of attempts to malign one scientist among a large team of scientists who have published the IQ/Fluoride link (it didn’t work):

Scientists call for independent probe of Canadian professor’s research linking fluoride to lower IQ https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/scientists-call-for-independent-probe-of-canadian-professor-s-research-linking-fluoride-to-lower-iq-1.5137842

Perhaps because more scientists have published more science than the science-deniers can handle:

Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores in Offspring in Canada https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2748634

Conclusions and Relevance  In this study, maternal exposure to higher levels of fluoride during pregnancy was associated with lower IQ scores in children aged 3 to 4 years. These findings indicate the possible need to reduce fluoride intake during pregnancy.”

The study that triggered the emotion-laden letter claiming that the scientist in question had an agenda?

Fluoride exposure from infant formula and child IQ in a Canadian birth cohort https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31743803/

Results: Thirty-eight percent of mother-child dyads lived in fluoridated communities. An increase of 0.5 mg/L in water fluoride concentration (approximately equaling the difference between fluoridated and non-fluoridated regions) corresponded to a 9.3- and 6.2-point decrement in Performance IQ among formula-fed (95% CI: -13.77, -4.76) and breast-fed children (95% CI: -10.45, -1.94). The association between water fluoride concentration and Performance IQ remained significant after controlling for fetal fluoride exposure among formula-fed (B = -7.93, 95% CI: -12.84, -3.01) and breastfed children (B = -6.30, 95% CI: -10.92, -1.68). A 0.5 mg increase in fluoride intake from infant formula corresponded to an 8.8-point decrement in Performance IQ (95% CI: -14.18, -3.34) and this association remained significant after controlling for fetal fluoride exposure (B = -7.62, 95% CI: -13.64, -1.60).

Conclusions: Exposure to increasing levels of fluoride in tap water was associated with diminished non-verbal intellectual abilities; the effect was more pronounced among formula-fed children.

The critics of Dr. Till’s study claimed that they scientists did not consider parent-child IQ (an imagined “confounder”) but they missed that they studied DYADS (which automatically adjusts for inheritance.

Realize that synergistic toxicity between aluminum and fluoride is well-established in the scientific literature for a long, long time, e.g.,

Role of Spirulina in mitigating hematotoxicity in Swiss albino mice exposed to aluminum and aluminum fluoride https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27687764/

From 1997: Toxin-induced blood vessel inclusions caused by the chronic administration of aluminum and sodium fluoride and their implications for dementia https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9369984/

What you can do:

  1. Inform your water department by sharing this article with them. CDC has been truly hush-hush on this and practically no one knows the lowered the recommended levels. https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/faqs/public-service-recommendations.html #ShareTheStudies #ScienceMatters
  2. Support the TCSA trial. EPA is actually being sued to act. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a group of non-profits and individuals petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 to end the addition of fluoridation chemicals into drinking water due to fluoride’s neurotoxicity. The EPA rejected the petition. In response, the groups sued the EPA in Federal Court. The trial was held in June 2020 and the judge has yet to make his ruling as of August 2021. https://fluoridealert.org/issues/tsca-fluoride-trial/
  3. Share this article in your email lists and online across social media. Let’s do ten times better than the online campaign in 2018. YOU MATTER. Act now!

* Original article online at https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/shhh-cdc-lowered-the-recommended