You’ve probably been told your entire life that fluoride is good for you and that only conspiracy theory nuts and health freaks think it’s dangerous. After all, why would municipalities add it to our water and our toothpaste if it had dangerous side effects?
Turns out, the dangers of fluoride aren’t just a theory. The latest American Medical Association’s journal on pediatrics, JAMA Pediatrics, confirmed the dangers of exposure to Fluoride in utero.
The study, “Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores in Offspring in Canada,” was a joint Canadian and U.S. study of 512 mother-child pairs from 6 major Canadian cities. The study concluded that maternal exposure to higher levels of fluoride during pregnancy was directly linked to lower IQ scores in children ages 3 to 4.
You can get your cavity repaired, but there isn’t much you can do for a brain that has been damaged in utero. Unbelievably, even the lefties at the Daily Beast were loath to admit that the “conspiracy theorists” have been right all along.
“An influential medical journal published a study Monday that links fluoride consumption during pregnancy with lower childhood IQs—a finding that could undermine decades of public-health messaging, fire up conspiracy theorists, and alarm mothers-to-be. The research was expected to be so controversial that JAMA Pediatrics included an editor’s note saying the decision to publish it was not easy and that it was subjected to ‘additional scrutiny.'”
But any expectant mother should be alarmed with results of the study and should avoid fluoridated water while pregnant. In fact, the findings are so huge that for the first time in his career, the editor of Pediatrics did, indeed, include an editorial note, knowing fluoridation proponents would attack the study without justification. He cited the study’s rigor, triple-checking of the data and definitive nature of the evidence:
This decision to publish this article was not easy. Given the nature of the findings and their potential implications, we subjected it to additional scrutiny for its methods and the presentation of its findings. The mission of the journal is to ensure that child health is optimized by bringing the best available evidence to the fore. Publishing it serves as testament to the fact that JAMA Pediatrics is committed to disseminating the best science based entirely on the rigor of the methods and the soundness of the hypotheses tested, regardless of how contentious the results may be. That said, scientific inquiry is an iterative process. It is rare that a single study provides definitive evidence. This study is neither the first, nor will it be the last, to test the association between prenatal fluoride exposure and cognitive development. We hope that purveyors and consumers of these findings are mindful of that as the implications of this study are debated in the public arena.
The editor’s nervousness is well founded because it will also affect the billion dollar industry that is selling fluoridated water to parents of infants as well as big corporations such as Procter & Gamble marketing toothpaste containing fluoride to children.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, municipal water fluoridation has been used for decades to prevent tooth decay. Water fluoridation is supplied to about 66 percent of U.S. residents, 38 percent to Canadian residents, and 3 percent of European residents.
In fluoridated communities, fluoride from water and beverages made with tap water makes up 60 to 80 percent of daily fluoride intake in adolescents and adults.
Higher fluoride exposure from drinking water has been associated with a lower intelligence in other studies, but in this case, the study irrefutably found that fluoride crosses the placenta and accumulates in the brain regions involved in learning and memory.
The study assessed children’s intellectual abilities, including verbal reasoning and comprehension and performance, as well as nonverbal reasoning, such as spatial intelligence and visual motor skills. Collectively, the findings support that exposure to fluoride during pregnancy is associated with neurocognitive deficits. You can read the full report here.
China and almost all European countries have banned or restricted the use of fluoride in commercial drinking systems, but not so for the United States. As with other public health hazards, Americans are left to fight their own government’s regulatory agencies for the right to untainted, nontoxic drinking water.
In February 2017, the EPA rejected a petition submitted by the Fluoride Action Network, Food & Water Watch, Organic Consumers Association, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology and other individuals seeking to ban the purposeful addition of fluoridated chemicals to U.S. water supplies.
The petition, submitted under the Toxic Substances Control Act, presented evidence that fluoride poses an unacceptable neurotoxic risk in light of the little to no benefits gained by adding it to drinking water. Numerous studies have shown that the primary benefit of fluoride comes from topical contact with teeth, not by swallowing fluoride in the water. And the risks of adding it to drinking water are enormous: lower IQ levels in children, cancer and elevated blood lead levels.
Countries that have banned or restricted the use of fluoride include Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Hungary, Israel, and Japan. And according to the Fluoride Action Network, in Europe, only Ireland (73 percent), Poland (1 percent), Serbia (3 percent), Spain (11 percent) and the U.K. (11 percent) fluoridate their water supplies.
Some of the greatest cities around the globe do not fluoridate their water and include: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Basel, Berlin, Copenhagen, Florence, Frankfurt, Geneva, Glasgow, Helsinki, London, Montreal, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Tokyo, Vancouver, Venice, Vienna and Zurich.
In the early 1970s, the EPA was tasked with regulating the amount of fluoride that can be legally present in drinking water supplies, and in 1975, it passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, setting the maximum contaminant level for fluoride at 1.4-2.4 ppm, twice the level of fluoride added to water in artificial fluoridation programs (0.7 to 1.2 ppm).
A decade or so later, the EPA undertook a review of the maximum level of fluoride in drinking water considered to be safe for human consumption. As part of this review, the EPA tapped a Surgeon General’s panel of scientists and doctors. The panel concluded that both moderate and severe dental fluorosis are adverse health effects and that the EPA should enact an enforceable drinking water standard no higher than 2.4 ppm.
But what the panel didn’t know, however, was that their conclusions were later gutted by pro-fluoridation officials at the Surgeon General’s office and it was this corrupted version of the panel’s report that was then sent to the EPA. This corrupted version of recommendations classified dental fluorosis as only a “cosmetic” effect and increased the allowable level of fluoride in drinking water to 4 ppm.
Fast forward 30 years later and Americans are still fighting against a regulatory agency that is employing bad science and corrupt reporting. It is unconscionable that the health of U.S. citizens is almost always put at risk by the very regulatory agencies set up to protect them.
The reality is that the EPA and other U.S. regulatory agencies have become no more than puppets of corporate interests and greed and that many credible, hard working scientists across a broad spectrum of research continue to lose their livelihoods by insisting on reporting the truth. In the case of fluoride, that would be the powerful chemical industry.
As one of the largest developed western nations on the globe, Americans suffer more damage at the hand of the EPA, USDA, FDA, NIH and other strong corporate and scientific interests than any other nation in the world.
The fight for who will reign is crucial to the well being of our nation and future generations. Will it be the corporate and government entities that collaborate together to achieve their own ends or will we be able to overcome these powerful entities by putting real science and information to work for our us. And as it turns out, the study confirms that we do have a nation of more stupid people than generations ago.