Fluoride Dangers: New Evidence

When will it be enough to convince policymakers to change course? Action Alert!
A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics has linked fluoride exposure with lower IQ. This is the latest in a long line of studies demonstrating the dangers of water fluoridation, but policymakers are still refusing to act.
The study found that women who drank fluoridated water while pregnant gave birth to children with lower IQs than pregnant mothers who did not drink fluoridated water. The article was accompanied by an editorial note—the first such note the editor-in-chief had ever written—saying that the choice to publish the article was “not easy” and that the paper was subjected to “additional scrutiny” due to its controversial nature. Judging from journals’ refusal to publish credible research calling vaccine safety into question, it is a welcome surprise to see a prestigious journal publish such findings.
Groups like the American Dental Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have rushed to downplay these findings and affirm the safety of fluoride in drinking water. The preponderance of evidence, however, casts doubt on such conclusions.
Two recent studies showed that 1) adults who are iodine deficient and have high levels of fluoride in their system have a greater risk of an underactive thyroid, and 2) mothers with higher fluoride exposure during pregnancy were more likely to have children with symptoms of ADHD. (Note that this wasn’t the first study to link water fluoridation with ADHD.)
These are just the most recent studies. There is substantial evidence, including more than fifty human population studies, that links elevated fluoride levels with neurological effects, especially lower IQ. Fluoride also accumulates in the body, including the blood vessels, where it can contribute to calcification. A National Research Council report concluded that the EPA’s standard for fluoride in drinking water is unsafe and should be lowered. The report highlighted damage that can be done to the teeth, bones, brain, endocrine system, thyroid, and pineal gland—all from drinking fluoride.
As we reported in recent years, water fluoridation is a gift to special interests. Since sodium fluoride is a waste product of the aluminum production process, water fluoridation meant that the aluminum industry could profit from their industrial waste.
Today it’s even worse. Fluorosilicic acid (FSA), an inorganic fluoride compound, is a waste product of synthetic fertilizer production. Breathing FSA’s fumes causes severe lung damage or death; an accidental splash on skin leads to burning and extreme pain. Yet FSA is put into barrels and shipped across the US to be drip-fed into drinking water.
Even if there weren’t any safety concerns with drinking fluoride, there would still be the question of whether we need to do it in the first place. The world is different than it was 100 years ago, especially when it comes to dental health. Most of us use toothpaste, and many people use fluoridated toothpaste, making fluoride in water unnecessary. Other parts of the world that do not fluoridate their water, like Western Europe, have seen dental decay rates decline just as much as they have in the US.
It’s no surprise, then, that 74 cities have voted to remove fluoride from drinking water over the last few years.
Water fluoridation is unsafe, unnecessary, and only benefits industries who can turn their toxic waste into cash. Some groups have sued the EPA after the agency denied a petition to ban the practice of fluoridating water. The case is currently in federal court.
Simply put, there is no good reason to continue water fluoridation, and ending the practice could help protect our kids. It’s time the EPA ended this practice once and for all.
Action Alert! Tell the EPA and Congress to stop water fluoridation. Please send your message immediately.

31 comments

  1. Fluoride is toxic and should not be in our water. It is a toxic byproduct of the aluminum industry and has many adverse affects on our health.

  2. With no valid scientific reason for adding fluoride to any water source, it is time to take action to remove this chemical from public drinking water. Neither the EPA, USDA, or other government agency has shown any proof of benefit by adding fluoride to the drinking. Even the American Dental Association states in their publications that children under six years of ages should not swallow any amount of fluoride in either toothpaste or drinking water. It is time to quit ignoring the proof – Fluoride is bad for human consumption.

  3. As we reported in recent years, water fluoridation is a gift to special interests. Since sodium fluoride is a waste product of the aluminum production process, water fluoridation meant that the aluminum industry could profit from their industrial waste.
    Today it’s even worse. Fluorosilicic acid (FSA), an inorganic fluoride compound, is a waste product of synthetic fertilizer production. Breathing FSA’s fumes causes severe lung damage or death; an accidental splash on skin leads to burning and extreme pain. Yet FSA is put into barrels and shipped across the US to be drip-fed into drinking water.
    Even if there weren’t any safety concerns with drinking fluoride, there would still be the question of whether we need to do it in the first place. The world is different than it was 100 years ago, especially when it comes to dental health. Most of us use toothpaste, and many people use fluoridated toothpaste, making fluoride in water unnecessary. Other parts of the world that do not fluoridate their water, like Western Europe, have seen dental decay rates decline just as much as they have in the US.
    It’s no surprise, then, that 74 cities have voted to remove fluoride from drinking water over the last few years.
    Water fluoridation is unsafe, unnecessary, and only benefits industries who can turn their toxic waste into cash. Some groups have sued the EPA after the agency denied a petition to ban the practice of fluoridating water. The case is currently in federal court.

  4. Come on folks….flouride is a pharmaceutical that has NO PLACE in our water or in our bodies. STOP WATER FLUORIDATION indefinitely!

  5. This issue of fluoridated waters has been going on for years! The science is there to prove its toxicity and lack of benefit to dental health. Yet congressional leaders refuse to act. Peabody still fluoridates its waters; I have tried to discuss this with water treatment bosses, still they don’t listen. They refuse to believe it is a waste product and the aluminum business is profiting from all the dental problems and inferior health.

  6. Water fluoridation is bascially adding a toxic industrial by-product to our drinking water. We do not want our water poisoned! Please stop adding fluoride to public water systems.

  7. Fluoride in our drinking water, based on knowledge from over 50 human population studies, is a mistake of a bygone era. Just as we used to have lead in our paint and mercury in our wallpaper. More than 50 studies have linked fluoride in drinking water with neurological effects, lower IQ, ADHD, blood vessel calcification, underactive thyroid and damage to the pineal gland.
    We have fluoride in our toothpaste – it is unnecessary and dangerous to add it to our drinking water.
    Allowing the aluminum and synthetic fertilizer industries to profit from their industry by-product, fluoride, is hardly worth the danger this practice poses to our population.
    100 years ago, much of the general populace did not have access to fluoridated toothpaste, That has changed, and the risk of contaminating our water greatly outweighs any benefit.
    Please do not support the fluoridation of our water.

  8. With fluoride in toothpaste, it is not necessary to put this very toxic substance in the water.There is already enough toxic residues in the water from drugs and agricultural runoff.

  9. My father was in an early fluoride study in the 1950’s. The consensus among the dentists for that study was that it was toxic and should be eliminated. Instead they put it in drinking water. There is not one reason for fluoride to be in our drinking water but there are lots of reasons why it shouldn’t.
    Please stop bowing to big dollar interests and remove the fluoride from ALL drinking water. It’s time to put the American people first instead of the almighty dollar!

  10. Good grief!!! The clue is making fluoride in the water a regulation. We know we need vitamin C, and yet there are no regs putting it in the water. It’s time we help the aluminum industry accountable. Congress and Senate: get it out of our water.

  11. Fluoridated water penalizes low income people who cannot afford an expensive water filter, and perhaps they don’t even have the information that fluoride can be harmful. And they need to be educated about proper dental hygiene.

  12. The chemical industry brain washes people and plays on their fears even making it part of racial issues.

  13. I am a dental hygienist & spent my younger years praising fluoride & wishing I had had it in my drinking water when growing up. This is a complete turn around for me!

  14. Proven unsafe, certainly unnecessary, and ONLY BENEFITS industries who want to turn their TOXIC WASTE into income. Come on, EPA, do your job: “Protect” us from fluoride in our water.

  15. EPA/Congress:
    PLEASE take a stance on fluoride and remove it from our water systems. It is ONE thing to CHOOSE to have fluoride treatments at a dentist, or to have it contained in toothpastes. It is quite another thing to mandate and let it flow through our nations water systems …. it is clearly a DRUG, and nearly all water systems do not give us the choice to USE this drug. Ingesting it without choice is just plain CRIMINAL.
    **PLEASE STOP WATER FLUORIDATION**

  16. I have been fighting fluoride for years but the knuckleheads in Zanesville Ohio don’t seem to understand. I’ve used a reverse-osmosis filter for years. I take bottled water to restaurants.

  17. My adult son with autism is allergic/hypersensitive to fluoride. He doesn’t get hives, but he does get severe pain a few minutes (or less) after a fluoride exposure, whether from food, dental products or even the seemingly tiny amount in fluoridated tap water. It is not a “tiny amount” to him any more than peanut dust is a tiny amount to person allergic to peanuts.
    Fortunately, my son’s reaction to fluoride isn’t the kind of allergy that is life-threatening, but fluoride to my son is definitely life-changing every single day, because fluoride is in every product that is produced in a city or water district that adds fluoride to public water. Not only does wide-spread fluoride contamination change my son’s life, but it also negatively affects everyone who provides care for him because we all must become fluoride avoidance experts (and if we screw up, there’s hell to pay when he starts screaming).
    It is well established that autism affects boys 4 times more often than girls. Now this latest fluoride study found that boys also suffer greater IQ loss than girls from fluoridated water. What hasn’t been studied yet—but should be—is how many IQ points were lost due to fluoridated tap water for those baby boys who are later diagnosed with autism? And beyond IQ tests, what other brain functions are affected by fluoride in those more vulnerable boy babies, such as speech, language and social skills that are the hallmark deficits in autism spectrum disorders?
    Without this type of research, we can’t know how or how much my son would have been affected by fluoride as a fetus or infant (considering that we have lived in a fluoridated area since well before his conception), but I know that pain from fluoride profoundly affects how my son behaves. Screaming, running and jumping from pain is not acceptable in a school room or at a job.
    We know so little about fluoride because it has been shielded from scientific scrutiny for half a century. Thankfully, that is changing. We also know next to nothing about the causes of autism because we’ve barely touched the tip of the iceberg in biological autism research. What if researchers take the effort to look and find that fluoride can exacerbate the symptoms of autism, like it profoundly does to my son? Such a discovery could potentially save so much money…and so many broken lives.
    In the meantime, there is plenty of damning scientific evidence that fluoridated water robs babies of a lifetime of much-needed intelligence. How long do we wait before lawmakers and public health agencies put babies before industry? Any substance that shows any evidence of harm to babies brains should be banned from all sources of exposure, especially public water supplies.
    Exactly what does it take to convince local, state and federal officials that while teeth can be fixed, babies brains cannot?

  18. there is no good reason to continue water fluoridation, and ending the practice could help protect our kids. It’s time the EPA ended this practice once and for all.
    Action Alert! Tell the EPA and Congress to stop water fluoridation

  19. The 2006 National Research Council advised the EPA that their MCL/MCLG of 4 ppm was unsafe. They also advised the EPA that there was insufficient evidence with which to determine a safe concentration, especially for vulnerable subpopulations.
    That gap in the science has been rectified. There is no safe concentration in the water for pregnant women and other vulnerable populations. Consequently, the EPA should lower the MCLG to 0 ppm like with lead. Set an actionable MCL at least at 1.5 ppm to be consistent with the WHO recommendations. Send out an advisory that pregnant women and other susceptible subpopulations should take action to avoid any water source with a concentration above 0.2 ppm. Then advise HHS, CDC and FDA to take action to end artificial fluoridation of municipal and bottled waters.

  20. Once again the EPA is protecting industry over public health. Flouride should never have been added to drinking water. It is a known toxin that numerous studies have shown to be harmful to children’s brains. There is no evidence that it reduces dental carries. It is only a convenient way to dispose of toxic waste. It’s time for this outrageous practice to stop.

  21. FLUORIDE is so corrosive that special equipment is required to store it.
    It is an industrial waste product that eats holes in concrete, dissolves metal and human flesh, but it’s OK to add to our drinking water? Fluoride makes your body absorb extra aluminum. “Where does this extra aluminum go? Your BRAIN! What metal shows up alarmingly in the brains of Alzheimer’s Victims? You guessed it!” – Dr. William Douglas, MD
    (and Autistic patients)
    Other prime sources of Aluminum are vaccinations.
    (Other dementia-causing heavy metal toxins include lead, cadmium, mercury, copper and tungsten.)
    Could it be the Fluoride Connection?
    Fluoride is an industrial Hazardous Waste (HAZMAT) product.
    (A) Fluoride is usually diluted into the tap water in very large cities.
    (B) Many people who vote Democrat are known as “Low Information Voters”
    (C) Many people in very large cities vote Democrat.
    (D) DemonRats are the Party of the Big Cities, it must be something in the Big City Water, like fluoride, that causes their brains to deteriorate!

  22. FLUORIDE is so corrosive that special equipment is required to store it.
    It is an industrial waste product that eats holes in concrete, dissolves metal and human flesh, but it’s OK to add to our drinking water? Fluoride makes your body absorb extra aluminum.
    “Where does this extra aluminum go? Your BRAIN! What metal shows up alarmingly in the brains of Alzheimer’s Victims? You guessed it!” – Dr. William Douglas, MD
    (and also Autistic patients)
    Other prime sources of Aluminum are vaccinations.
    (Other dementia-causing heavy metal toxins include lead, cadmium, mercury, copper and tungsten.)
    Could it be the Fluoride Connection?
    Fluoride is an industrial Hazardous Waste (HAZMAT) product.
    (A) Fluoride is usually diluted into the tap water in very large cities.
    (B) Many people in very large cities vote Democrat.
    (C) Many people who vote Democrat are known as “Low Information Voters”
    (D) DemonRats are the Party of the Big Cities, it must be something in the Big City Water, like fluoride, that causes their brains to deteriorate!

  23. Please look into the problem of fluoride in drinking water being as much of a health hazard as mercury and lead exposure.

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