The Lawsuit That Could End Water Fluoridation in the US
Since 1945, it’s been claimed that adding fluoride to drinking water is a safe and effective way to improve the public’s dental health. Since then, many have bought into this fallacy hook, line and sinker, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
One of the reasons why it’s so important to eliminate water fluoridation is because this chemical is very difficult to remove. You can remove some or a significant amount using distillation, reverse osmosis and special filtration media, but the vast majority of water filters that people have access to will not remove fluoride. So, you might filter your water, thinking you’ve purified it, but you haven’t eliminated fluoride.
This is particularly problematic for low-income parents of small children, who need to use fluoride-free water for mixing baby formula. Fluoridated water contains 250 times more fluoride than mother's milk, significantly raising the child’s risk of fluorosis and other health problems, including developmental and neurological problems.
Michael Connett, an attorney specializing in toxic tort practice, is the son of Paul Connett, Ph.D., toxicologist, environmental chemist and the founder and former director of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) — an organization that has fought to remove toxic fluoride from the water supply across the world. Over the past 18 years, FAN has facilitated the removal of fluoride from the water supplies of hundreds of communities in North America, Canada and Europe.
In the featured Newsbud video report, Paul and Michael discuss the known dangers of fluoride, and how FAN is now taking on government by suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to end the deliberate addition of fluoride to drinking water in the U.S.
Water Fluoridation Jeopardizes Public Health
Scientific investigations have revealed fluoride is an endocrine-disrupting chemical,1 and have linked it to the rising prevalence of thyroid disease,2 which in turn can contribute to obesity, heart disease, depression and other health problems. In fact, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, fluoride was used as a drug to lower thyroid activity in patients with overactive thyroid.
Even more importantly, fluoride has been identified as a developmental neurotoxin that impacts short-term and working memory, and contributes to rising rates of attention-deficit hyperactive disorder3 and lowered IQ in children.4 Many of these studies have found harm at levels within the range, or precariously close to, the levels millions of American children receive on a regular basis. In all, there are more than 300 animal and human studies demonstrating fluoride can cause:5
Brain damage, especially when coupled with iodine deficiency or excessive levels of aluminum
Reduced IQ
Impaired ability to learn and remember
Neurobehavioral deficits such as impaired visual-spatial organization
Impaired fetal brain development
Government Study Confirms IQ Loss Following Prenatal Exposure
This evidence includes a long-term multimillion-dollar study6,7,8,9 sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which was published last year. This study found a correlation between fluoride exposure in utero and subsequent reductions in cognitive function at the ages of 4 and 6 through 12.
The authors, hailing from several universities in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, followed over 300 mother-child pairs in Mexico City for 12 years. The urine levels of the pregnant women in the study (0.5 to 1.5 mg/Liter), were basically identical to those found in pregnant women in the U.S. (0.6 to 1.5 mg/L). The mean level of fluoride in the urine of the mothers included in the study was 0.9 mg/L.
At these levels the authors reported a staggering loss of five to six IQ points. (From the low end of that range to the high end is a difference of 1 mg/L, which is what caused the five to six IQ-point difference in the children of the study mothers.) More specifically, each 0.5 mg/L increase in fluoride over 0.8 mg/L in the mother’s urine was associated with a 2.5-point reduction in IQ and a 3.15-point reduction in general cognitive index scores in the child, leading the authors to conclude that:
“… higher prenatal fluoride exposure, in the general range of exposures reported for other general population samples of pregnant women and nonpregnant adults, was associated with lower scores on tests of cognitive function in the offspring at age 4 and 6-12 y[ears].”
According to lead author Howard Hu, founding dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, this is one of the largest, longest and most rigorously executed studies on fluoride and neurodevelopment ever conducted. While Mexico does not fluoridate drinking water, Mexicans are still exposed to many other sources of fluoride, including naturally-occurring fluoride in water, fluoridated salt, dental products, supplements, pesticides and tea.
Importantly, the researchers found that prenatal exposure was far more influential with respect to cognitive function than subsequent fluoride exposure during childhood. As noted by Hu, “The fetal system tends to be more sensitive to environmental toxicants than once the child is born,” and this study supports that view.