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September 27, 2024 - 7:00pm
A federal judge this week ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride levels in drinking water to minimise the risk posed to children’s health. It marks a turning point in the fight over public water fluoridation, the potential harms of which have long been dismissed.
Water fluoridation began in the US in the Forties in order to prevent tooth decay, but it was followed soon after by rumours that the project was a communist plot to make Americans less intelligent. The John Birch Society, a fringe Right-wing group that was prominent in the Sixties, pushed this argument and was eventually exiled from the conservative mainstream.
More recently, however, Left-wing environmental activists have led the charge against fluoride, citing health concerns rather than national security. David Brower, former leader of a Left-leaning environmental group, the Sierra Club, co-founded the Fluoride Action Network, which famously opposed the fluoridation programme in Portland. The same group brought the lawsuit which resulted in the new EPA ruling, citing a large collection of studies which found a link between IQ and fluoride. Despite their grounding in science, these critics are often lumped in with conspiracy theorists and portrayed as fringe.
Just this year, former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr pledged to “remove neurotoxic fluoride from American drinking water”, and was quickly fact-checked. “Some studies suggest a possible association between greater levels of fluoride exposure during pregnancy or early childhood and reduced IQ in children. But many scientific experts have said the evidence for this association is weak,” FactCheck.org wrote, alongside citations of the CDC and EPA.
For many years, health concerns about fluoride were dismissed. “Science says fluoride in water is good for kids. So why are these towns banning it?” a 2018 MSNBC headline read, while the National Geographic struck a similar tone in an article titled “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?” “Fluoridation continues to incite fear and paranoia”, the article read. “Opponents didn’t like the idea of the government adding ‘chemicals’ to their water. They claimed that fluoride could be harmful to human health.”
But this week, an Obama-appointed judge, Edward Chen, determined that fluoride, which is added to the drinking water of about 75% of Americans, poses an “unreasonable risk” to consumers. “The scientific literature in the record provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present; fluoride is associated with reduced IQ,” Chen wrote.
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SubscribeDo we know if fluoride actually reduces cavities in a meaningful way? It’s not like your sloshing water around your mouth when you drink it. When you brush your teeth, you are actually applying it to every tooth in your mouth.
In the UK we’ve got several adjacent regions with identical socioeconomic and demographic profiles but different levels of flouride, naturally or by water treatment. The presence of 0.7mg/l or more of fluoride in the water very strongly correlates with a statistically very significant 25% fewer cavities.
Here’s the thing, the UK treatment target rate is 1.0mg/l and the legal maximum 1.5mg/l. Many mineral waters exceed 0.4mg/l (the “safe” limit cited in this ruling) and natural flouride levels in several areas of the UK are in the range 0.5mg/ to 1.0mg/l. Would this natural water be considered “unsafe”?
Further, flouride in water is just one source. For children, toothpaste may be their single largest source because they swallow it. If it is IQ we are concerned about, then is it safe for toothpaste – something so very obviously swallowed by children learning to brush their teeth – to have such a high concentration of flouride delivered in such an uncontrolled way?
Given the complexities and many trade offs of this topic, the very last people we should allow to guide this debate are judges and lawyers. They are by training and temperament perfectly ill-equipped to deal with ambiguity and represent societal concerns, let alone statistics and science. This cannot be left to “experts” to decide.
Thanks for this
The standard toothpaste is about 1450ppm which converts to about 1450mg/l. So considerably ‘stronger’ than fluoridated water. Does that make fluoride toothpaste very dangerous? Possibly, so I have stopped using.
Strange that the Govt insist is both effective and safe.
Anyway better to look after your teeth by healthier diet and other oral health measures such as water flossing etc.
When I was a child a friend’s little brother used to like having toothpaste on his tongue, so his parents used to apply it as a treat. It will have all got swallowed.
I don’t know how long this went on for, or even if it was fluoride toothpaste, but when I saw that kid later on he seemed a bit damaged.
I know it’s an anecdote, and a pretty rubbish one at that, but people definitely shouldn’t be swallowing toothpaste as a treat. But if used properly it should be safe – it’s been in use since the 50s, a major issue would’ve been observed.
Not at all sure a link would have been observed. So many potential causes, variations, people etc. Might it be responsible for the huge increase in ADHD or autism or….?
The increases in ADHD and autism are much more recent than fluoride toothpaste, so it seems unlikely.
I guess it is possible a small effect could have been missed. But large numbers of people becoming noticeably more stupid would be obvious.
Oh, wait…
The increases in ADHD merely reflects the fact that today’s parents are not looking after their children properly, if at all. Most children are shipped out to child-minders soon after birth so that the mother can go out to work. The child therefore does not receive the guidance, love and attention he/she should have in early stages.
If the govt says something is “safe and effective” it probably isn’t.
Seems to me that our governments have no business adding flouride to drinking water, given the risks. What we need is public information about the natural flouride levels in our water and the risks/benefits of using toothpaste with added flouride.
The problem is there are no studies showing any risk at or below 1mg/l so there is no known risk with public health flouridation programmes. The US legal ruling (unsurprisingly) conflates findings from several different studies.
A major problem with flouride studies to date is they are meta data type correlations and politically correct sensitivities about IQ mean they don’t control for many obvious variables you’d normally control for such as ethnicity and economics. Poorer areas are more likely to be provided with flouridated water to compensate for poor diet choices leading to higher tooth decay. But poorer areas are more likely to have lower IQ with or without flouride. No academic who wants to stay employed will touch studies looking at genetic and societal factors affecting IQ so any study linking IQ to environmental factors is only telling half a story.
When it comes to health, the normal regulatory standard is “guilty until proven innocent”.
“Factcheckers” betray their bias and their allegiance when they use language like “But many scientific experts have said the evidence for this association is weak”.
“Many experts” means nothing – “Covid” produced “experts” by the sackful, most of them now proven venal grifters, charlatans, and frauds, while the true experts were cancelled and silenced. Science is peer-reviewed publications, not “experts”.
“Weak evidence for an association” means there is evidence for an association. As soon as there is such evidence, the regulatory standard requires that the practice be ceased until there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The main thing is that there should NOT be medical treatment without informed and free consent. You don’t need to know anything about fluoride’s purported risks or benefits to know water fluoridation is unethical.
At the same time the evidence against is substantial and worrying. The precautionary principle also requires its removal from water.
This is a minimally informed fluff piece about non-consensual fluoride treatment that is unworthy of Unheard. Laurel Duggan should inform herself of the information in “The Fluoride Deception” (2004) by British researcher Christopher Bryson and the impressive account of the end of fluoridation in the Netherlands “Fluoride the Freedom Fight” (1987) by physician Hans Moolenburgh. Rob N is correct that the fundamental reason that fluoridation is illegitimate is that it is forced medication. There is also a large body of evidence that ingesting fluoride is carcinogenic, neurotoxic, and increases the risk of hip fractures. It should also give everyone pause that Americans have been drinking fluoridated water for eight decades. For several decades now roughly 75% Americans have started life with IQ deficits and there has been no study of the effect of neurotoxic fluoride ingestion on the cognition of adolescents, adults, and elders. Does fluoride contribute to the “exceptionalism” of Americans?
What has this got to do with the UK?
Some areas of the UK have fluoridated water. Other areas have natural levels similar to those intended from artificial fluoridation.
Er, we drink water, some of which has fluoride added, and our new Labour government wants to add it to all water supplies.
To be clear, all water naturally has flouride in it. Some more, some less. The flouridation programme to date has targeted water supplies very low in flouride. Neither Labour or Tory Party before is / was deciding to add flouride to more supplies, it is the technocrats in the civil service. The evidence the technocrats are using is poor and confounded by reductions in cavities achieved without water flouridation. Ministers rarely challenge departmental technocrats because their only independent source of information is… the technocratic civil servants. Flouride is totemic of the power of unelected technocrats and the powerlessness of the democratic part of government.
Conservatives proven right again after decades of mockery by the Left followed by the Left pretending to discover exactly the same thing they’ve been mocking. Why do we always have to do this?
Maybe Fluoride explains the epidemic of woke?
this would explain a lot about Americans
Fluoride is a neurotoxin. It also causes floridosis in teeth. It has Zero positive impacts on teeth and gums. It has no place in public water supplies though it is an industrial waste product and dumping it in public water is a cheap waste disposal method that also dumbs down those who drink unfiltered tap water. It is a national scandal the UK is promoting fluoridation. While Californian courts now confirm the scientific evidence against. Unherd’s headline about ‘fears’ makes it sound like ‘the science’ is in favour of fluoridation. Which it has never been. Fluoride should also be eradicated from toothpaste and dental care. It is a poison. Period. Prof Michael Northcott, University of Edinburgh.