Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Flouride and lower IQ/LDs?

This is an honest request for opinions, I have not decided one way or another what to believe on this issue.

Mom seems convinced that just about everything in the world is some giant conspiracy, I generally take her advice with a grain of salt to protect myself from becoming paranoid and neurotic (she sent me "the non-toxic baby" book and some other "horror of vaccines" book when I was pregnant).

Many of her wacko "theories" have gained credibility and general acceptance over time, so I don't totally discount what she says, I just don't have the time or energy to follow up with thorough research on everything so I generally take the advice that doesn't cost or inconvenience me - just in case she's right (i.e. choosing deodorant over anti-perspirant, not microwaving food etc).

You all are so good at looking at the different angles of an issue and picking it apart for science based vs BS studies, so I thought I would ask your opinions on this one:

Should we be opposing fluoridation of our water supply and or supporting research on the possible health consequences of ingesting fluoride?

This page lists a number of studies and concerns that seem to be alarming - especially reasons 20-26:

http://www.fluoridealert.org/50-reasons.htm

and this one says fluoride is a drug that has never been approved by the FDA:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036280_history_water_fluoridation_FDA_approval.html

I don't want top be paranoid on this but I haven't found anything positive on the studies that showed it to be healthy and safe in the first place.

Thoughts?

Hi Nik,

This set of pages from the CDC will give you lots of information about the importance of fluoride to teeth. The page says that fluoridation was one of the great public health achievements of the twentieth century.

Like everything else, too much fluoride can cause harm. This page has information about this idea.

ETA: This article, which is written in a clear but colorful way, illustrates the way that putative connections between fluoride and lower IQ can be exaggerated way, way, way out of proportion.

This set of pages is about vaccination. Unfortunately, there has been an uninformed backlash against vaccination in the last decade or so. The problem sprung from an unethical researcher named Andrew Wakefield who "studied" children who had been vaccinated with a certain MMR vaccine. He claimed that the vaccine was causing autism. Long story short: he had a financial interest in a DIFFERENT MMR vaccine, and he made up some of his results. This has been thoroughly documented. Read the Wikipedia entry with his name.

The really sad part about all of this is that what he did has given birth to an industry of fakery that scares people away from vaccinating their children. Diseases that were once nearly eradicated in the west are now reappearing, due in large part of failure to vaccinate. Children have died of diseases like measles and whooping cough as a result. The saddest thing is that some people who haven't been vaccinated yet (young babies, who can die of whooping cough) or can't be (young cancer patients) have picked up these diseases from older children whose parents didn't vaccinate them.

One thing that struck me is that one of your URLs is called "fluoride alert" and the other is "natural news." To me, these names say "We're biased." I realize that some people will claim government conspiracy theories, but the reality is that the CDC refers to papers that were published in peer-reviewed journals written by people who work at universities or in industry. Even government scientists publish in peer-reviewed journals. Even if they did manage to use their power (?) to elbow a bad paper into a journal (such as lies about vaccine safety or fluoride), someone else would catch it and expose it. Or more likely, a lot of people would catch it and expose it.

HTH.

ETA: Some people say that vaccine-preventable diseases aren't dangerous (I believe Jenny McCarthy is famous to preferring measles to a shot). They are wrong. Measles almost killed my sister, who was born a few years before the shot became available. As I noted, whooping cough can kill infants under 6 months old. Polio is renowned for paralysis and death. Etc.!

No way should we oppose fluoridation (note the correct spelling). For what it's worth, we have given both of my kids fluoride drops (since our water is unfluoridated) since birth.
My almost 10 year old has never had a cavity- is GAI on the WISC was 144 at age 6 and he only missed 6 questions on the OLSAT (99th percentile). My 7 year old had one tiny cavity and got a 165 total IQ on the RIAS. Both kids are lousy brushers, LOL.
I have two patients who are pediatric dentists. They said fluoride drops are a fantastic way to prevent cavities. It encases the teeth in almost concerete. My kids should have lifelong excellent enamel on their teeth, thanks to fluoride drops.
There is so much pseudo-science out there. It's very sad since it makes people miss great opportunities to otherwise improve their health.

There's lots of pseudoscience regarding fluoride, but there's also this: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/features/fluoride-childrens-health-grandjean-choi.html

As for the claim that the FDA has not approved fluoride... possibly true, but conclusively irrelevant. The FDA does not regulate tap water supplies. That's the EPA.

Thanks for the links Val and I am not concerned about vaccines here, I already made an informed decision to vaccinate my kids long ago. Could you please re-post the first link as it doesn't work. The 2nd link seems to support some of the concerns raised in the "50 reasons" article (my first link above), primarily that infants and children are getting a lot more than they need- over 100 times more than what is found in breast-milk.

Jack'smom, I am aware that dentists and others say that fluoride is great for preventing cavities. My DD just got her first cavity at 19 and she was never a good toothbrush-er so I am not disagreeing there either. But the graph in #12 on the first link shows World Health Organization data indicating the same level of cavity reduction across children in all countries whether they had fluoride in their water or not - so I am not so sure I am convinced it is the addition of fluoride to drinking water that is to credit for this. Also #11 states:

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 1999, 2001) has now acknowledged that the mechanism of fluoride's benefits are mainly topical, not systemic"

I am hoping for more than anecdotal feedback here, I find it so difficult and exhausting to digest the information in the technical studies. Has anyone here actually looked into the hard data on this issue?

The links to studies on the CDC page are somewhat dated and hard to read but as far as I got before my brain shut down, it appeared that the studies were actually consistent with the health concerns against adding fluoride to the water. I will try to plow through it some more as time permits.

I appreciate your input!

Thanks Dude! I guess the relevance of the FDA claim goes with the statement that by FDA standards Fluoride is a drug, and then it's an ethical question about medicating the masses without informed consent by adding an unapproved drug to the water supply. Yes I know, this all reeks of wacky conspiracy theory, but I don't want to be so put off by that that I throw out the baby with the bathwater because it seems there is something worth learning more about here.

That study talks mainly about China. The study notes that very high fluoride levels can cause neurotoxicity ("brain damage.") I can imagine that in China or other largely third world countries which may not closely regulate waste, etc., that you could get highly toxic doses.
That is not directly relevant to the discussion at hand- whether adding fluoride at very low levels to the water supply (versus in my example, giving fluoride drops, again at low levels) causes "brain damage" is not clearly shown. Dumping toxic doses into the water supply, as from run-off from chemical companies, etc. probably can cause problems.

(Fluoride is a supplement and supplements aren't defined as drugs. Although one could make a case for the FDA regulating vitamin pills.)

The Harvard study is here. They did a meta-analysis of a lot of different studies in China. I don't really know what to think about it: they authors note that "studies were generally of insufficient quality," yet focused on the "consistency" of their findings. But this is a huge problem to me: the Harvard authors state that the quality of the Chinese studies was poor, and in reading through the paper, it seems to me that they also didn't know much about local conditions at each study site. For example, they said "large tracts of China have superficial fluoride rich minerals with little, if any, likelihood of contamination by other neurotoxicants that would be associated with fluoride concentrations in drinking water." But they just assume. They don't KNOW if this is true. What about lead from cars? What about lead in the water that isn't being published by the government? The government in mainland China is known for this kind of this (for example, google "crazy bad air beijing." A friend of mine was there that day. Contrary to official estimates, the air really was crazy bad.).

I can see that fluoride could cause brain damage in very high concentrations. I don't know about high, medium, or low concentrations.

Here's my advice: stay away from sites with an ideological agenda. People who make decisions based on ideology tend to ignore anything that doesn't support their point of view. Stick to the CDC or other similar sites outside the US. Read peer-reviewed studies or reviews. Obviously, they can have flaws, but it's far less likely that you'll find ideology in them.


Personally, when I'm trying to answer a question that involves analyzing published information, I figure that I need to dig into the data myself. This way, I become more educated about the topic, and the education I get tends to carry over into other areas later on. It's always good to get links and sources of information from other people, though.

I think the real problem here is quantifying "very high concentrations." If you look at Table 1 in the study, it shows some very basic information about different studies. A number of those studies note lower IQ scores with the "high" or "exposed" group compared to the "reference" group, and many of the levels specified as "high" or "exposed" are below the 4.0mg/L maximum specified by the EPA.

Ultimately, the study concluded "more research is needed." I think we can both agree with that statement.

On the other hand, fluoride only benefits you when it's in your mouth and in contact with your teeth. Once you swallow it, it can no longer help... but that's when it can hurt. Given this information, fluoridating water doesn't make any sense. Fluoride should be used in rinses and toothpastes where they're not swallowed, and left out of the water supply.

"Fluoride is a drug" is another ludicrous claim. Fluoride is no more a drug than table salt.

Also, the claim that "fluoride is an ingredient in nerve gas." So is water.

There do appear to be some real potential risks with fluoridating water, but any correlation with conspiracy theories can be considered entirely coincidental.