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Harvard Professor: Fluoride Toxic to Children, Linked to Autism

John Deike | February 20, 2014 12:49 pm | Comments
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Practically overnight, fluoride joined the likes of lead, arsenic, methylmercury, toluene and other chemicals known to damage brain tissue, reports the Fluoride Action Network (FAN).
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[/URL]"In light of the new classification of fluoride as a dangerous neurotoxin, adding more fluoride to American's already excessive intake no longer has any conceivable justification. We should follow the evidence and try to reduce fluoride intake, not increase it," said Paul Connett, PhD, FAN executive director. Photo courtesy of ShutterstockIn the March 2014 journal Lancet Neurology, the highly prevalent chemical was reclassified as a developmental neurotoxin by medical authorities.
The authors, Dr. Philippe Grandjean of the Harvard School of Public Health and Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Icahn School of Medicine write, "A meta-analysis of 27 cross-sectional studies of children exposed to fluoride in drinking water, mainly from China, suggests an average IQ decrement of about seven points in children exposed to raised fluoride concentrations."
The majority of these 27 studies had water fluoride levels of less than four milligrams per liter, which falls under the allowable level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Developmental neurotoxins, which are capable of causing widespread brain disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities, often cause untreatable and permanent damage.
Grandjean and Landrigan write, "Our very great concern is that children worldwide are being exposed to unrecognized toxic chemicals that are silently eroding intelligence, disrupting behaviors, truncating future achievements and damaging societies, perhaps most seriously in developing countries."
To help protect children's brain development, the authors say it's extremely important to control the use of such harmful chemicals. In the study, they have proposed mandatory testing of these chemicals and request an immediate formation of a new international clearinghouse to evaluate them for potential neurotoxicity.
"Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain," Grandjean says. "The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us."
"In light of the new classification of fluoride as a dangerous neurotoxin, adding more fluoride to American's already excessive intake no longer has any conceivable justification. We should follow the evidence and try to reduce fluoride intake, not increase it," said Paul Connett, PhD, FAN executive director, in a prepared statement.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report roughly 276 million Americans consume fluoridated drinking water, largely as a result of the CDC's vigorous advocacy to maintain and elevate those consumption numbers.
Yet the CDC's own evidence reveals Americans already show symptoms of fluoride-overexposure and reports that 41 percent of American teenagers have dental fluorosis, a physical sign that they ingested too much fluoride while their teeth were forming. Evidence also indicates these markers in the U.S. are not decreasing over time, but are increasing.

Connett asks, "Why would the CDC persist in going against the tide of evidence to promote higher fluoride intake? Sadly, it seems, health agencies in fluoridated countries seem to be more intent on protecting the fluoridation program than protecting children's brains."

Charlie Prima Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:...rots your brains.

That's a Conspiracy Theory.

Quote:Impact of fluoride on neurological development in children

July 25, 2012 For years health experts have been unable to agree on whether fluoride in the drinking water may be toxic to the developing human brain. Extremely high levels of fluoride are known to cause neurotoxicity in adults, and negative impacts on memory and learning have been reported in rodent studies, but little is known about the substance's impact on children's neurodevelopment. In a meta-analysis, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and China Medical University in Shenyang for the first time combined 27 studies and found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children. Based on the findings, the authors say that this risk should not be ignored, and that more research on fluoride's impact on the developing brain is warranted.
The study was published online in Environmental Health Perspectives on July 20, 2012.
The researchers conducted a systematic review of studies, almost all of which are from China where risks from fluoride are well-established. Fluoride is a naturally occurring substance in groundwater, and exposures to the chemical are increased in some parts of China. Virtually no human studies in this field have been conducted in the U.S., said lead author Anna Choi, research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health at HSPH.
Even though many of the studies on children in China differed in many ways or were incomplete, the authors consider the data compilation and joint analysis an important first step in evaluating the potential risk. "For the first time we have been able to do a comprehensive meta-analysis that has the potential for helping us plan better studies. We want to make sure that cognitive development is considered as a possible target for fluoride toxicity," Choi said.
Choi and senior author Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at HSPH, and their colleagues collated the epidemiological studies of children exposed to fluoride from drinking water. The China National Knowledge Infrastructure database also was included to locate studies published in Chinese journals. They then analyzed possible associations with IQ measures in more than 8,000 children of school age; all but one study suggested that high fluoride content in water may negatively affect cognitive development.
The average loss in IQ was reported as a standardized weighted mean difference of 0.45, which would be approximately equivalent to seven IQ points for commonly used IQ scores with a standard deviation of 15.* Some studies suggested that even slightly increased fluoride exposure could be toxic to the brain. Thus, children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas. The children studied were up to 14 years of age, but the investigators speculate that any toxic effect on brain development may have happened earlier, and that the brain may not be fully capable of compensating for the toxicity.
"Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain," Grandjean says. "The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us."
* This sentence was updated on September 5, 2012.