Last week a federal court in California ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to act on concerns about the "unreasonable risk" to children posed by currently recommended levels of fluoride in the American drinking water supply.
How fluoride fears went mainstream | Unherd | Laurel Duggan:
September 27, 2024 - "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...
"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, ... [the] same group [that] brought the lawsuit which resulted in the new EPA ruling....
"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.... 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....
"18 high-quality studies have found a link between higher fluoride levels in public water and lower IQ in children, according to a National Toxicology Program systematic review published in August. The review was central to the federal court decision that the EPA needed to reconsider the regulation of fluoride in the water.
"Most of the studies cited in the review have been available for years, but federal agencies have been sceptical of this emerging body of research. The CDC announced in May that it had not 'found convincing scientific evidence linking community water fluoridation with any potential adverse health effect'....
"The US is a global outlier in water fluoridation, a practice which is rare in Europe. US authorities have long known that excessive fluoride consumption can have adverse health impacts, hence the existing limits on fluoride levels in water, but new research suggests the chemical is tied to lower IQ, even in quantities approved by the Government." In this week’s case ... Chen found that, based on existing research, even the Government-recommended fluoride levels posed an 'unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment'.
Read more: https://unherd.com/newsroom/how-fluoride-fears-went-mainstream/
Why I Changed My Mind on Water Fluoridation | NutritionFacts.org | May 6, 2024:
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