01 Feb Can drinking fluoridated water affect my IQ?
Rumblings about fluoride’s negative effects on health have been active on the information highway for several years. Recently (2012), scientists at Harvard University published a meta-analysis funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) which provided a serious warning with regard to fluoride and its affect on IQ in children’s developing brains. Conclusion from the abstract:
The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment. Future research should include detailed individual-level information on prenatal exposure, neurobehavioral performance, and covariates for adjustment.
Should this be ringing massive alarm bells?
Some people think so:
The people in the city of Portland, Oregon rejected fluoridation of the city water supply in May, 2013. Hell no, they say, for the 4th time since 1956. Maybe Portland’s ‘weird’ because their water is not medicated.
Same deal in Wichita, Kansas.
And in the country of Israel, its Supreme Court recently weighed in by ruling that the entire country’s water fluoridation must end by 2014.
Also worth mentioning here, most developed nations ***do not fluoridate their water***. According to the Fluoride Action Network, in all of western Europe, only 3% of the population drinks fluoridated water. It is also banned in Japan. If you check out the link at the Fluoride Action Network, they are very thorough. Click around a bit and you’ll see they even address the fluoridation of salt in some of the countries and how that factors in to the stats. Point being, the facts check out on this.
My question:
Are the people in all these cities and countries less intelligent? … or, are they smarter because their water isn’t fluoridated.
And just how toxic is fluoride? A half a tube of toothpaste has enough fluoride in it to kill a small child. That’s kill, not just lower their IQ.
Because everyone always brings this up (and fair enough, tooth decay sucks), The Center for Disease Control (CDC) supports the assertion that water fluoridation prevents tooth decay by stating that dental caries have gone down in populations with fluoridated water supply. They use this chart to illustrate:
What they don’t say, is that tooth decay has declined in ALL western countries whether or not they fluoridate their water. This data from the World Health Organization illustrates this point:
I think it’s fair to continue to ask these questions even when media and the CDC and doctors and dentists and moms and dads and neighbors and teachers say, “You need this for healthy teeth.” I do??? Are you sure?
An exhaustively researched and informative book on this topic by Christopher Bryson: The Fluoride Deception.
For a good article on a water filter that comes with an option to remove a lot of the fluoride, and is easy to use, see here. This by no means is the ‘final word’ on the super complicated topic of “What kind of water filter is best”, but it’s where I’ve currently put my money after trying other things out, and doing my own research, and having a budget. The best case scenario would be governments ceasing to medicate our water with an unnecessary toxin, but sigh, that is not what’s happening right now.
* thanks to the Fluoride Action Network for the awesome charts!