So, now, then, we have to see the other side of the court. Well, first of all, if it’s not doing any good, if swallowing fluoride doesn’t reduce tooth decay, that should be the end of the story. If it doesn’t work, why do it? Well, that’s not a scientific explanation.
So, no, we move on to the other issue which is, let me make this clear, there is no argument that fluoride damages health. Fluoride has wrecked the lives or literally millions of people in India and China, parts of Africa, and other countries which have high natural levels of fluoride in their drinking water, who cook with coal, who drink a lot of brick tea, and so on. We know that fluoride wrecks bones and causes harm to other tissues. That argument should not be going on at this moment.
The real argument is will people be exposed to doses of fluoride in fluoridated communities from water and from other sources where the combination puts them closer to doses which cause harm. Is there an adequate margin of safety between the doses which cause harm and the doses that people get sufficient to protect everybody? Not the average person because if you do something as stupid as putting a toxic substance to the drinking water of every man, woman, and child in your community, it’s beholden on you to be certain you’re protecting everyone. That becomes tough because now you have to protect people with poor kidney function, poor diet, who are sick. You need actually a large margin of safety to make sure that you’ve taken into account all the genetic variations, all the variations in lifestyle, health, and diet of a whole population.
So, let’s look at this now. First of all, the harmful effects of fluoride have been carefully documented in a 507-page report by the United States National Research Council published in 2006. This took them three and a half years. It’s the most comprehensive document, and it is revealing that the promoting health agencies in the fluorinated countries have largely ignored this report. That goes for New Zealand. It goes for Australia, and it goes for the United States. It goes for Canada.
The harmful effects of fluoride include dental fluorosis, brain damage, lowered thyroid function, accumulation in the pineal gland, bone damage, osteosarcoma (mixed studies there), and some people are very sensitive to very low levels of fluoride. They examined that as well. They examined other issues, but there are a lot of big health issues that they examined.
Dental fluorosis. This is the easy one. This is the one they don’t even bother to deny. They thought at one part per million that they could limit dental fluorosis to 10% of children in its very mild form. Remember, that’s up to 25% of the tooth enamel. In 2010, the CDC reported that 41% of American children aged 12 to 15 had dental fluorosis; 28.5% had very mild; 8.6% had mild; 3.6% had moderate or severe. Black and Hispanic children have higher rates of dental fluorosis.
New Zealand dental fluorosis rates, there’s very little data that’s been published in New Zealand, but from what we can see it’s about 30%. It’s about 30% in fluorinated communities, and about 15% in non-fluoridated communities. Thirty percent is three times higher than the original pioneers of fluoridation anticipated.
Now, the real issue is this: When fluoride is damaging the growing tooth cells in the baby, causing this condition, what is it doing to the other tissues? This is what Arvid Carlsson, again, said in 1978, “One wonders what… an increased in the exposure to fluoride, such as occurs in bottle-fed infants… may mean for the development of the brain .“ He’s a neuropharmacologist so he’s interested in the brain, but that statement was made in 1978. The first animal study didn’t come along until about 1995, and the first IQ study didn’t come along until about 1991. So, it was pretty prophetic, his concerns.
So, let’s look at evidence that fluoride damages the brain. According to National Research Council, “It is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain.” Many more studies on the brain have been published since 2006. The review itself only looked at five IQ studies.
There have now been, as of last month, 36 published studies, courtesy of my son Michael whose translated many of Chinese studies into English. The one I particularly follow, it’s a study by Xiang because I had the opportunity to go to China and visit these villages where the study was done. One village had less than 0.7 parts per million in their well water. The other village had between 2.5 to 4.5 parts per million. Those were the two villages.
Now, going to these villages. This is an area of China which has been stable for literally centuries, practically no movement, no migration. The people all had the same occupation. They are all rural farmers. They all have the same diet. They all have the same lifestyle. All had the same schooling. Everything looks the same except for the fluoride levels in the well water. They were even controlled for lead exposure and iodine intake, both of which would be serious confounding variables, but they were the same.
He found a drop of about 5 to 10 IQ points across the whole age range, and the whole IQ curve was shifted over for both males and females. Here’s the males. The black line is the low fluoride village. The dotted mauve line is the high fluoride village. Xiang estimated that the IQ was lowered 1.9 parts per million. By putting all the data, he extrapolated and found the point at which the lowering just occurred was 1.9 parts per million.
This is why I say that there is no adequate margin of safety to protect against known harmful effects because 1.9 parts per million does not offer an adequate margin of safety to protect all of New Zealand’s children from two things, one, the range of doses that you’re going to get, and, two, the range of sensitivity that you can expect to cross the whole population. In this case, the study group was pretty homogeneous, fairly uniform genetic stock so quite tight, but in New Zealand, you’ve got so many different ethnic groups, many different lifestyles, etc.
Let’s see, does it protect against a range of doses? Of course, it doesn’t. A child drinking 2 Liters of water, 1 part per million, would get a dose of 2 mg per day. One part per million is 1 mg per Liter. So, if you drink 2 Liters, you’re going to get 2 mg per day dose. A child in the Chinese study that drank 1 Liter of water at 1.9 ppm, where the IQ is lowered, would get 1.9 mg per day, a lower dose.
So, you can see that if you had two populations, one drinking 0.85 ppm, the average for New Zealand, and another community, a study group, average 1.9 ppm, you’re going to get an overlap of the doses. So, there’s no protection against the range of doses here. We have to protect the most sensitive person in a large population. We normally divide the dose that causes harm, the lowest dose that causes her, by 10, to get a dose that we think would protect everybody.
It may not be enough. If there’s any argument, it may not be enough, the 10. This may be rather crude, but I don’t want to mess around trying to work out how much water the Chinese children drink, how much water the New Zealand children drink. So, I’m going to assume that both populations drink about the same amount of water each day in which case we can deal with the concentration.
So, if I take the 1.9 parts per million and divide by 10, I get to 0.19 parts per million. Your average is 0.85 ppm. That means you are exposing your children at four times the level that is safe for the most sensitive child in New Zealand. That should be the end of fluoridation right there if regulatory agencies did the standard risk assessment for toxic substances.
Now, since that data was published, since I’ve been here, Harvard University has done a meta-analysis of 27 of the studies. The methodology in all 27 studies was the same as the Xiang study. They compared the IQ of children in a low fluoride village with a high fluoride village, and the study was published in the Environmental Health Perspectives. That’s important because the Environmental Health Perspectives is probably the best journal on environmental health in the world. Number two, it’s published by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences which is part of the National Institutes of Health in the United States which, in turn, is part of the Department of Health and Human Services which has a policy of promoting fluoridation. So, those who are promoting fluoridation at the highest levels in the United States have, under their noses, proof the fluoride can lower IQ.
Now, out of the 27 studies they looked at, 26 had lowering of IQ in the high fluoride village. That’s a remarkable consistency, considering that these studies came from all over China. They weren’t located in one specific place. They weren’t all done by the same authors. They were done by different authors in different places, a remarkable consistency.
The people that promote fluoridation say these studies are not relevant because they looked at very high concentrations. Again, they cherry pick. They cherry pick the highest concentrations in two of the villages, which was 11 ppm, but they forget something. If you’re a regulator, it’s not the highest the concentration or the highest dose that you are concerned about; it’s the lowest dose that causes harm. So, to refer to two studies where the concentration went up to 11 ppm is totally irrelevant. It’s the lowest dose that you are concerned about. Anyway nine of the 27 studies had, the high fluoride villages had levels of fluoride less than three parts per million.
Now, they found the average drop was 7 IQ points, and they felt this deserved high research priority, but fluoridated countries like New Zealand are not doing these or any other health studies. There’s no indication that they’re going to change, that they’re going to suddenly start doing the health studies they should have done 50 or 60 years ago. So, there’s been no IQ study done in New Zealand, in Australia, in Israel, in Ireland, in Canada and the United States, or England. There’s none.
Now, the Master Research Council said the same thing in 2006. This needs to be studied. We need to study the IQ in fluoridated communities, no studies done in the seven years. What they do is assume that the absence of study is the same as the absence of harm. How many people have you heard this, “Well, we’ve been doing this for 50 years, if there’s any problem with fluoridation, we’d see it by now.” Oh no, you wouldn’t unless you did careful study.
How do you know that the arthritis in this country is related to fluoride if you’re not studying it? How do you if hypothyroidism that’s increasing in this country is not related to fluoridation if you’re not studying it? How do you know there’s no effect on IQ if you’re not studying it? We could go on and on and on. If you don’t look, you don’t find.
Here’s a somewhat humorous example. This is from Canada. You get an idea of how good the research is in Canada. Dr. Peter Cooney, the Chief Dental Officer of Canada, told an audience in Dryden, Ontario. I was there. I challenged him to a debate, but he wouldn’t debate. They snuck him in the day before to poison the water, literally. They would have a referendum a few weeks later, and he told them, “I walked down your High Street today, and I didn’t see anyone growing horns, and you have been fluoridated for 40 years!”
