We do not hear much about the issue of fluoride in the water today in Australia, even though most people are using water filters and/or buying spring water. I always felt that drinking tap water was like drinking from a swimming pool. In any case the concern since the 1950s was that fluoride lowered IQ. Over the years there have been many studies confirming this. The Sierra Club, Fluoride Action Network recently took action and federal judge Edward Chen, held that fluoride, which is added to the drinking water of about 75 percent 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 held. This has led to the US Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride levels in drinking water to minimise the risk to the health of children.
It is a small victory, but an important one that hopefully needs to be replicated in other jurisdictions.
"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 and was eventually exiled from the conservative mainstream.
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, which famously opposed the fluoridation programme in Portland. The same group brought the lawsuit which resulted in the new EPA ruling, citing a large collection of studies which found a link between IQ and fluoride. Despite their grounding in science, these critics are often lumped in with conspiracy theorists and portrayed as fringe.
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. "Science says fluoride in water is good for kids. So why are these towns banning it?" a 2018 MSNBC headline read, while the National Geographic struck a similar tone in an article titled "Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?" "Fluoridation continues to incite fear and paranoia", the article read. "Opponents didn't like the idea of the government adding 'chemicals' to their water. They claimed that fluoride could be harmful to human health."
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.
In recent decades, 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", echoing the longstanding position of various Government agencies in support of the practice. 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.
Despite mounting evidence of the potential dangers of fluoridation, the American Academy of Pediatrics reiterated its support for the practice last month, citing concerns about the validity of the new research, which defined high levels of fluoride exposure at double the current Government recommendations. However, the systematic review found that about three million Americans receive water with more than double the recommended level of fluoride. The AAP also argued that the research failed to find a causal link between fluoride and IQ, and was hampered by confounding factors such as genetic, nutritional and socioeconomic status that, like fluoride exposure, vary geographically.
In this week's case, however, Chen found that, based on existing research, even the Government-recommended fluoride levels posed an "unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment".