Sol Invictus
08-13-2011, 02:46 AM
LEZ15m-D_n8
By Drs. Paul and Ellen Connett
Paul Connett, co-author of the book, The Case Against Fluoride, is joined by his wife, Ellen, webmaster of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Tara Blank, PhD, Science Liason Officer for FAN, in authoring this article on fluoride and the brain. Together they have recently provided an extensive commentary to the EPA's Office of Drinking water in response to its proposed safe reference dose for fluoride1.
In an ongoing effort to determine which chemicals may damage the developing brain, scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently conducted an extensive literature review of over 400 chemicals, including fluoride.
Fluoride is Classified as a Neurotoxin
While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would have us all believe that fluoride is perfectly innocuous and safe, scientists from the EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory have classified fluoride as a "chemical having substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity".2 Consistent with the EPA's conclusion, a continually growing body of human and animal research strongly suggests that fluoride can damage the developing brain.
Consider for example:
•24 studies have now reported an association between fluoride exposure and reduced IQ in children
•Three studies have reported an association between fluoride exposure and impaired neurobehavioral development
•Three studies have reported damage to the brain of aborted fetuses in high fluoride areas, and
•Over 100 laboratory studies have reported damage to the brain and/or cognitive function among fluoride-exposed animals3.
Most of the 30 studies linking fluoride to reduced IQ, impaired neurobehavioral development, and fetal brain damage have come from China where fluoride occurs at moderate to high levels in the drinking water in what is known as "endemic areas for fluorosis." While there have been shortcomings in the methodologies of some of these studies, they have been remarkably consistent in their findings. Children exposed to excessive fluoride have been consistently observed to suffer from some form of neurological impairment.
Your Brain Under Attack
Statistics tell us that our brains are under attack. For example:
•Autism Spectrum Disorders: The rates in the U.S. are now 1 in 110 children and are "4 to 5 times more likely to occur in boys than in girls," or as many as 1 in 60 boys.
•Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: According to a November 2010 CDC report, nearly 1 in 10 U.S. children have ADHD - an increase of about 22 percent from 2003.
•Alzheimer's Disease: According to the Alzheimer's Association, 5.4 million Americans are living with it and every 69 seconds an American is diagnosed with it. By 2050, it is estimated that as many as 16 million Americans will have the disease.
We do not know the causes for the alarming increases in these diseases but we do know that wherever possible, everything must be done by regulatory agencies and caregivers to protect the brain from known neurotoxins. Fluoride is a known neurotoxin and it is time to stop adding it to public drinking water systems. However, convincing U.S. regulatory authorities of this urgent necessity is proving very difficult.
Developmental Neurotoxicity
In 2007 Choi and Grandjean4 stated:
"In humans, only five substances have so far been documented as developmental neurotoxicants: lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene. From this evidence, including our own studies on some of these substances, parallels may be drawn that suggest that fluoride could well belong to the same class of toxins, but uncertainties remain…"
Health Agencies are Ignoring Fluoride-Brain Studies
Even though health agencies in the U.S. and other fluoridating countries have recognized that children are being grossly over-exposed to fluoride (41 percent of American children aged 12-15 now have some form of dental fluorosis5), they are unwilling to concede that fluoride may be impacting the brain. Their approach has been either to ignore these studies completely or to challenge the relevance and the methodology of the fluoride-brain studies. They have thus far failed to conduct any IQ studies of their own.
Bottle-Fed Babies at Risk
The level of fluoride in mothers' milk is remarkably low; only about0.004 ppm6. In the view of many critics of fluoridation, including Arvid Carlsson, Nobel laureate in medicine/physiology, it is reckless to expose infants to levels of fluoride orders of magnitude higher than that found in breast milk.
In the U.S., infants who are fed formula reconstituted with fluoridated tap water receive the highest levels of fluoride (per kilogram bodyweight) in the human population. Specifically, infants who are fed formula made with fluoridated water at the current level of 1 part-per-million (1 ppm = 1 mg/liter) fluoride will receive a dose up to 250 times more than the breastfed infant.
Even with the proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to lower fluoride to 0.7 ppm in fluoridation schemes, bottle-fed infants will still receive up to 175 times more fluoride than the breastfed infant.
In addition to bottle-fed infants, others at heightened risk include those with poor nutrition and both African American and Mexican-American children.
Recent studies indicate that African American and Mexican-American children have higher rates of the more severe forms of dental fluorosis than white children7. As dental fluorosis provides a visual indication that fluoride has exerted a toxic effect on your body, it is reasonable to assume that these same children will also be more vulnerable to other toxic effects of fluoride including damage to the brain.
EPA Protecting Fluoridation Program, Not Public Health
On January 7, 2011, the EPA's Office of Water (OW), while pursuing its mandate to set a new safe drinking water standard for fluoride, made it clear that it would do so without jeopardizing the water fluoridation program. According to Peter Silva, EPA Assistant Administrator for the OW:
"EPA's new analysis will help us make sure that people benefit from tooth decay prevention while at the same time avoiding the unwanted health effects from too much fluoride"8.
Silva was referring to severe dental fluorosis, broken bones, and skeletal fluorosis as the unwanted health effects. These were the three health effects that the National Research Council of the National Academies in its 2006 report Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards singled out. The report recommended that the EPA perform a new health risk assessment to determine a safe drinking water standard for fluoride because they found the current level of 4 ppm was not protective of health.
In its first draft risk assessment, EPA claimed that the most sensitive health effect of fluoride was severe dental fluorosis9. Brain effects were ignored by EPA even though many more studies have been published since the NRC made its recommendation. Science does not stand still.
The NRC examined five IQ studies; there have now been nearly five times more at 24!
Making matters worse, the EPA's Office of Water risk assessment excluded the fetus and infants under 6 months of age, as the EPA does not expect them to get dental fluorosis! Whether fluoride impacts the growing tooth enamel during this period or not, this is a very important period for brain development. As noted above, an infant fed formula made with fluoridated water at the proposed lower level of 0.7 ppm will receive 175 times more fluoride than the breast-fed infant.
EPA Research Laboratory Takes Different View
Fortunately, the EPA does not speak with a single voice on fluoride's neurotoxicity. While the EPA's Office of Water ignored any brain effect in its 2011 risk assessment, the Neurotoxicology Division at the EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory included fluoride in its list of "Chemicals with Substantial Evidence of Developmental Neurotoxicity", for a new project expected to be launched this year10.
Ultimately, therefore, the EPA administrator will have to resolve the following question: Is it more important to protect our children's brains or the fluoridation experiment?
Fluoridation Proponents' False Claim
Proponents of fluoridation have dismissed the fluoride-IQ studies on the basis of the claim that the children in these studies were drinking water containing fluoride at much higher levels than used for water fluoridation (approximately 1 ppm).
However, such claims do not bear close scrutiny, Xiang11 estimated that the threshold for IQ lowering was 1.9 ppm and more recently Ding et al. (2011) found a lowering of IQ in the range of 0.3 to 3 ppm. These findings reveal that there is no adequate margin of safety to protect ALL American children drinking uncontrolled amounts of fluoridated water and ingesting fluoride from other sources (e.g. toothpaste).
While we will discuss this crucial margin of safety argument in more detail below, suffice it to say here that when harm is found in a small human study a safety factor of 10 to 100 is typically applied in order to extrapolate to a level designed to protect a whole population from harm.
The NRC (2006) Review of Fluoride
The NRC panel devoted a whole chapter on the brain in its 507-page 2006 review and concluded:
"it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means."
Of the five IQ studies reviewed by the NRC the panel drew special attention to the study by Xiang et al.12, which they indicated had the strongest design. The panel described this study:
"This study compared the intelligence of 512 children (ages 8-13) living in two villages with different fluoride concentrations in the water. The IQ test was administered in a double-blind manner. The high-fluoride area had a mean water concentration of 2.47 ± 0.79 mg/L (range 0.57-4.50 milligrams per liter [mg/L]), and the low-fluoride area had a mean water concentration of 0.36 ± 0.15 mg/L (range 0.18-0.76 mg/L). The populations studied had comparable iodine and creatinine concentrations, family incomes, family educational levels, and other factors.
The populations were not exposed to other significant sources of fluoride, such as smoke from coal fires, industrial pollution, or consumption of brick tea. Thus, the difference in fluoride exposure was attributed to the amount in the drinking water… the average intelligence quotient (IQ) of the children in Wamiao was found to be significantly lower (92.2 ± 13.00; range, 54-126) than that in Xinhuai (100.41 ± 13.21; range, 60-128).
The IQ scores in both males and females declined with increasing fluoride exposure."
Read More (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn1)
By Drs. Paul and Ellen Connett
Paul Connett, co-author of the book, The Case Against Fluoride, is joined by his wife, Ellen, webmaster of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Tara Blank, PhD, Science Liason Officer for FAN, in authoring this article on fluoride and the brain. Together they have recently provided an extensive commentary to the EPA's Office of Drinking water in response to its proposed safe reference dose for fluoride1.
In an ongoing effort to determine which chemicals may damage the developing brain, scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently conducted an extensive literature review of over 400 chemicals, including fluoride.
Fluoride is Classified as a Neurotoxin
While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would have us all believe that fluoride is perfectly innocuous and safe, scientists from the EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory have classified fluoride as a "chemical having substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity".2 Consistent with the EPA's conclusion, a continually growing body of human and animal research strongly suggests that fluoride can damage the developing brain.
Consider for example:
•24 studies have now reported an association between fluoride exposure and reduced IQ in children
•Three studies have reported an association between fluoride exposure and impaired neurobehavioral development
•Three studies have reported damage to the brain of aborted fetuses in high fluoride areas, and
•Over 100 laboratory studies have reported damage to the brain and/or cognitive function among fluoride-exposed animals3.
Most of the 30 studies linking fluoride to reduced IQ, impaired neurobehavioral development, and fetal brain damage have come from China where fluoride occurs at moderate to high levels in the drinking water in what is known as "endemic areas for fluorosis." While there have been shortcomings in the methodologies of some of these studies, they have been remarkably consistent in their findings. Children exposed to excessive fluoride have been consistently observed to suffer from some form of neurological impairment.
Your Brain Under Attack
Statistics tell us that our brains are under attack. For example:
•Autism Spectrum Disorders: The rates in the U.S. are now 1 in 110 children and are "4 to 5 times more likely to occur in boys than in girls," or as many as 1 in 60 boys.
•Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: According to a November 2010 CDC report, nearly 1 in 10 U.S. children have ADHD - an increase of about 22 percent from 2003.
•Alzheimer's Disease: According to the Alzheimer's Association, 5.4 million Americans are living with it and every 69 seconds an American is diagnosed with it. By 2050, it is estimated that as many as 16 million Americans will have the disease.
We do not know the causes for the alarming increases in these diseases but we do know that wherever possible, everything must be done by regulatory agencies and caregivers to protect the brain from known neurotoxins. Fluoride is a known neurotoxin and it is time to stop adding it to public drinking water systems. However, convincing U.S. regulatory authorities of this urgent necessity is proving very difficult.
Developmental Neurotoxicity
In 2007 Choi and Grandjean4 stated:
"In humans, only five substances have so far been documented as developmental neurotoxicants: lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene. From this evidence, including our own studies on some of these substances, parallels may be drawn that suggest that fluoride could well belong to the same class of toxins, but uncertainties remain…"
Health Agencies are Ignoring Fluoride-Brain Studies
Even though health agencies in the U.S. and other fluoridating countries have recognized that children are being grossly over-exposed to fluoride (41 percent of American children aged 12-15 now have some form of dental fluorosis5), they are unwilling to concede that fluoride may be impacting the brain. Their approach has been either to ignore these studies completely or to challenge the relevance and the methodology of the fluoride-brain studies. They have thus far failed to conduct any IQ studies of their own.
Bottle-Fed Babies at Risk
The level of fluoride in mothers' milk is remarkably low; only about0.004 ppm6. In the view of many critics of fluoridation, including Arvid Carlsson, Nobel laureate in medicine/physiology, it is reckless to expose infants to levels of fluoride orders of magnitude higher than that found in breast milk.
In the U.S., infants who are fed formula reconstituted with fluoridated tap water receive the highest levels of fluoride (per kilogram bodyweight) in the human population. Specifically, infants who are fed formula made with fluoridated water at the current level of 1 part-per-million (1 ppm = 1 mg/liter) fluoride will receive a dose up to 250 times more than the breastfed infant.
Even with the proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to lower fluoride to 0.7 ppm in fluoridation schemes, bottle-fed infants will still receive up to 175 times more fluoride than the breastfed infant.
In addition to bottle-fed infants, others at heightened risk include those with poor nutrition and both African American and Mexican-American children.
Recent studies indicate that African American and Mexican-American children have higher rates of the more severe forms of dental fluorosis than white children7. As dental fluorosis provides a visual indication that fluoride has exerted a toxic effect on your body, it is reasonable to assume that these same children will also be more vulnerable to other toxic effects of fluoride including damage to the brain.
EPA Protecting Fluoridation Program, Not Public Health
On January 7, 2011, the EPA's Office of Water (OW), while pursuing its mandate to set a new safe drinking water standard for fluoride, made it clear that it would do so without jeopardizing the water fluoridation program. According to Peter Silva, EPA Assistant Administrator for the OW:
"EPA's new analysis will help us make sure that people benefit from tooth decay prevention while at the same time avoiding the unwanted health effects from too much fluoride"8.
Silva was referring to severe dental fluorosis, broken bones, and skeletal fluorosis as the unwanted health effects. These were the three health effects that the National Research Council of the National Academies in its 2006 report Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards singled out. The report recommended that the EPA perform a new health risk assessment to determine a safe drinking water standard for fluoride because they found the current level of 4 ppm was not protective of health.
In its first draft risk assessment, EPA claimed that the most sensitive health effect of fluoride was severe dental fluorosis9. Brain effects were ignored by EPA even though many more studies have been published since the NRC made its recommendation. Science does not stand still.
The NRC examined five IQ studies; there have now been nearly five times more at 24!
Making matters worse, the EPA's Office of Water risk assessment excluded the fetus and infants under 6 months of age, as the EPA does not expect them to get dental fluorosis! Whether fluoride impacts the growing tooth enamel during this period or not, this is a very important period for brain development. As noted above, an infant fed formula made with fluoridated water at the proposed lower level of 0.7 ppm will receive 175 times more fluoride than the breast-fed infant.
EPA Research Laboratory Takes Different View
Fortunately, the EPA does not speak with a single voice on fluoride's neurotoxicity. While the EPA's Office of Water ignored any brain effect in its 2011 risk assessment, the Neurotoxicology Division at the EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory included fluoride in its list of "Chemicals with Substantial Evidence of Developmental Neurotoxicity", for a new project expected to be launched this year10.
Ultimately, therefore, the EPA administrator will have to resolve the following question: Is it more important to protect our children's brains or the fluoridation experiment?
Fluoridation Proponents' False Claim
Proponents of fluoridation have dismissed the fluoride-IQ studies on the basis of the claim that the children in these studies were drinking water containing fluoride at much higher levels than used for water fluoridation (approximately 1 ppm).
However, such claims do not bear close scrutiny, Xiang11 estimated that the threshold for IQ lowering was 1.9 ppm and more recently Ding et al. (2011) found a lowering of IQ in the range of 0.3 to 3 ppm. These findings reveal that there is no adequate margin of safety to protect ALL American children drinking uncontrolled amounts of fluoridated water and ingesting fluoride from other sources (e.g. toothpaste).
While we will discuss this crucial margin of safety argument in more detail below, suffice it to say here that when harm is found in a small human study a safety factor of 10 to 100 is typically applied in order to extrapolate to a level designed to protect a whole population from harm.
The NRC (2006) Review of Fluoride
The NRC panel devoted a whole chapter on the brain in its 507-page 2006 review and concluded:
"it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means."
Of the five IQ studies reviewed by the NRC the panel drew special attention to the study by Xiang et al.12, which they indicated had the strongest design. The panel described this study:
"This study compared the intelligence of 512 children (ages 8-13) living in two villages with different fluoride concentrations in the water. The IQ test was administered in a double-blind manner. The high-fluoride area had a mean water concentration of 2.47 ± 0.79 mg/L (range 0.57-4.50 milligrams per liter [mg/L]), and the low-fluoride area had a mean water concentration of 0.36 ± 0.15 mg/L (range 0.18-0.76 mg/L). The populations studied had comparable iodine and creatinine concentrations, family incomes, family educational levels, and other factors.
The populations were not exposed to other significant sources of fluoride, such as smoke from coal fires, industrial pollution, or consumption of brick tea. Thus, the difference in fluoride exposure was attributed to the amount in the drinking water… the average intelligence quotient (IQ) of the children in Wamiao was found to be significantly lower (92.2 ± 13.00; range, 54-126) than that in Xinhuai (100.41 ± 13.21; range, 60-128).
The IQ scores in both males and females declined with increasing fluoride exposure."
Read More (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn1)