According to a U.S. government report, fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ in children.

“This review finds, with moderate confidence, that higher estimated fluoride exposures (e.g., as in approximations of exposure such as drinking water fluoride concentrations that exceed the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride) are consistently associated with lower IQ in children,” a review from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) stated.

“More studies are needed to fully understand the potential for lower fluoride exposure to affect children’s IQ,” it added.

“A landmark National Toxicology Program (NTP) report on #fluoride neurotoxicity has confirmed what experts have long suggested: that fluoride is comparable to lead in its ability to lower IQ in children,” Fluoride Action Network wrote.

Per Fluoride Action Network:

After conducting an 8-year systematic review, which included an unprecedented number of peer reviews and attempts to suppress its release, the NTP published their long-awaited monograph. NTP authors reported that “72 studies assessed the association between fluoride exposure and IQ in children,” and 64 of those studies, amounting to 88%, found “an inverse relationship associated between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.”

From the Associated Press:

The report, based on an analysis of previously published research, marks the first time a federal agency has determined — “with moderate confidence” — that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. While the report was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoride in drinking water alone, it is a striking acknowledgment of a potential neurological risk from high levels of fluoride.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

“I think this (report) is crucial in our understanding” of this risk, said Ashley Malin, a University of Florida researcher who has studied the effect of higher fluoride levels in pregnant women on their children. She called it the most rigorously conducted report of its kind.

The long-awaited report released Wednesday comes from the National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. It summarizes a review of studies, conducted in Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Mexico, that concludes that drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter is consistently associated with lower IQs in kids.

The report did not try to quantify exactly how many IQ points might be lost at different levels of fluoride exposure. But some of the studies reviewed in the report suggested IQ was 2 to 5 points lower in children who’d had higher exposures.

The National Toxicology Program wrote:

The bodies of experimental animal studies and human mechanistic evidence do not provide clarity on the association between fluoride exposure and cognitive or neurodevelopmental human health effects. Human mechanistic studies were too heterogenous and limited in number to make any determination on biological plausibility.

This systematic review identified studies that assessed the association between estimated fluoride exposure and cognitive or neurodevelopmental effects in both adults and children, which were evaluated separately. The most common exposure assessment measures were drinking water concentrations and estimates of total fluoride exposure, as reflected in biomarkers such as urinary fluoride. In adults, only two high-quality cross-sectional studies examining cognitive effects were available. The literature in children was more extensive and was separated into studies assessing intelligence quotient (IQ) and studies assessing other cognitive or neurodevelopmental outcomes. Eight of nine high-quality studies examining other cognitive or neurodevelopmental outcomes reported associations with estimated fluoride exposure. Seventy-two studies assessed the association between fluoride exposure and IQ in children. Nineteen of those studies were considered to be high quality; of these, 18 reported an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children. The 18 studies, which include 3 prospective cohort studies and 15 cross-sectional studies, were conducted in 5 different countries. Forty-six of the 53 low-quality studies in children also found evidence of an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.

Read the full report HERE.

 

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