Major health groups support water fluoridation as a public health benefit and emphasize that the practice is safe.

Summary

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that a Trump administration would prioritize removing fluoride from public water systems, a position at odds with major health organizations like the CDC, the American Dental Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which endorse water fluoridation as safe and beneficial for dental health.

Despite Kennedy’s controversial stance on health and environmental issues, which includes previously debunked claims linking vaccines to autism, Trump has praised his passion, stating that Kennedy would have significant freedom to influence health policy if Trump were elected.

  • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    17 days ago

    Here is the abstract of the study you cited (Guth et al 2020):

    Recently, epidemiological studies have suggested that fluoride is a human developmental neurotoxicant that reduces measures of intelligence in children, placing it into the same category as toxic metals (lead, methylmercury, arsenic) and polychlorinated biphenyls. If true, this assessment would be highly relevant considering the widespread fluoridation of drinking water and the worldwide use of fluoride in oral hygiene products such as toothpaste…based on the totality of currently available scientific evidence, the present review does not support the presumption that fluoride should be assessed as a human developmental neurotoxicant at the current exposure levels in Europe.

    Emphasis mine. Let me rephrase with a made up example:

    Recently it’s been suggested that carbon dioxide is poisonous. If true, then the fact that humans are breathing carbon dioxide is worrisome. We reviewed the research, and carbon dioxide is not poisonous in the concentration to which humans are normally exposed. They would have to inhale 80-100% CO2 for an extended duration, and that scenario is highly unlikely because that concentration can only be achieved in a laboratory.

    Your study is not saying fluoride is a toxin. It’s saying people have claimed it’s a toxin, they looked into it, and that conclusion is bogus. The study that’s routinely cited as claiming it’s a toxin is this one. Here is Guth et al’s analysis of that study:

    In this publication, the authors cited one of their previous studies, a meta-analysis from 2012 of 27 cross-sectional studies investigating children exposed to fluoride in drinking water (Choi et al. 2012). There, a decreased IQ was observed in ‘fluoride exposed’ compared to ‘reference populations’. However, Choi et al. (Choi et al. 2012) also discussed limitations of their findings, e.g., that critical confounders were not considered and age adjustment of cognitive test scores were not reported in most studies included in the meta-analysis. Nevertheless, in the Lancet Neurology review (Grandjean and Landrigan 2014), the authors concluded that fluoride is a human developmental neurotoxicant, although no novel data and arguments were presented. Moreover, it was stated that ‘confounding from other substances seems unlikely in most of these studies’ (Grandjean and Landrigan 2014) without supporting this statement with data. Besides this questionable reinterpretation, further limitations of the meta-analysis have already been discussed in detail by other authors (Feldman 2014; Gelinas and Allukian 2014; Sabour and Ghorbani 2013; Sutton et al. 2015), e.g., the use of non-validated IQ tests (Feldman 2014), exposure of the children to a relatively highly polluted environment, the subsequent risk of possible confounding substances (Feldman 2014; Gelinas and Allukian 2014), and an overall low quality of the meta-analysis (Sutton et al. 2015). Moreover, in the time period after the introduction of fluoridation of drinking water, IQs in general have increased (Feldman 2014). This may be due to secondary factors, such as improved education.

    The study you’ve cited does not say fluoride is a developmental neurotoxin. It very explicitly says it is not. Do not claim that it is.

    • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
      16·
      17 days ago

      studies have suggested that fluoride is a human developmental neurotoxicant

      Literally the first part which you bolded says quite plainly that there are, in fact, studies which suggest that it is. I’m not here to debate whether or not it actually is, but rather to attempt to show people that they should take a second look before dismissing concerns as entirely baseless, as though they have all of the answers. This is about the difference between treating science as a religion, compared to actually being capable of reading and understanding that there is no hard consensus on many issues.