Comment by jeffbee
21 days ago
> Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains.
What's amazing is these anti-science wackos are rejecting the largest-scale experiment of all time, with the best evidence that anyone is ever going to have on the subject. We have both temporal and spatial boundary conditions with and without community water fluoridation, where a large population has it and another large population doesn't have it. There is no evidence that the without-fluoridation population has higher intelligence! There is a huge body of evidence that the people without fluoridation have more decayed teeth.
Before calling them "anti science wackos", why not review the evidence or cite some of your own. Ironic that the "wackos" seem to be the only ones providing any evidence for their claims.
There is high quality evidence that fluoride at levels contained in some US water supplies is associated with lower childhood intelligence. For lower levels, the conclusion is "we don't know", not that there is no harm.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
There is also high quality evidence that in the age of fluorinated toothpaste, fluorinated water "may slightly" improve dental health.
“The evidence suggests that water fluoridation may slightly reduce tooth decay in children,” says co-author Dr Lucy O’Malley, Senior Lecturer in Health Services Research at the University of Manchester. “Given that the benefit has reduced over time, before introducing a new fluoridation scheme, careful thought needs to be given to costs, acceptability, feasibility and ongoing monitoring."
https://www.cochrane.org/news/water-fluoridation-less-effect...
The literally bold-faced conclusion of your article is that no evidence exists that community water fluoridation affects childhood IQ.
We have a natural experiment running for 80 years where each arm of the experiment has N > 100e6. If there was going to be evidence of community water fluoridation lowering IQ, it would have emerged by now.
"The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children".
They found drinking water with levels that lowered IQ. The actual conclusion was that higher levels (that were found in drinking water) lower IQ.
For lower levels the conclusion is we don't know how it effects IQ. The actual bold face conclusion is "More research is needed to better understand if there are health risks associated with low fluoride exposures".
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