Arkansas Fluoridation Study Fraudulent?

In 2011,  Arkansas enacted a state-wide law requiring fluoridation, which some say was enacted to over-ride those Arkansas cities which voted repeatedly against fluoridation. The new law was sold, in part, with an Arkansas Morrilton/Perry County study which was said to prove  that children in fluoridated Morrilton  have less cavities than children in non-fluoridated Perry County.  It's repeated by many pro-fluoridation groups as fact. The problem is the study doesn't seem to exist. 

Repeated  requests  to the Arkansas Department of health, Dr. Lynn Mouden, who spearheaded the ill-advised fluoridation mandate law,  the Pew Foundation which financed the effort, and others haven't unearthed the alleged study.

However, when the Pew Foundation apparently asked for the evidence, they and I were sent what appears below from the Arkansas Department of Health.  The "study" begins on page 12.

It's actually a compilation of incomplete and possibly selective data that has so many easily identifiable flaws to render it junk-science.

 .

For example:

1) There is no indication of age just of school grade.  Children generally lose teeth in kindergarten. Yet, some kindergartners are missing permanent teeth due to decay which begs the question “how old were the examinees?”

2)  Dr. Mouden reported  that this data is especially “compelling because the screenings involved virtually every kindergarten child in the area.” However, it’s odd that so many kindergarten classes had a very small number of children, e.g. 6 – 12 children in Ann Watson Elementary School’s Kindergarten classes; 4 – 9 children in Casa Elementary  Kindergarten classes. There is no explanation for this.  Were they small classes, children unavailable for examination, or was there a high refusal rate?  This information is usually provided in tooth decay studies.

3) The data isn’t presented by socio-economic-status (SES).  Poverty is strongly  linked to more tooth decay whether water is fluoridated or not.  Tooth decay studies usually put students in at least two SES categories (those who do and don’t get free lunch)  and studies usually also report by race since minorities also have the most tooth decay, according to government reports.   Morrilton, which Dr. Mouden says has less tooth decay because it is fluoridated, also is a higher income area than the schools chosen in Perryville which doesn’t make this a legitimate comparison study at all.

4) I’ve never heard of schools asking to be part of a study.  Dr. Mouden wrote, “In October of 2002, all kindergarten students from the City of Morrilton also received a dental screening at the request of the school.” 

5)  There are several pages detailing Perryville; but only one chart on Morrilton which  puts children in 7 undefined groups with no identifying details. 

6)  Despite being fluoridated, Morrilton’s children’s primary teeth don’t look so good either:

71% of group 3 had caries

64% of group 2 had caries

59% of group 7 had caries

56% of group 2 had caries

Several non-fluoridated Perryville Kindergarten classes have lower rates than the above.

I am left to assume this massaged data was used solely to pass the Arkansas state-wide fluoridation mandate. It's clear, scientific integrity was not an objective.

Neither Dr. Mouden nor Rhonda Sledge who conducted the "study" have replied to my requests for an explanation.

If the below doesn't work for you, try this link https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-3-v9GxfN2JU3VwVnpWSVZMaFE/view?ts=56c1bcee

CDC Can't Prove Fluoridation Safety; but Says It's Safe Anyway

The Centers for Disease Control says on its fluoridation page that “The safety and benefits of fluoride are well documented,” but provides no such documentation. In fact, they provide absence of evidence or evidence to the contrary.

These are the fluoridation safety references the CDC provides:

1) The US Community Preventive Services Task Force Preventing Dental Caries: Community Water Fluoridation," 2000 and 2013

According to the Task Force, the basis of its 2000 fluoridation report was a systematic review by McDonagh et al. (2000) dubbed the “York Review.”  Since officials such as the CDC, organized dentistry and other fluoridation promoters continually misrepresent the York Review as favoring fluoridation, the York reviewers were forced to explain, "We are concerned about the continuing misinterpretations of the evidence...We were unable to discover any reliable good-quality evidence in the fluoridation literature world-wide."

The 2013 Task Force findings are also based on most of the same unreliable studies included in the York Review.

The Task Force admitted poor data quality. It reports, “Quality issues across studies included failure to measure or acknowledge relevant factors such as the contribution of fluoride from other sources or access to dental care. Most of the studies also had measurement issues; many did not blind the examiners, and across studies there was a lack of consistency among indices used to measure caries and fluorosis.”

They identified evidence gaps including "High quality research on non-dental harms is needed to better understand this area of concern"

2) National Research Council (NRC): Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards, 2006

NRC reveals that fluoride poses risks to the thyroid gland, bones, diabetics, kidney patients, high water drinkers and others and can severely damage children's teeth. NRC concluded that EPA's current MCLG [Maximum Contaminant Level Goal] is too high to protect health. EPA failed to heed NRC's advice even though EPA request NRC  do this fluoride toxicology review for EPA. Warnings to avoid mixing infant formula with fluoridated water emerged after NRC's conclusions were publicized, with the American Dental Association leading the standpede of government and health organizations  quietly issuing cautionary advice.

NRC members were shocked at how little fluoride safety research has been done.  NRC recommends many safety studies be finally conducted and report that fluoride's link to lower IQ and cancer are plausible.

So consider yourself a guinea pig in this ongoing human experiment.

3) US Public Health Service, Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General, 2000

The Surgeon General's 2000 report identified oral health as a "silent epidemic,” despite 55 years of fluoridation, at that time.  And, nothing changed since then.  Tooth decay is a crisis in all fluoridated cities and states despite dozens of reports, meetings, hearings, webinars,  conferences, the hiring of state fluoridation consultants, dental directors and conducting fluoridation spokesperson training.

4) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Achievements in Public Health 1900–1999 — Fluoridation of Drinking Water to Prevent Dental Caries, 1999

This is neither a peer-reviewed published study nor objective. It's an outdated article written by the CDC to promote fluoridation.

5) Institute of Medicine Dietary Reference Guidelines, 1997

This is not a safety study but sets limits on fluoride intake by age group and describes different fluoride sources, some of which have higher fluoride levels than the EPA allows in public water supplies.  For example, "brewed tea contains fluoride at concentrations ranging from 1 to 6 mg/liter depending on the amount of dry tea used, the water fluoride concentration, and brewing time."

 EPA set 4 mg/L as the maximum contaminant level of fluoride in public water supplies - a level too high to protect health according to the NRC Fluoride Panel in 2006. Yet, the CDC doesn't inform Americans that this level found in some teas can be equally as harmful as consuming highly fluoridated water.

6) National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Government, A Systematic Review of the Efficacy and Safety of Fluoridation, 2007

"This report has been used extensively in Australia in efforts to get more communities fluoridated there, especially in Queensland. However, this "report is little more than a duplication of large chunks of the York Review but without the caveats the York Review provided," according to Connett, Beck, and Miklem in their carefully references book "The Case Against Fluoride." 

Even though this report came out after the extensive and detailed US NRC report of 2006, The only reference this report made to the NRC report and it's 1100 references was a brief mention in its introduction.

"Moreover, while claiming that there was no evidence to support any health effects from fluoridation at 1 ppm, nowhere did [they] acknowledge that practically no health studies had been conducted on this matter in Australia or, indeed, in any other fluoridating country," says Connett, et al.
 

·    7) World Health Organization, Nutrients in Drinking Water, 2005

This report mainly discusses desalination as a source of drinking water.

"WHO emphasizes that in setting national standards for
fluoride it is particularly important to consider climatic conditions, volumes of water intake, and intake of fluoride from other sources (e.g. food and air)," which the CDC and no other US government agency does.
"

And, by the way, fluoride is neither a nutrient nor essential for healthy teeth See: http://fluoridealert.org/studies/essential-nutrient/