Pew Foundation Misleads Legislators about Fluoride

A 7/2/2013 letter signed by Shelly Gehshan of the Pew Foundation to The Dalles, Oregon, Mayor and City Council contains many falsehoods. The most egregious is her dismissal of  Harvard research showing a link between fluoride and lower IQ.  Gehshan wrote the following:

“anti-fluoride groups claim that fluoride causes lower IQ scores in children, but many of the studies they cite were from areas in China, Mongolia and Iran in which the natural fluoride levels were at least four or five times higher than the level used to fluoridate water in The Dalles.  One study including fluoride levels that reached as high as 11.5 milligrams per liter – a concentration that is roughly 10 times higher than the level that is used to fluoridate American communities. In addition, the Harvard researchers who examined these IQ studies found that each of the studies “had deficiencies, in some cases rather serious, which limit the conclusions that can be drawn.” 17 Furthermore, the Harvard researchers publicly distanced themselves from the way that anti-fluoride groups were misrepresenting these IQ studies.18  Anti-fluoride groups also ignore historical evidence that undermines their claim – between the 1940s and the 1990s, the average IQ scores of Americans improved 15 points while fluoridation steadily expanded to serve millions of additional people 19.”

When Gehshan writes, “the Harvard researchers (Grandjean et. al)  publicly distanced themselves from the way that anti-fluoride groups were misrepresenting these IQ studies,” she uses an error-laden Wichita KS newspaper article as a reference which some believe was ghost-written by Pew’s fluoridation Public Relations employee.  

The truth is that Harvard scientist, Philippe Grandjean, MD, states the newspaper never "checked their information with the authors, even though statements were attributed to them."

Dr. Philippe Grandjean, the senior scientist on the Harvard team, criticized the Wichita paper for deceptively attributing its own conclusions on fluoridation to the Harvard scientists. Fluoridation's potential to produce "chemical brain drain," Grandjean writes, is an issue that "definitely deserves concern."

Grandjean also takes objection to the Wichita paper's claim that the Harvard review only looked at studies that used "very high levels of fluoride." The Wichita paper conveyed this impression by focusing on a single, cherry-picked study (Hu 1989) that was never published, nor even included in the Harvard review.

The truth, Grandjean writes, is that "only 4 of 27 studies" in the Harvard review used the high levels that the Wichita paper described, and "clear differences" in IQ "were found at much lower exposures."

Grandjean identifies fluoride is one of 213 known brain-toxic chemicals that may lower the intelligence of generations of children, in his new book, “Only One Chance: How Environmental Pollution Impairs Brain Development,”

EPA lists fluoride as having “Substantial Evidence of Developmental Neurotoxicity.”

When environmental chemicals affect developing brains, children risk cognitive deficits, learning disabilities, mental retardation, ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy, and other disorders that will remain for a lifetime, says Grandjean. 

“Fluorides are known to cause brain toxicity and neurological symptoms in humans,” Dr. Grandjean says. He laments that vested interests often manipulate brain-drain research and manufacture uncertainties to wrongly discredit scientists’ conclusions and credibility.

 

Vested interests caused decades to pass before children were protected from the brain-damaging effects of lead exposure reported in the literature. We unnecessarily lost a generation to lead-induced brain damage, reports Grandjean.

When Grandjean’s research team published a careful review of studies (meta-analysis) linking fluoride to children’s lower IQ, worried fluoridation promoters and regulators immediately and incorrectly claimed that only excessive exposures are toxic, the effect is insignificant, decades of fluoridation would have revealed brain deficits (although nobody looked, yet), and that it was probably lead and arsenic that lowered IQ, not fluoride.  Example here

“When such a misleading fuselage is aimed at the authors of a careful meta-analysis of 27 different studies, what would it take to convince critics like that,” asks Grandjean.

Thirty-seven human studies now link fluoride to children's lowered IQ, some at levels considered safe in the US. See: http://www.fluoridealert.org/articles/iq-facts/ and that no research on fluoride’s human brain effects have ever been conducted in the US

We don’t understand why Pew continues to distort the truth. 

Fluoride – A Review of Year 2012

Fluoridation, the addition of fluoride chemicals into public water supplies, began 68 years ago promising to eradicate tooth decay, lower dental bills, and put dentists out of business.

Instead, tooth decay rates and dental bills are rising, more dental professionals were created, more dental schools opened, both fluoridated dental products and tooth decay have become multi-billion dollar international industries. And fluoride-overdose, dental fluorosis, is the new epidemic facing America’s children, along with UNtreated tooth decay.

The following fluoride-related stories occurred in 2012 adding to the alarming body of evidence proving fluoridation is not safe, not effective and not wanted:

-- Wichita Kansas voters Rejected Fluoridation, 60% to 40% despite a well-funded, stealth lobbying campaign by fluoridationists.

-- Portland, Oregon residents halted the ill-advised, secretly-planned fluoridation mandate after collecting over 40,000 valid petition signatures in one  month to force a May 2013 referendum instead (Portlanders defeated fluoridation in 2013)

-- Windsor, Ontario, Canada stopped 51 years of fluoridation.  The number of people drinking fluoridated water in Canada has dropped by about 25% since 2008.

-- New Hampshire Passes First State-Wide Fluoride Warning Law  “if your child under the age of 6 months is exclusively consuming infant formula reconstituted with fluoridated water, there may be an increased chance of dental fluorosis.”

-- Arsenic in fluoridation chemicals costs society $1 – 6 billion in medical

costs, according to research published in Environmental Science & Policy

-- Dr. Yolanda Whyte, a primary care pediatrician, explains why she no  longer supports water fluoridation in this Fluoride Action Network (FAN) video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iu9HzaVbWQ

-- FluorideGate – An American Tragedy by David Kennedy, DDS - This new documentary exposes the scientific fraud behind the promotion of water fluoridation

-- "fluoridation rates were not significantly related to the measures of either  caries or overall condition of the teeth for urban or rural areas." ((West Virginia University Rural Health Research Center, 2012 )

-- 37 studies link fluoride to reduced IQ in human populations. FAN located obtained, and — in many cases — translated these studies.  FAN also identified dozens of other studies which correlate fluoride exposure with

impaired learning and memory, altered neurobehavioral function, fetal brain damage, and altered thyroid hormone levels.

-- Harvard researchers’ review of fluoride/brain studies “support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children’s neurodevelopment.” (Environmental Health Perspectives). Co-author Grandjean says, “Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain.”

Fluoridationists continually misrepresent this research. So, Grandjean corrects them on his own blog, “Chemical brain drain should not be disregarded. The average IQ deficit in children exposed to increased levels of fluoride in drinking water was found to correspond to about 7 points – a sizable difference. To which extent this risk applies to fluoridation in Wichita or Portland or elsewhere is uncertain, but definitely deserves concern.”

-- Vandenberg et al. include sodium fluoride in a list of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) with low-dose effects. They noted the EDC action of sodium fluoride as: “Inhibits insulin secretion, PTH, TH.” [parathyroid hormone, thyroid hormone]

-- Crescent City, California stops fluoridation partially because no fluoridation chemical manufacturer or distributor could provide required safety studies. They join fluoridation-free Poughkeepsie, NY; Selmer, Tennessee and the Carroll-Boone Water District employees, Arkansas in asking for but failing to receive this necessary documentation.

-- Nidel Law Re-files Case For Injury From Fluoridated Drinking Water

-- “the average number of decayed, missing or filled teeth in 12-year-olds was higher in the United States than in 11 peer countries (and three nonpeer countries)” behind 13 countries that do not fluoridate public water supplies according to a National Research Report .

-- Dentists are trained to use politics and not science to promote water fluoridation, according to a Journal of the American Dental Association article. The authors write: "Studies of dentists' attitudes about water fluoridation suggest that a lack of knowledge and preparedness are barriers to discussing the topic ... more than one-half of the respondents believed they needed more information and training on the issue…Dentists’ lack of self-efficacy with respect to critically evaluating scientific literature may help to explain their reluctance to promote fluoridation”

-- Public Relations fluoridation-promoter strategist, Matt Jacob paid by the Pew Foundation, teaches fluoridationists to focus on teeth and not health. “Opponents are likely to win if the dialogue is trapped” on Harms and Risks, he says.

-- New York City Fluoridation Opposition Rally held by Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. on city hall steps. Local school children studied the issue and protest the continued addition of fluoride chemicals into their bodies via NYC’s water supply without their consent.

-- At least Four New Jersey County legislatures passed resolutions opposing NJ’s proposed but abandoned fluoridation mandate bill

-- ABC-TV, Durham NC reports How Safe is Fluoride in Your Water?

“As the I-Team dug into the science behind the fluoride controversy, we found study after study dating back to the 80s from respected academic and scientific institutions that connect fluoride to health dangers.”

-- Exposure to fluoride suppresses the production of certain cells that resorb bone, and account for osteosclerosis, an increase in bone density, the major clinical manifestation of skeletal fluorosis, according to a report in the journal Fluoride  (Vol. 45, No. 2, 2012)

-- Postmenopausal women drinking water with 2.0 parts per million fluoride suffered significantly greater oxidative stress on their bones than women drinking water in a village with a low amount of fluoride, researchers reported in the same issue of the journal Fluoride (pp. 108-115).

--- “Some infant foods/drinks, when reconstituted with fluoridated water, may result in a F intake in infants above the suggested optimum range and therefore may put infants at risk of developing dental fluorosis”  Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology,

-- Captive New Zealand zoo frogs living in ponds of fluoridated water (0.94 ppm) suffered increased rates of bone disease, “consistent with skeletal fluorosis” and mortality according to published research 

In 2012, the following joined hundreds of communities that stopped or rejected fluoridation:

U.S.A.

St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin  

Balsam Lake, Wisconsin   

Pine Island, Florida

Milton, Florida        

Bradford, Vermont  

Romulus, New York          

Pulaski, New York

Wichita, Kansas

Harvard, Nebraska  

Crescent City, California    

Lake View, Iowa

Cassadaga and Lily Dale, New York

Santa Fe, New Mexico      

Argos, Indiana        

Walkerton, Indiana  

North Liberty, Indiana        

Lakeville, Indiana    

Bassett, Nebraska  

Palisade, Colorado

Pevely, Missouri

Albuquerque, New Mexico

West Manheim, Pennsylvania      

Bourbon, Indiana              

Bolivar, Missouri     

Myerstown, Pennsylvania

O’Fallon, Missouri

Smithville, Missouri

Canada

Windsor, Ontario, (includes LaSalle and Tecumseh )

Kirkland Lake, Ontario

Orillia, Ontario

Rosetown, Saskatchewan

Okotoks, Alberta,

Amherstburg, Ontario

Becancour, Quebec

Wynyard, Saskatchewan

Australia

Burdekin, Queensland

Bundaberg region, Queensland

Cairns, Queensland,

North and South Burnett, Queensland

Blackbutt, Queensland

Nanango, Queensland

Kingaroy, Queensland

Wondai, Queensland

Murgon, Queensland

Cunnamulla, Queensland

Fraser Coast, Queensland

Tablelands, Queensland

Carnavon

Domadgee

New Zealand

Waipukurau, New Zealand

         

Curacao       (The entire country)