National Toxicology Program confirms fluoride a brain hazard, according to Fluoride Action Network

NEW YORK, Oct. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In 2019, the National Toxicology Program (NTP), the research arm for U.S. government agencies, performed the first systematic government review on fluoride's neurotoxicity and concluded that it "is presumed to be a cognitive neurodevelopmental hazard," according to Fluoride Action Network's (FAN) director Paul Connett, PhD.

This NTP review was sent to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) for peer review. The NAS requested that changes be made.

In September 2020, a revised review was sent to NAS for a second round of peer review.

The NTP review team identified "159 published human studies, 339 published experimental animal studies, and 60 in vitro/mechanistic studies." They concluded:

"…when considering all the evidence, including studies with exposures to fluoride levels above 1.5 mg/L in water, NTP concludes that fluoride is presumed to be a cognitive neurodevelopmental hazard to humans."

Their finding was based on:

"... a consistent and robust pattern of findings in human studies ... demonstrating that higher fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ and other cognitive effects in children"

However, according to Chris Neurath, research director for FAN, "fluoride's neurotoxic dangers are worse than NTP revealed": 

"Their claim that the evidence at levels lower than 1.5ppm is inconsistent and unclear compared to the studies above 1.5ppm is incorrect.  It contradicts their own findings about the four recent highest quality studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, which found significant effects when pregnant women or bottle-fed infants were exposed to fluoride at or below 0.7ppm (or equivalent) see Bashash 2017, 2018; Green 2019; Till 2020.

A poster Neurath presented at a recent International Society for Environmental Epidemiology conference showed that of 29 studies classified by the NTP as high quality, 13 found neurotoxic effects at fluoride levels less than 0.7ppm and another 5 studies at less than 1.5ppm:
http://fluoridealert.org/wp-content/uploads/neurath-2020.e-poster.isee-conference.pdf

Meanwhile, the NTP's recognition of harm above 1.5ppm incorporates no margin of safety to protect pregnant women and children drinking fluoridated water, thus refuting claims by proponents that fluoridation is "absolutely safe and effective."

Connett explains that a standard safety factor of 10 is used by the EPA to extrapolate from a human study finding harm to find a dose which is protective of everyone in a large population. Dividing 1.5ppm by ten would give a safe level of fluoride in water of 0.15ppm, thus making fluoridation programs at 0.7ppm untenable.

SOURCE Fluoride Action Network

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