[P2P-F] Fwd: update on fluoride studies show brain connection?

Tue Sep 20 12:14:27 CEST 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Olga Scully <muffyandbrian at westnet.com.au>
Date: Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 5:12 PM
Subject: Study Proves: This Everyday Drink Lowers Your IQ
To:

**
 Study Proves: This Everyday Drink Lowers Your IQ  Posted By Dr. Mercola
<http://articles.mercola.com/members/Dr.-Mercola/default.aspx> | August 12
2011 | 145,479 views

    Dr. Mercola Recommends...
Every "Like" Helps Support This Cause

*By Drs. Paul and Ellen Connett*

*Paul Connett, co-author of the book, *The Case Against Fluoride*, is joined
by his wife, Ellen, webmaster of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Tara
Blank, PhD, Science Liason Officer for FAN, in authoring this article on
fluoride and the brain. Together they have recently provided an extensive
commentary to the EPA's Office of Drinking water in response to its proposed
safe reference dose for
fluoride1<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn1>.
*

In an ongoing effort to determine which chemicals may damage the developing
brain, scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
recently conducted an extensive literature review of over 400 chemicals,
including fluoride.

Fluoride is Classified as a Neurotoxin

While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would have us all believe that
fluoride is perfectly innocuous and safe, scientists from the EPA's National
Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory have classified
fluoride as a "chemical having substantial evidence of developmental
neurotoxicity".2<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn2>Consistent
with the EPA's conclusion, a continually growing body of human
and animal research strongly suggests that fluoride can damage the
developing brain.

Consider for example:

   - 24 studies have now reported an association between fluoride exposure
   and reduced IQ in children
   - Three studies have reported an association between fluoride exposure
   and impaired neurobehavioral development
   - Three studies have reported damage to the brain of aborted fetuses in
   high fluoride areas, and
   - Over 100 laboratory studies have reported damage to the brain and/or
   cognitive function among fluoride-exposed
animals3<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn3>.

Most of the 30 studies linking fluoride to reduced IQ, impaired
neurobehavioral development, and fetal brain damage have come from China
where fluoride occurs at moderate to high levels in the drinking water in
what is known as "endemic areas for fluorosis." While there have been
shortcomings in the methodologies of some of these studies, they have been
remarkably consistent in their findings. Children exposed to excessive
fluoride have been consistently observed to suffer from some form of
neurological impairment.

Your Brain Under Attack

Statistics tell us that our brains are under attack. For example:

   - *Autism Spectrum Disorders: *The rates in the U.S. are now 1 in 110
   children and are "4 to 5 times more likely to occur in boys than in
girls<http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html>,"
   or as many as 1 in 60
boys<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/do-you-believe-that-one-i_b_310378.html>.

   - *Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder:* According to a November
   2010 CDC report, nearly 1 in 10 U.S. children have ADHD - an increase of
   about 22 percent from
2003<http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-11/news/29307443_1_adhd-howard-abikoff-attention-deficit-hyperactivity>.

   - *Alzheimer's Disease:* According to the Alzheimer's Association, 5.4
   million Americans are living with it and every 69 seconds an American is
   diagnosed with it. By 2050, it is estimated that as many as 16 million
   Americans will have the
disease<http://www.alz.org/documents_custom/2011_Facts_Figures_Fact_Sheet.pdf>.

We do not know the causes for the alarming increases in these diseases but
we do know that wherever possible, everything must be done by regulatory
agencies and caregivers to protect the brain from known neurotoxins.
Fluoride is a known neurotoxin and it is time to stop adding it to public
drinking water systems. However, convincing U.S. regulatory authorities of
this urgent necessity is proving very difficult.

Developmental Neurotoxicity

In 2007 Choi and
Grandjean4<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn4>stated:

*"In humans, only five substances have so far been documented as
developmental neurotoxicants: lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated
biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene. From this evidence, including our own
studies on some of these substances, parallels may be drawn that suggest
that fluoride could well belong to the same class of toxins, but
uncertainties remain…"*

 Health Agencies are Ignoring Fluoride-Brain Studies

Even though health agencies in the U.S. and other fluoridating countries
have recognized that children are being grossly over-exposed to fluoride (41
percent of American children aged 12-15 now have some form of dental
fluorosis5<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn5>),
they are unwilling to concede that fluoride may be impacting the brain.
Their approach has been either to ignore these studies completely or to
challenge the relevance and the methodology of the fluoride-brain studies.
They have thus far failed to conduct any IQ studies of their own.

Bottle-Fed Babies at Risk

The level of fluoride in mothers' milk is remarkably low; only about0.004
ppm6<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn6>.
In the view of many critics of fluoridation, including Arvid Carlsson, Nobel
laureate in medicine/physiology, it is reckless to expose infants to levels
of fluoride orders of magnitude higher than that found in breast milk.

In the U.S., infants who are fed formula reconstituted with fluoridated tap
water receive the highest levels of fluoride (per kilogram bodyweight) in
the human population. Specifically, infants who are fed formula made with
fluoridated water at the current level of 1 part-per-million (1 ppm = 1
mg/liter) fluoride will receive a dose up to 250 times more than the
breastfed infant.

Even with the proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
to lower fluoride to 0.7
ppm<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/05/breaking-news-us-finally-admits-too-much-fluoride-in-the-water.aspx>in
fluoridation schemes, bottle-fed infants will still receive up to 175
times more fluoride than the breastfed infant.

In addition to bottle-fed infants, others at heightened risk include those
with poor nutrition and both African American and Mexican-American children.

Recent studies indicate that African American and Mexican-American children
have higher rates of the more severe forms of dental fluorosis than white
children7<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn7>.
As dental fluorosis provides a visual indication that fluoride has exerted a
toxic effect on your body, it is reasonable to assume that these same
children will also be more vulnerable to other toxic effects of fluoride
including damage to the brain.

EPA Protecting Fluoridation Program, Not Public Health

On January 7, 2011, the EPA's Office of Water (OW), while pursuing its
mandate to set a new safe drinking water standard for fluoride, made it
clear that it would do so without jeopardizing the water fluoridation
program. According to Peter Silva, EPA Assistant Administrator for the OW:

*"EPA's new analysis will help us make sure that people benefit from tooth
decay prevention while at the same time avoiding the unwanted health effects
from too much fluoride"8<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn8>
.*

Silva was referring to severe dental fluorosis, broken bones, and skeletal
fluorosis as the unwanted health effects. These were the three health
effects that the National Research Council of the National Academies in its
2006 report *Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's
Standards *singled out. The report recommended that the EPA perform a new
health risk assessment to determine a safe drinking water standard for
fluoride because they found the current level of 4 ppm was not protective of
health.

In its first draft risk assessment, EPA claimed that the most sensitive
health effect of fluoride was severe dental
fluorosis9<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn9>.
Brain effects were ignored by EPA even though many more studies have been
published <http://www.fluoridealert.org/since-nrc.html> since the NRC made
its recommendation. Science does not stand still.

The NRC examined five IQ studies; there have now been nearly five times more
at 24!

Making matters worse, the EPA's Office of Water risk assessment excluded the
fetus and infants under 6 months of age, as the EPA does not expect them to
get dental fluorosis! Whether fluoride impacts the growing tooth enamel
during this period or not, this is a very important period for brain
development. As noted above, an infant fed formula made with fluoridated
water at the proposed lower level of 0.7 ppm will receive 175 times more
fluoride than the breast-fed infant.

EPA Research Laboratory Takes Different View

Fortunately, the EPA does not speak with a single voice on fluoride's
neurotoxicity. While the EPA's Office of Water ignored any brain effect in
its 2011 risk assessment, the Neurotoxicology Division at the EPA's National
Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory included fluoride in
its list of "Chemicals with Substantial* *Evidence of Developmental
Neurotoxicity", for a new project expected to be launched this
year10<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn10>.

Ultimately, therefore, the EPA administrator will have to resolve the
following question: Is it more important to protect our children's brains or
the fluoridation experiment?

Fluoridation Proponents' False Claim

Proponents of fluoridation have dismissed the fluoride-IQ studies on the
basis of the claim that the children in these studies were drinking water
containing fluoride at *much higher* levels than used for water fluoridation
(approximately 1 ppm).

However, such claims do not bear close scrutiny,
Xiang11<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn11>estimated
that the threshold for IQ lowering was 1.9 ppm and more recently
Ding et al. (2011) found a lowering of IQ in the range of 0.3 to 3 ppm.
These findings reveal that there is no adequate margin of safety to protect
ALL American children drinking uncontrolled amounts of fluoridated water and
ingesting fluoride from other sources (e.g. toothpaste).

While we will discuss this crucial margin of safety argument in more detail
below, suffice it to say here that when harm is found in a small human study
a safety factor of 10 to 100 is typically applied in order to extrapolate to
a level designed to protect a whole population from harm.

The NRC (2006) Review of Fluoride

The NRC panel devoted a whole chapter on the brain in its 507-page 2006
review and concluded:

*"it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the
functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means.*"

Of the *five* IQ studies reviewed by the NRC the panel drew special
attention to the study by Xiang et
al.12<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn12>,
which they indicated had the strongest design. The panel described this
study:

*"This study compared the intelligence of 512 children (ages 8-13) living in
two villages with different fluoride concentrations in the water. The IQ
test was administered in a double-blind manner. The high-fluoride area had a
mean water concentration of 2.47 ± 0.79 mg/L (range 0.57-4.50 milligrams per
liter [mg/L]), and the low-fluoride area had a mean water concentration of
0.36 ± 0.15 mg/L (range 0.18-0.76 mg/L). The populations studied had
comparable iodine and creatinine concentrations, family incomes, family
educational levels, and other factors. *

*The populations were not exposed to other significant sources of fluoride,
such as smoke from coal fires, industrial pollution, or consumption of brick
tea. Thus, the difference in fluoride exposure was attributed to the amount
in the drinking water… the average intelligence quotient (IQ) of the
children in Wamiao was found to be significantly lower (92.2 ± 13.00; range,
54-126) than that in Xinhuai (100.41 ± 13.21; range, 60-128). *

*The IQ scores in both males and females declined with increasing fluoride
exposure."*

The shift in the IQ curves for both males and females are shown in Figures 1
and 2.

[image: Figure 1]
*Figure 1.** Distribution of IQ scores from males in Wiamiao and Xinuai.
Source: data from Xiang et al. 2003a (as shown in NRC, 2006, Figure 7-2, p.
207).*

[image: Figure 2]
*Figure 2**. Distribution of IQ scores from females in Wiamiao and Xinuai.
Source: data from Xiang et al. 2003a (as shown in NRC, 2006, Figure 7-1, p.
207).*

According to the NRC (p. 206):

*"A follow-up study to determine whether the lower IQ scores of the children
in Wamiao might be related to differences in lead exposure disclosed no
significant difference in blood lead concentrations in the two groups of
children13<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn13>."
*

Xiang extrapolating from the whole set of data estimated that the threshold
for IQ lowering would be 1.9 ppm. Below we use this estimate in a margin of
safety analysis to calculate a level that would be sufficient to protect all
children drinking fluoridated water.

The NRC panel's overall conclusion based on its review of these *five *IQ
studies was:

*"A few epidemiologic studies of Chinese populations have reported IQ
deficits in children exposed to fluoride at 2.5 to 4 mg/L in drinking water.
Although the studies lacked sufficient detail for the committee to fully
assess their quality and relevance to U.S. populations, the consistency of
the results appears significant enough to warrant additional research on the
effects of fluoride on intelligence."*

Incredibly, no fluoridating country has followed up on this. We continue to
fly blind on this critical issue. One of the animal studies reviewed by the
NRC was the study by Julie A. Varner and
co-workers14<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn14>from
the State University of New York at Binghamton. These authors fed rats
for one year with 1 ppm ﬂuoride in their water. One group received sodium
ﬂuoride, the other aluminum ﬂuoride.

In the rats treated with either ﬂuoride compound, Varner et al. discovered
the following:

   - Morphological changes in the kidney and the brain
   - An increased uptake of aluminum into the brain
   - The formation of beta-amyloid deposits, which are a hallmark for
   Alzheimer's disease

 More Brain Studies Published Since NRC 2006 Review

Since the NRC panel wrote its report in 2006 many more animal studies have
been published and another *14* IQ studies have either been published or
translated. Five more IQ studies wait translation from the original Chinese.
This brings the total to 24 IQ studies that have found exposure to fluoride
associated with lowered
IQ15<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn15>.

At least 16 studies on animals have shown that ﬂuoride has an effect upon
the hippocampus and nine of these have been published since the NRC's 2006
review. Damage in this area of your brain usually results in difﬁculties in
forming new memories and recalling events that occurred prior to the damage
16<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn16>.

Xiang Updates His
Work17<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn17>

An updated version of Xiang et al.'s (2003a)
work18<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn18>,
which included new information about the relationship between the level of
fluoride in the children's plasma and IQ was accepted for publication
in *Environmental
Health Perspectives* (the journal of the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences) and made available online on December 17, 2010.

This article was later withdrawn when it was found that some of the material
had been previously published. However, for those who have used criticisms
of the methodologies of some of the 24 IQ studies to justify ignoring the
issue completely, it is important to note that the Xiang et al. paper
successfully passed the peer-review process of this important journal.

Another Important Fluoride IQ Study

An IQ study published in 2011 by Ding et
al.19<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn19>investigated
the effects of low levels of fluoride on IQ. Children were
exposed to 0.3 to 3 mg F/L fluoride via drinking water. The authors found a
very significant linear correlation (p <0.0001) between fluoride levels in
the children's urine and lowered IQ (Figure 3). They calculated that there
will be a lowering of IQ by 0.59 points for each increase of 1 mg/L urinary
fluoride.

[image: Figure 3]
*Figure 3.** The relationship between IQ differences and urine fluoride
concentrations. **Multiple linear regression model was carried out to
confirm the association with urine fluoride exposure and IQ scores (F=9.85,
p < 0.0001) (Figure 2, Ding et al., 2011)** *

Margin of Safety: The Safety Factors Used in Toxicological Assessments

Promoters of fluoridation, either through ignorance or design, betray little
understanding of the concept of margin of safety. This is revealed when they
dismiss studies carried out at levels higher than 1 ppm as being irrelevant
for assessing the risks posed by water fluoridation.

This indicates that they have no appreciation of the difference between
concentration and dose.

Someone drinking three liters of water with 1 ppm fluoride would get a
higher dose (3 mg) than someone drinking one liter of water with 2 ppm
fluoride (2 mg). In other words, it is the dose that hurts people, and thus
finding harm at levels as high as 4 ppm are still relevant to a high water
consumer drinking water at 1 ppm.

Toxicologists usually have to work from high dose animal experiments to
extrapolate to a safe level for humans.

This typically requires the application of a safety factor of 10, when
extrapolating from the dose that causes harm in animals to predict a safe
dose for humans (in order to account for the potential variation between
species). Then a second safety factor of 10 is commonly applied to take into
account the full range of sensitivity to any toxic substance that is to be
expected in any large population. In other words some individuals are likely
to be 10 times more sensitive to fluoride than others.

In the case of fluoride we are in the unusual situation of having quite a
large amount of human data to work with, especially in the case of its
neurotoxic effects, so it is only necessary to address the variation in
sensitivity expected in a large population.

In its January 7, 2011, draft risk assessment the EPA Office of Water took
the most unusual tack of not using any safety factor at all when
extrapolating from the dose that causes severe dental
fluorosis20<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn20>.

In other words they believed that they had enough data to state – with no
uncertainty—that no one consuming less than 0.08 mg of fluoride per kilogram
bodyweight per day would develop severe dental fluorosis. For them to
legitimately forego any safety factor they need to demonstrate that this
purported "threshold" dose is based on sufficiently large numbers of
subjects to represent the full range of different vulnerabilities and
sensitivities in the U.S. population.

Such variations include: age, income levels, nutritional status, genetic and
ethnic variability.

It is notable therefore, that the study on which the EPA's calculations were
based21<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn21>did
not include African American or Mexican-American children, or children
from a full range of family income levels.

Dr. Paul Connett, director of the Fluoride Action Network believes that the
EPA Office of Water was forced to choose this "uncertainty factor" of 1 in
order to produce a "safe reference dose" that was higher than the dose
deemed necessary to protect teeth against decay*. *In other words, this was
a political decision made to protect the water fluoridation program. Even
more political was the EPA's willingness to ignore the studies that indicate
that fluoride lowers IQ.

No Margin of Safety for Fluoride

The level at which Ding et al. (2011) researchers found a lowering of IQ
(0.3-3 ppm) overlaps the range at which fluoride is added to water in the US
(0.7 – 1.2 ppm). Even without applying a safety margin to this finding, it
would suggest that there is no safe level that would protect ALL of
America's children from potential interference with mental development from
fluoride exposure via the water supply.

However, Ding et al. state that this is a preliminary finding, and more work
should be done to control for possible confounding factors. Meanwhile, it is
possible to use the findings of Xiang et
al.22<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn22>to
estimate a safe reference dose to protect all American children from
this
effect.

This is the task that the EPA Office of Water should have undertaken.

However, as indicated above, their preliminary calculations for the safe
reference dose published on January 7, 2011, failed to consider fluoride's
potential to lower IQ. The EPA defended its decision to only consider severe
dental fluorosis, by claiming that this is the most sensitive endpoint of
fluoride's toxicity. The EPA made this claim despite the fact that, in both
the Ding and Xiang studies, reductions in IQ were observed among children
without severe dental fluorosis. This clearly challenges the EPA's claim
that severe dental fluorosis is the most sensitive adverse effect of
fluoride.

Other Human Brain Studies

Three other studies from
China23<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn23>indicate
that aborted fetuses in endemic areas for fluorosis show signs of
brain changes compared to aborted fetuses in non-endemic areas.

Moreover, in a study from
Mexico24<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn24>,
Rocha-Amador et al found that children exposed to moderate levels of
fluoride had impaired visual-spatial recognition abilities. Such impairments
could affect a child's development. In 2009 the Rocha-Amador team performed
tests25<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn25>on
children exposed to various neurotoxicants (Fluoride, Arsenic, Lead,
DDT,
DDE or PCBs). Fluoride exposed children were selected if they had dental
fluorosis (a bio-marker for fluoride over-exposure).

All the children exposed to the various neurotoxicants "had very poor
performance in Copy and Immediate Recall tests and in general they recalled
less information on the Construction/Memory score."

As the authors of these studies note, fluoride's impact on the brain may be
evident in the absence of crude reductions in IQ. Indeed, the authors note
that IQ tests may well fail to detect fluoride's more subtle effects on
cognitive function.

Consistent with Rocha-Amador's research on non-IQ effects, Li et
al.26<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn26>reported
that infants born in areas with high fluoride levels had
"significant differences in the non-biological visual orientation reaction
and biological visual and auditory orientation reaction" compared to infants
born in areas with low fluoride levels.

Establishing a Safe Drinking Water Level for Fluoride MCLG

The most important step in setting a federally enforceable safe drinking
water standard (maximum contaminant level or MCL) is the determination of
the Maximum Contaminant Level *Goal* (MCLG). This determination is made by
the EPA's Office of Water. The MCLG is the level of a contaminant in water
below which there is no known or reasonably anticipated risk to health.

The MCLG is the basis for setting the enforceable standard (MCL).

This enforceable standard takes into account the cost of removing the
contaminant and is therefore not as protective as the MCLG level. For
example the MCLG for arsenic is zero, but the MCL is set at 15 ppb (parts
per billion) due to the costs of removing natural arsenic from some water
supplies. For fluoride, Xiang et al. (2003a, b) estimated that the lowest
water concentration associated with a lowering of IQ was 1.9 mg F/L.
Ironically, this is the same threshold that the EPA's Office of Water offers
for severe dental fluorosis.

We convert this to a dose by assuming that the children in the Xiang study
were consuming on average one liter of water a day. One liter of water at
1.9 mg F/L translates into a dose of 1.9 mg/day. This is called the lowest
observable adverse effect level (LOAEL).

Because these studies only dealt with 500 children, with fairly similar
genetics, lifestyles and nutritional status, we would need at least the
standard uncertainty factor of 10 to account for the full range of
sensitivity expected in the whole population in the U.S. to arrive at a safe
daily dose. 1.9 mg F/day divided by 10 equals 0.19 mg F/day and thus a safe
daily dose should be set no higher than this. Such a dose would be exceeded
by a child drinking less than one glass of water (250 ml) at 1 ppm (1 ppm =
1 mg/liter).

In other words water fluoridation is not safe; some children could have
their mental development impaired by drinking as little as one glass of
fluoridated water on a daily basis.

As far as setting a maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) for safe drinking
water is concerned, we should note that this safe daily dose of 0.19 mg/day
is already being exceeded from other sources.

For example the EPA OW estimates that mean fluoride ingestion from
toothpaste among children between the ages of 1 and 4 is 0.34
mg/day27<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx?e_cid=20110812_DNL_art_1#_edn27>.
Fluoride intake from toothpaste alone, therefore, contributes twice the safe
daily dose of 0.19 mg/day. Thus, since some children will exceed the safe
dose of fluoride from non-water sources alone, it is difficult to understand
how the MCLG for fluoride could be set any higher than ZERO if the EPA were
to acknowledge the existence of these IQ studies and follow routine
procedures.

Of all the dangers posed by fluoridation (and there are many others) the
potential to impact a child's mental development must be considered one of
the most serious. Just how long can promoters continue to ignore the
voluminous evidence of these dangers?

And how long will the public let them?

-- 
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