Page 42 - Spring 2019 Journal

The authors found strong associations between fluoride exposure to the pregnant women (as measured in their urine) and lowered IQ in their offspring.
study carried out by a highly qualified research team headed by Dr. Morteza Bashash confirmed that fluoride is neurotoxic at levels currently experienced in fluoridated communities and, for this effect, the most vulnerable stage of human life is during fetal development.20 This study was conducted in Mexico City with two hundred ninety-nine mother-offspring pairs. The authors found strong associations between fluoride ex- posure to the pregnant women (as measured in their urine) and lowered IQ in their offspring at age four and again at six to twelve years of age. Subsequently, in 2018, a study reported that the lowering of IQ in the same cohort also occurred
in an earlier age range (one to three years).
In 2018, using the same Mexico City co- hort, Dr. Bashash found that there was a strong association between some of the symptoms of ADHD in the children and urine fluoride levels in the pregnant women.22 A 2015 study found a relationship between the prevalence of ADHD in the U.S. and fluoridation status by state; the higher the percentage of the state fluoridated,
the greater the prevalence of ADHD.23
It is hard to overstate the importance of the 2017 Bashash study.20 Strikingly, it was funded by U.S. government agencies, two of which (National Institutes of Health and the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency) have promoted (NIH) and defended (EPA) the safety of water fluoridation. The study was part of a twenty- five-year ELEMENT research project (Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants) directed by professor Howard Hu from the University of Toronto. The Bashash study took over twelve years and involved re- searchers from many distinguished universities and institutions in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. These included the universities of Toronto, Mc- Gill, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Harvard, as well as Mount Sinai and the National Institute of Perinatology in Mexico. These researchers have published over fifty studies conducted along similar lines for other neurotoxicants. Of particular importance was the fact that, unlike most of the other IQ studies on fluoride, this study involved measurements at the individual (not community) level for both mother and child. Based upon their extensive experience, the authors controlled for a large number of
potential confounding variables, and even af- ter controlling for these they still found a very strong relationship between fluoride exposure during pregnancy in the mother and lowered IQ in their offspring.
Fluoridation promoters, including the American Dental Association, have claimed that this study was not relevant to fluoridated communities in the U.S. because Mexico City does not have artificial fluoridation and pregnant women there are likely to have higher doses of fluoride from fluoridated salt and some naturally fluoridated water areas. Such arguments are not convincing because the biometric of exposure used was fluoride levels in the urine, which is a measure of total dose of fluoride and is inde- pendent of the source. Moreover, the range of exposure in Mexico City was within the range of fluoride levels in the urine of adults in the U.S. This point was further confirmed by a subse- quent national study of the urine fluoride levels in pregnant women in Canada. This study found that levels of fluoride in the urine of Canadian women living in fluoridated communities were almost identical to the levels in Mexico City, namely 0.87 ppm in Canada versus 0.91 ppm in Mexico City.24
As far as the politics of fluoridation are con- cerned, it is significant that some of the world’s leading neurotoxicologists, like Phillipe Grand- jean (mercury specialist) and David Bellinger (lead specialist), are now participating in this research as well as reviewing the literature.25,26 They now see fluoride’s neurotoxicity in the same vein as that of lead, arsenic, mercury and other well-established neurotoxicants.
It should also be stressed that in addition to the fifty-three IQ studies discussed above, there are many other animal, human, biochemical and cellular studies that provide an overwhelming weight of evidence that fluoride is neurotoxic. These include one hundred thirty human brain studies;27 two hundred forty-one animal brain studies;28 thirty-three cellular brain studies;29 and thirty review studies.30
FLUORIDE AND HYPOTHYROIDISM
In the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, doctors in Argentina, France and Germany used sodium fluoride to lower the activity of the thyroid
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Wise Traditions
SPRING 2019