Fluoride should come with a strong warning label according to one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. The Lancet has now classified fluoride as a neurotoxin, putting the ubiquitous chemical in the same category as arsenic, lead, mercury, toluene, DDT, and PCBs.
The medical journal states that fluoride is “known to cause developmental neurotoxicity in human beings.” Industrial sodium fluoride is added to many water supplies around the world, but The Lancet is now commenting on the negative health effects of the chemically treated water. The authors of the study urge that “untested chemicals should not be presumed to be safe to brain development, and chemicals in existing use and all new chemicals must, therefore, be tested for developmental neurotoxicity.”
The report also makes mention of what it calls a “pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity.” It mentions that neurodevelopmental disabilities, like ADHD and dyslexia, are impacting millions of people around the globe.
The Lancet article is not the only such report to raise warning flags about fluoride, in 2013 the National Institutes of Health found that children in areas with highly fluoridated water tend to have “significantly lower” IQ scores compared to children with lower amounts of fluoride in their water supplies. It should be noted that the levels studied in this report are nowhere near what’s allowable in the U.S. water supply. But it states, “the results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment” and it concludes that more research on fluoride’s impact on the developing brain should be done in the future.
Water expert, Roy Speiser, told The Guardian that the most disturbing bit of information that has come up in his research of the toxicity of fluoridation is that abnormal brain cells can be found in fetuses exposed to fluoridated water in-utero. He also said that the mothers drank fluoridated water within “safe guidelines” set by the EPA.
The British Medical Journal published a report that contained more bad news about the substance. The scientists participating in that study found it make associated with hypothyroidism, which can contribute to depression and weight gain.
If these reports make you nervous to drink straight from the tap, there are a few ways around the issue. A few companies offer high-quality water filtration that filters out fluoride. MetalGonTM, from CWR Environmental, is a new filter media that has been shown to reduce fluorosilicic acid up to 85 percent. Also, bottled water labeled as de-ionized, purified or distilled do not contain fluoride.
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