Harvard Study Confirms Fluoride Reduces Children's IQ | Dr. Joseph Mercola

Harvard Study Confirms Fluoride Reduces Children's IQ | Dr. Joseph Mercola:

recently-published Harvard University meta-analysis funded by the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) has concluded that children who live
in areas with highly fluoridated water have "significantly lower" IQ scores than those who live in low fluoride areas.

In a 32-page report that can be downloaded free of charge from Environmental Health Perspectives, the researchers said:

A
recent report from the U.S. National Research Council (NRC 2006)
concluded that adverse effects of high fluoride concentrations in
drinking water may be of concern and that additional research is
warranted. Fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in laboratory animals,
including effects on learning and memory ...

To summarize the
available literature, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis
of published studies on increased fluoride exposure in drinking water
and neurodevelopmental delays. We specifically targeted studies carried
out in rural China that have not been widely disseminated, thus
complementing the studies that have been included in previous reviews
and risk assessment reports ...

Findings from our meta-analyses
of 27 studies published over 22 years suggest an inverse association
between high fluoride exposure and children's intelligence ... The
results suggest that fluoride may be a developmental neurotoxicant that
affects brain development at exposures much below those that can cause
toxicity in adults ...

Serum-fluoride concentrations associated
with high intakes from drinking-water may exceed 1 mg/L, or 50 Smol/L,
thus more than 1000-times the levels of some other neurotoxicants that
cause neurodevelopmental damage. Supporting the plausibility of our
findings, rats exposed to 1 ppm (50 Smol/L) of water-fluoride for one
year showed morphological alterations in the brain and increased levels
of aluminum in brain tissue compared with controls ...

In
conclusion, our results support the possibility of adverse effects of
fluoride exposures on children's neurodevelopment. Future research
should formally evaluate dose-response relations based on
individual-level measures of exposure over time, including more precise
prenatal exposure assessment and more extensive standardized measures of
neurobehavioral performance, in addition to improving assessment and
control of potential confounders.