The Great Fluoride Debate
RFK wants to remove fluoride from America's tap water. The CDC and ADA say fluoride is safe and effective. Who is right?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's new health secretary, has proposed that he wants to remove fluoride from America's drinking water. In the last few weeks, there has been much media backlash to this statement.
Supporters of removing fluoride from our drinking water say that the evidence of harm is abundantly clear. Fluoride affects cognitive development at levels much lower than previously suspected. It also disrupts the endocrine system, causes abnormalities in bone tissue, and much more.
Defenders of fluoridation say that fluoride is safe and effective, and that removing fluoride will cause a significant increase in dental carries in children. They point to clear studies that show that water fluoridation leads to a 3 to 11% absolute reduction in dental carries in children.
So, who's right? Let's look at the research.
First, I want to acknowledge that there exists clear evidence that fluoride reduces dental carries. And so the question is not whether fluoride helps prevent cavities, but the question of whether the good outweighs the bad.
Out of all the papers and meta-analyses I looked at, there was one study on the harms of flouride that stood out to me as especially solid.
This study was a 2019 study on fluoride and sleep disturbances, done by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The study concluded that concentrations of fluoride in our tap water deemed safe by our government's standards, can cause serious sleep disturbances in teenagers. Specifically, they observed that a .52mg/L increase in water fluoride concentration, is linked to 1.97x greater odds of "self-reported snorting, gasping, or stopping breathing while asleep ever as compared to never." For reference, California's legal limit on fluoride in water is 2mg/L, and target range is .6mg/L to 1.2mg/L. The government "optimal" recommendation is .7mg/L. So, basically, normal concentrations of fluoride can give a healthy teenager sleep apnea.
Also, this same .52mg/L increase in fluoride concentration was linked to delayed bed and wake times (24 minutes and 26 minutes respectively). This suggests fluoride can affect the circadian rhythm. And since the pineal gland is a key regulator of the circadian rhythm, it suggests that the fluoride in our water, as per the author's hypothesis, is interfering with one of the most critical parts of our body!
For decades, "experts", "fact checkers", and "debunkers", have treated the idea that fluoride disturbs the pineal gland as some hippie, new age, conspiracy, on the level of the Earth being flat. But the scientific mechanism by which fluoride affects the pineal gland is absolutely clear.
The Icahn researchers summarize this mechanism in the background section of their paper:
Fluoride accumulation in pineal gland hydroxyapatite is present in higher concentrations than in any other part of the body, including bones and teeth. In 2006, a National Research Council report concluded that fluoride is likely to affect pineal gland function and cause decreased melatonin production which could contribute to a variety of effects in humans.
For those who are unfamiliar with hydroxyapatite:
Hydroxyapatite is an important mineral in our bones and teeth. It makes up 65 to 70% of our bone mass and 80% of our teeth.
The presence of flouride ions near these natural hydroxyapatite crystals leads to a molecular reaction where some of the hydroxyapatite molecules in the crystals turn into a new molecule, fluoroapatite, which contains fluoride.
Fluoroapatite is harder and more resistant to acid. Teeth with more fluoroapatite are thus more resistant to tooth decay.
So: more fluoride consumption -> more fluoride in teeth -> more hydroxyapatite gets turned into fluoroapatite -> teeth are more resistant to acid and decay
But, hydroxyapatite is not only present in our teeth and bones, but also in our pineal gland. And it is present in our pineal gland at concentrations higher than in our bones and teeth! What happens if the the hydroxyapatite in our pineal gland turns into fluoroapatite? We really have little idea, but early research suggests it interferes with melatonin synthesis, a hypothesis confirmed confirmed by the above study.
And the pineal gland has many critical functions beyond regulating sleep. So if flouride interferes with the workings of the pineal gland, then it would be affecting many important mechanisms in the body, like immunity, mood, and the timing of puberty.
There are hundreds of studies on the risks of fluoride. But I chose to highlight this one, because:
it looked at fluoride concentrations at the levels we consume every day-- levels deemed safe by the US PHS.
measuring sleep and wake time is much less controversial than measuring IQ. and there are fewer confounding factors
there is a very promising theoretical mechanism for how fluoride would disturb sleep (accumulation in the pineal gland)
I really think this study should be enough to convince any open-minded person that fluoride is harmful even at "safe" levels, and should absolutely not be added to entire country's water supply. To put a known endocrine disrupter in the entire country's water supply just to help prevent some tooth decay in children seems like an absurd and unreasonable solution to me. We should address oral health in other ways. The three countries in the world with the healthiest teeth1, Denmark, Germany, and Finland, do not fluoridate their water.
I have not seen this study on fluoride and the pineal gland mentioned by the CDC, major news outlets, the American Dental Association2, or the recent 324 page review on fluoride by the National Toxicology Program. And so of course, those who do not have the time to look deeper than CNN or NPR will believe that there's nothing to worry about. That anti-fluoridation is just another paranoid conspiracy theory drummed up by republicans with too much free time. But this is so far from the truth! Hundreds of sincere scientists and researchers are finding convincing evidence of the many different harmful effects of fluoride on our bodies.
Also, there is always a section of the population that will be hypersensitive to a certain chemicals. Fluoride allergy is already a known phenomena. Extreme cases are documented, but of course sensitivity is a spectrum. And so while you and I might not have our lives ruined by fluoride and tap water, we must empathize with that percentage of the population, maybe three million Americans, who possibly suffering from rashes, cognitive disorders, sleep disorders, arthritis, or thyroid dysfunction, caused in part by excessive fluoride. And because the Official Science shoved down our throats keeps repeating that fluoride is "safe and effective", and "one of the greatest health achievements of this century"3, those suffering from fluoride toxicity would not even think to look at the fluoride in their tap water as a causative factor!
And for the rest of us who are not hypersensitive to fluoride, but may be suffering from some inexplicable chronic illness, or just feeling like we're not as healthy as we should be, fluoride could be one thorn in the hairy bush of industrial chemicals and pollutants that are a major factor in our country's health crisis. It is of the utmost importance illuminate and uproot these potential causes one by one so that our country may finally heal.
The media and the CDC owe it to all of us to be clear and honest about the research on fluoride. And our government, which is supposed to represent, as best as it can, the will of its people, should absolutely not force fluoride upon those who believe that the risks outweigh the benefits.
Measured by lowest DMFT index (Decayed, Missing, and Filled Teeth)
The American Dental Association is the "expert "group, most often cited by legacy media, that the persists in the absolute safety of .7mg per liter of fluoride despite any evidence presented to them.
Source: CDC Website