Earlier this year, a meta-analysis was published in the journal Public Health which concluded that fluoridated water was not associated with lower IQ in children. Its lead author, Dr. Jayanth Kumar, is the State Dental Director of the California Department of...
So…the final phase of the EPA/fluoridation lawsuit has finally been set and will begin on January 29, 2024. (As they say, the wheels of justice turn slowly.) The court has set aside two weeks for testimony and cross-examination of expert witnesses, who will focus...
Since we last blogged about the fluoridation lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - way back in the summer of 2020 - the only real news about it has been delay after delay after delay. For much of that, you can thank government efforts to block...
Drinking water and toothpaste are just the most obvious day-to-day sources of fluoride. They’re hardly the only ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLaPVEauFww And even that isn’t an exhaustive list! (Some dental sealants and restorative materials contain...
Any dental or medical intervention comes with both risks and benefits, yet some practices persist despite evidence of risks outweighing the benefits. Using mercury amalgam to fill decayed teeth is one of those. Fluoride is another. Its benefits are modest and...
If only one or two studies provided evidence of fluoride’s harm to the developing brain, you might not think much of it, but in fact, dozens of published studies have done so. The latest, published a couple months ago in NeuroToxicity, followed 103 mother/child...
There are more than a few reasons you might give for why water fluoridation is bad policy. For one, any benefit it gives comes from applying it directly to the teeth, not swallowing it. You might also note the lack of rigorous evidence in support of the practice or...
The legal battle over water fluoridation is facing another delay after Judge Edward M. Chen of the US District Court in San Francisco postponed his ruling regarding the EPA’s regulation of fluoride. The case, filed back in 2017, pits the EPA against a group of...
In 1909, the great dental researcher GV Black traveled to Colorado Springs to see what a young dentist named Frederick McKay had observed among the children there: Nearly all of them had incredibly dark brown stains on their teeth. “I spent considerable time...
If you buy the idea that fluoride prevents cavities – hint: it doesn’t really – fluoridation can seem like a common sense solution: You simply drink fluoride-treated water, and your count your teeth as protected, right? Wrong. Research has shown that any benefit...
So back to the problem of drinking fluoride – or rather, how to avoid that problem to begin with. The answer isn’t necessarily bottled water. Bottled waters vary widely in quality. Some are no more than packaged water from municipal supplies. Where those supplies...
So if fluoridation isn’t all that, what about applying fluoride directly to the teeth? Are the benefits worth the risk? The idea that topical fluoride is safer and more effective than fluoride you swallow is a common one. Hence, all the toothpastes, mouthwashes,...
For more than 50 years, the American Dental Association has published a book they call Fluoridation Facts. The newest edition just dropped. Like earlier versions, it justifies and endorses the fluoridation of public water supplies, while dismissing any cause for...
For over 70 years, conventional dentistry has considered fluoride, both in public water supplies and dental products, a panacea against tooth decay. Yet does current science support this? A new Cochrane Review, for instance, set out to evaluate evidence of whether...
For a third time, the Fluoride Action Network has petitioned the EPA to get the "F" out of our water - fluoride, that is. And once again, the agency denied the petition that would have banned the practice of fluoridating US water supplies. Rather than exercising...
When it comes to witty truths, no one was more prolific than Mark Twain. And when we read about the recent Canadian study claiming that the end of fluoridation in Calgary caused a spike in children’s cavities, we couldn’t help but think of one particular truth...
When Representative Donna Lichenegger first introduced her fluoride notification bill to the Missouri House of Representatives a couple years ago, it failed to make it to the floor for debate. So last year, she re-filed it. The bill made it out of the Senate...
About a year ago, voters in Portland, Oregon, said "no" to fluoridation. And since then, it seems the pace of change has really picked up, with more residents in more towns and cities standing up and saying no to this well-intentioned but misguided practice. Here...