The final version of the report confirms what previous draft versions have concluded — fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ in children.
The long-delayed and censored final report from the U.S. National Toxicology Program has found “moderate confidence” that fluoride exposure is “consistently associated with lower IQ in children”.
The NTP report has been the source of controversy over the last couple years as it became clear that elements of the U.S. government were seeking to prevent its release.
The NTP’s final report, also known as a monograph, reported that 72 studies examined the “association between fluoride exposure and IQ in children,” and 64 of those studied found “an inverse relationship associated between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.”
Of the total 72 studies, the NTP considered 19 of those studies to be “high quality”, and of those high quality studies, 18 “reported an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.”
Even among another 53 studies which were considered to be “low-quality” the NTP found that “46 of the 53 low-quality studies [88%] in children also found evidence of an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.”
The NTP is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate, evaluate, and report on toxicology within public agencies, and is headquartered at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
While these conclusions are breaking news to the vast majority of the public, regular readers of The Last American Vagabond have been informed of these conclusions since at least 2020 due to our ongoing coverage of this important matter.
Although the conclusion of the final version of the NTP’s monograph is strongly worded, it is likely to continue to be debated due to certain caveats.
For example, the conclusion mentions “higher estimated fluoride exposures”, which the scientists note are at “drinking water fluoride concentrations that exceed the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride”. The NTP scientists call for “more studies” to “fully understand the potential for lower fluoride exposure to affect children’s IQ”.
These caveats are already being used by corporate media to downplay the seriousness of the NTP’s conclusions. One of the most widely distributed articles from the Associated Press is headlined, “US government report says fluoride at twice the recommended limit is linked to lower IQ in kids“. The mention of “twice the recommended limit” is designed to misinform the public by having them believe the conclusions do not apply to the U.S. government’s currently recommended levels of 0.7 mg/L of fluoride in the water.
However, buried deep within the NTP’s 324-page report, the scientists make it clear they believe their conclusions apply to the U.S. population. They write (emphasis added):
“However, because people receive fluoride from multiple sources (not just drinking water), individuals living in areas with optimally fluoridated water can have total fluoride exposures higher than the concentration of their drinking water. In addition, there are people living in the United States who live in areas with naturally occurring fluoride in drinking water that is higher than 1.5 mg/L”
The NTP scientists take it one step further and conclude:
“This indicates that the moderate confidence in the inverse association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ is relevant to some children living in the United States.”
These additional statements are extremely important because people will likely consume more fluoride because of the multiple sources of exposure, including in processed foods or by cooking with fluoridated water. This especially applies for pregnant mothers and people with kidney problems who will consume more water than the average person.
NTP Scientist’s Long Battle to Preserve the Science
The release of the NTP report coincides with the ongoing legal battle between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Fluoride Action Network (FAN). The lawsuit began following the EPA’s 2016 decision to deny the plaintiff’s petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). FAN is attempting to prove that fluoride is a neurotoxin and should be regulated or banned under the TSCA.
The second phase of the fluoride lawsuit concluded in February, but Judge Edward Chen has yet to rule on the matter. Now that the final version of the NTP monograph has been released Chen may soon decide to issue his final ruling.
Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the FAN, told TLAV the NTP’s finding confirm what previous data has shown relating to fluoride and IQ.
“NTP’s landmark report confirms that there is a large, consistent, and reliable body of scientific research linking fluoride to reduced IQ, and that the doses associated with lower IQ are precariously close to what hundreds of millions of Americans consume everyday,” Connett said via text message.
“This isn’t what people signed up for when we started adding fluoride to the water. We didn’t sign up to add a neurotoxicant to our water. We signed up for something that could help our teeth. Now that we know that it can affect our brain, we really need to go back to square one on this.”
Emails released in early January 2023 as part of the lawsuit reveal that various elements of the U.S. government appear to have been involved in a concerted effort to block the release of the NTP draft report — a report which concluded fluoride is linked to lower IQ in children.
The emails show that NTP scientists believed their work was completed and set a date for May 2022 for publication. However, leadership at the top levels of the Department of Health Human Services intervened to stop the report from being released.
One email dated April 28, 2022 shows Dr. Mary Wolfe, the Director of NTP’s Office of Policy, Review and Outreach, emailed Casey Hannan, the Director of CDC’s Division of Oral Health, and stated the NTP’s “analysis and conclusions are set”. Dr. Wolfe also let Hannan know that the NTP had reviewed the CDC’s previously submitted comments, but still planned to release the review “mid/late May” 2022.
In a May 11, 2022 email, Wolfe again notifies Hannan and the CDC that the NTP has “set May 18, 2022 for publication of the monograph. The monograph will be posted to the NTP website, and we will email a notice of the posting to NTP listserv subscribers.”
However, later that day and the following day, Dr. Karen Hacker, the Director of CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, tells Dr. Wolfe that there is concern within the CDC about publishing the NTP review without an additional review by “NIH leadership”. Hacker also asked about the potential of a “interagency review” by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Dr. Wolfe subsequently told the CDC that “we (the NTP) believe the current findings, as stated in the monograph, reflect the scope of our evaluation and the available scientific literature and no revision is needed”.
Meanwhile, as Dr. Wolfe was defending the work of the NTP, internal emails among officials at the CDC’s Division of Oral Health reveal that the CDC was already preparing to prevent the release. A May 12, 2022 email from Hannan states:
“The May 18th release date for [the monograph] is almost certainly not going to happen. OASH and NIH OD are pretty clearly going to get more involved.”
OASH is a reference to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health, the second highest office in the Department of Health and Human Services, while NIH OD refers to the NIH’s Office of the Director, the highest office within the NIH. The current Director of the NIH is Lawrence A. Tabak.
An additional email dated June 3rd, 2022, shows Nicole Johnson, Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships and Strategic Communication in CDC’s Oral Health Division, contacting Jennifer Greaser, a Senior Public Health Policy Analyst in CDC’s Washington office. Johnson states:
“The latest we heard (yesterday) is that ASH Levine has put the report on hold until further notice.”
ASH Levine refers to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine.
These communications point to direct intervention from the head of the NIH and the Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The emails confirm what has long been suspected. Namely, that government officials at some level were preventing the release of this important review on the toxicity of fluoride. The CDC interference comes on top of an already unusual process employed by the NTP to evaluate the data on the safety of water fluoridation.
Other emails released in the lawsuit include a rare view into the discussions between government scientists and anonymous peer-reviewers. Some of the back and forth centers around the peer-reviewer’s desire to have the NTP insert statements noting that the majority of the studies being reviewed involved exposure to fluoride at levels above the US government’s recommended dose for water fluoridation.
The NTP scientists repeatedly assert their view that adding such a statement is unnecessary because water fluoridation is not the only exposure an individual faces. “As we discuss in the monograph, fluoride is found in water, certain foods, dental products, some pharmaceuticals, etc., and individual behaviors are likely to be an important determinant of actual total fluoride exposures,” the NTP writes.
The Evidence Continues to Pile Up
One recent study which was not included in the NTP’s final report was released in May 2024 and published at JAMA Network Open medical journal. The study, Maternal Urinary Fluoride and Child Neurobehavior at Age 36 Months.
The researchers studied the maternal urinary fluoride (MUF) levels of 229 Hispanic pregnant women living in Los Angeles, California. They looked for associations between third trimester MUF and the children’s neurobehavior at 3 years of age. They found that “prenatal fluoride exposure may increase risk of neurobehavioral problems among children”.
“These findings suggest that there may be a need to establish recommendations for limiting exposure to fluoride from all sources during the prenatal period, a time when the developing brain is known to be especially vulnerable to injury from environmental insults,” the study states (emphasis added).
The JAMA researchers write, “the study sample resided in a predominately fluoridated region and had fluoride exposures that are typical of those living in fluoridated communities in North America”.
The JAMA study, along with the release of the NTP’s final report, may lead Judge Chen to rule in favor of the Fluoride Action Network. It may also lead nowhere as the U.S. government continues to ignore its own data which shows water fluoridation is causing harm to Americans.
Stay tuned to TLAV for ongoing coverage of this vital issue.