FAN Bulletin 787

April 6, 2007

Dear All,

First, a request. Does anyone know anyone in the Yarmouth-Hyannis area of Massachusetts? I am looking for someone to put me up overnight on Monday May 7, after I have given a presentation to the Yarmouth Board of Health. My presentation has been requested to counterbalance the one sided presentation given to the Health Board several months ago by Myron Aleuken.

Second, we are looking for someone who can translate Persian (Iranian) (see below).

Two more hammer blows

Today, I received one abstract and one full paper which between them deliver two more huge hammer blows to the “official” mantra that fluoridation is “safe and effective.”

The abstract (see below), is from yet another paper which shows that fluoride can lower the IQ of children. This joins 18 studies from China (some of which are now being translated from the original Chinese) which show the same thing. However, this is the first time that such an article has appeared in a dental journal (I am trying to get the name)!

The study found an average difference of 11 IQ points in children between two villages, one with a fluoride concentration of 2.5 ppm and the other 0.4 ppm. We are most anxious to read the whole paper and would be grateful if there is someone out there who can translate Persian (Iranian). We have the whole paper as a pdf file. The findings are remarkably similar to those of Xiang et al. (2003 a) and b)).

While we have to hold out the possibility that all 19 of these studies have not taken into account some unidentified confounding factor, the pattern being seen is remarkably consistent. If this was not a “real” finding, by now one would have expected to see other studies, which did not find a lowering of IQ associated with “high” fluoride exposure. 19 to 0 does not look good for those who want to believe that these results are merely a coincidence and not related to fluoride.

I would remind our readers that the average level of fluoride in mothers milk in unfluoridated areas is 0.004 ppm and that at birth the baby’s blood brain barrier is not fully developed. This is not the time to expose the baby’s developing brain to 250 times the level of fluoride that nature intended.

A second paper was published in the latest issue of Annals of Anatomy (Ann Anat, 189 (2007) 175-181) and was sent to me by the author (at the suggestion of Japanese FAN representative Dr. Tohru Murukami). This paper strikes another blow against the notion that ingesting fluoride is beneficial to the growing tooth enamel and the growing bone. In an elegant study, combining electron microscopy and biochemical analyses, Japanese researchers M. Kakei et al. (m-kakei@dent.meikai.ac.jp ) have shown in a rat study that “regardless of its amount, fluoride intake has harmful effects on both tooth and bone formation.” Electron microscopy “revealed that fluoride ions could interrupt the crystal nucleation process, resulting in crystal perforation in the developing tooth enamel and the presence of amorphous minerals in bone crystals” and their biochemical analyses “indicated that fluoride directly interfered with the synthesis of (the enzyme) carbonic anhydrase by the enamel forming cells.” These biochemical effects, which the authors relate to the crystal perforations observed with the electron microscope, were observed at the lowest doses to which the animals were exposed: 0.1 ppm in their drinking water!

Remembering that you need approximately 5 times as much fluoride in the drinking water of a rat to reach the same plasma concentration in a human, this low dose is equivalent to 0.02 ppm fluoride in human drinking water. That’s 50 times lower than we fluoridate water! Again we might be seeing another reason why nature kept fluoride away from a new born baby and our foolishness in gambling with higher levels.

Paul Connett

——————————————————–
Effect of high fluoride concentration in drinking water on children’s intelligence.
Seraj B., Shahrabi, M., Falahzade, M., Falahzade, F. and Akhondi, N.

In their abstract, the authors write:

Materials and Methods: “In this cross sectional study, 41 children were selected from the high fluoride area with 2.5 mg/L (ppm) fluoride in the drinking water and 85 children were selected from low fluoride area with 0.4 mg/L (ppm) fluoride in the drinking water. The intelligence quotient (IQ) of each child was measured by the Raven’s test. The history of illness affecting the nervous system, head trauma, birth weight (>2.5 kg or < 2.5 kg), residential history, age and sex of children were investigated by questionnaires completed by the children’s parents. Data were analyzed by the Chi-Square test with p < 0.05 as the limit of significance.

Results: I the high fluoride area the mean IQ of children (87.9 +/- 11) was significantly lower than in the low fluoride area (98.9 +/- 12.9) (p= 0.025).

Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, exposure of children to high levels of fluoride may carry the risk of impaired development of intelligence.

——————————————–