Are you still drinking fluoridated water, using fluoride toothpaste or permitting the dentist to administer fluoride treatments on your children? Even worse, are you using fluoride tablets thinking this will somehow help prevent cavities in your child?

Parents: It’s time to wake up! The strong evidence that fluoride negatively impacts children’s neurological development and actually lowers their IQ just keeps growing and growing.

The latest nail in the coffin for fluoride comes from the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives which has recently published a thorough and systematic review by Harvard researchers of eligible studies through the end of 2011 in order to examine the possible adverse effects of exposure to fluoride and the potential of delayed neurobehavioral development in children.

Fluoride and IQ

The findings of the Harvard researchers whose study was funded by the National Institutes of Health is nothing short of disturbing: (1)

“… children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low fluoride areas.”

As a result of their analysis, the researchers concluded the following about fluoride exposure:

“The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment. Future research should include detailed individual-level information on prenatal exposure, neurobehavioral performance, and covariates for adjustment.”

EPA Classifies Fluoride as Neurotoxic

This research dovetails with what the EPA already knows having classified fluoride as a chemical for which there is substantial evidence of toxicity to neurodevelopment. (2)

Fortunately, communities around the United States are finally starting to take action by voting to have fluoride removed from the drinking water, something that most European countries along with China and Japan have already done. (3)

While important, having your children drink pure, clean water not treated with fluoride is only the first step in protecting them from the devastating neurological impact of fluoride exposure.

10 Ways to Limit Fluoride Exposure

These ten tips are provided by the Fluoride Action Network as the best ways to protect from the neurological ravages of excessive fluoride exposure:

Stop drinking fluoridated water. Don’t let your child swallow fluoride toothpaste (I would add that it is better to not even use fluoridated toothpaste at all!) Do not allow fluoride gel treatments at the dentist. Find a holistic dentist who will let you opt out! Eat more fresh food and less processed food as the more processed a food is, the more fluoride it will actually have. Buy organic grape juice and wine. Use organic tea or reduce tea consumption. Another option is to use white tea made from younger tea leaves. Bottled tea is the worst! Avoid cooking in Teflon pans. Don’t take Cipro if you can possibly avoid it and be aware of the fluoride content of many pharmaceuticals. Avoid mechanically deboned chicken as fluoride concentrates most heavily in the bone and bone fragments end up in machine processed meat. Avoid fluoridated salt.

References

(1) Developmental fluoride neurotoxicity: a systematic review and meta-analysis

(2) EPA Toxicity Forecasting

(3) Countries which do not fluoridate water

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