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Prominent organizations including the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have dismissed low-carbohydrate diets that prevent tooth decay in favor of recommending high-carbohydrate diets which rely on fluoride and food fortification to mitigate dental damage and nutritional shortcomings, a researcher says. Dr. Philippe Hujoel says that not only these organizations but other associations reversed earlier positions and began recommending high-carbohydrate diets. Specifically, he cites the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, and the American Dental Association (ADA). In the meantime, Dr. Hujoel says, some scientists provided compelling evidence that low-carbohydrate diets were at least as beneficial...

Water fluoridation has been hailed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the top great public health achievements of the 20th century, but a new study raises questions about its role as a potential neurotoxin in utero. The study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, found that increased levels of fluoride exposure during pregnancy were associated with declines in IQ in children. Previous research has made similar findings, but this is the first such study to evaluate the effect of fluoride on populations receiving what the US Public Health Service considers optimal levels...

First piloted as an experiment to reduce dental cavities in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1945, fluoridated drinking water has since been hailed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as “one of public health’s greatest success stories.” Today, about two-thirds of people in the United States receive fluoridated tap water, as do many people in Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Now, a controversial new study links fluoridation to lower IQ in young children, especially boys whose mothers drank fluoridated water while pregnant. Longtime fluoridation critics are lauding the study, but other...

An influential medical journal published a study Monday that links fluoride consumption during pregnancy with lower childhood IQs—a finding that could undermine decades of public-health messaging, fire up conspiracy theorists, and alarm mothers-to-be. The research was expected to be so controversial that JAMA Pediatrics included an editor’s note saying the decision to publish it was not easy and that it was subjected to “additional scrutiny.” “It is the only editor’s note I’ve ever written,” Dimitri Christakis, editor in chief of JAMA Pediatrics and a pediatrician, told The Daily Beast. “There was concern on the journal’s editorial team about how this...

At Rainbow Grocery, a cooperative in this city’s Mission District, one brand of water is so popular that it’s often out of stock. But one recent evening, there was a glittering rack of it: glass orbs containing 2.5 gallons of what is billed as “raw water” — unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water, $36.99 each and $14.99 per refill, bottled and marketed by a small company called Live Water.

Increased levels of prenatal fluoride exposure may be associated with lower cognitive function in children, a new study says. The study, published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, evaluated nearly 300 sets of mothers and children in Mexico and tested the children twice for cognitive development over the course of 12 years. Fluoride is not added to public water supplies in Mexico, but people are exposed through naturally occurring fluoride in water and fluoridated salt and supplements. The study found a drop in scores on intelligence tests for every 0.5 milligram-per-liter increase in fluoride exposure beyond 0.8 milligrams per...

When Calgary city council decided to end water fluoridation in 2011, one outcome was clear: The number of cavities in children was going to go up. Five years later, we have the hard evidence that the perfectly predictable has indeed come to pass. A study published in the journal Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology shows that Grade 2 students in Calgary had an average of 3.8 more cavities in 2013-14 than they did in 2004-05. In Edmonton (which continued to fluoridate its water), during the same time period, the number of dental caries (or cavities) increased by 2.1, on average....

Fluoride is a mineral that occurs naturally in most water supplies. Fluoridation is the adjustment of the natural fluoride concentration to about one part of fluoride to one million parts of water. Although fluoridation is safe and effective in preventing tooth decay, the scare tactics of misguided poisonmongers have deprived many communities of its benefits. The history of fluoridation in the United States underlines its unique standing as a public health measure copied from a natural phenomenon. In the early 1900s, Dr. Frederick S. McKay began an almost 30-year search for the cause of the staining of teeth that was...

The federal government is calling for lower levels of fluoride in drinking water, the first update since the 1960s. The new recommendation is for 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water, which replaces the previous range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams, according to the Health and Human Services Department on Monday. Americans have access to more fluoride through toothpaste and mouth rinses than when the recommendations were introduced in 1962, the agency said. Because Americans are using more fluoride, officials are worried about increases in cases of fluorosis, a condition that stains teeth exposed to too much fluoride. "The...

Professor Chrisopher Exley of Keele University claims that aluminium present in everyday items like cosmetics and food may be building up in the brain and causing Alzheimer's disease Aluminium poisoning may be fuelling Alzheimer’s disease, a leading professor has claimed.Professor Chrisopher Exley, of Keele University, said that exposure to the metal causes deposits in the human brain which can exacerbate other problems...Aluminium, he argues, is now added to or used in almost everything we eat, drink, inject or absorb. The metal is abundant in the Earth’s crust and is naturally absorbed from the soil by plants and foodstuffs. But aluminium...

Israel Bans Water Fluoridation The New American 26 August 2014 Israeli authorities last week unveiled a nationwide ban on the controversial practice of adding the chemical fluoride, labeled a “neurotoxin” by a top medical journal this year, to public water supplies as a medical treatment. The decision by the Health Ministry to ban what critics call a dangerous, involuntary mass-medication scheme drew applause from many medical and some dental experts around the world. However, it also prompted outrage and vicious attacks by proponents of fluoridation, who say the chemical can provide benefits to children’s teeth. The ban is a...

Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb by Chris Bryson & Joel GriffithsSome fifty years after the United States began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children’s teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of that still-controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government’s assurances of safety.Since the days of World War II, when this nation prevailed by building the world’s first atomic bomb, U.S. public...

Top Medical Journal Labels Fluoride a Neurotoxin The New American 22 May 2014 Most Americans drink fluoride every day as part of what critics refer to as an involuntary mass-medication program. Organized dentistry argues that it is good for children’s teeth. However, according to a recent report in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, the industrial chemical added to water supplies across much of the United States is actually a dangerous developmental neurotoxicant. Echoing the recent findings of another Harvard study suggesting that fluoride is associated with drastic reductions in the IQ of children, The Lancet journal...

An angry reader — one of many — is impatiently waiting for me to explain myself after an earlier column in which I characterized anti-fluoride activists as delusional cranks. “You are promoting the mass medication of your community,” she wrote. “It makes absolutely no sense to put this hazardous waste into our drinking water. Why are you pushing for this insane practice? I look forward to your response.” I have a response, but she won’t like it: I am at an honest loss as to how to respond to crazy talk. If someone wants to believe flying saucers are beaming...

One in 68 children has autism, a 30 percent rise over the last estimate released in 2012, US health authorities said Thursday. The latest US data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the "proportion of children with autism and higher IQ (is) on the rise," said a CDC statement. Previously, as many as one in 88 US children were known to have autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, a developmental disorder that recent research suggests may originate in the womb. "This new estimate is roughly 30 percent higher than previous estimates reported in 2012 of 1 in...

Jill Knapp begs us to “Please Stop Asking Me When I’m Going to Have Children.” Being that I am still a newly-wed and have just moved to a new city, I am in no rush to have a kid. This is an unacceptable answer to a lot of people. The constant reminders that your clock is ticking and that you don’t want to be confused for your child’s grandparents when they grow up are not making us move any faster. Having children is a big responsibility. What Jill doesn’t understand is that her fertility is not subject to whim...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Health officials are recognizing 430 Illinois communities for maintaining state-mandated fluoride levels in drinking water. The Illinois Department of Public Health presented the awards Monday in Springfield. Health experts say drinking fluoridated water from birth can reduce tooth decay by up to 65 percent. The department's director, Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck, says fluoridation saves money for families and the health care system.

<p>LONGVIEW, Wash. -- The city council of Woodland, Wash., has decided to stop fluoridating the city's water.</p> <p>The council voted 6-1 Monday night to remove the additive from the water supply.</p> <p>Even if fluoridation prevents tooth decay, councilman John Burke said the city shouldn't make a medical decision for citizens without their consent.</p>

Israel's Supreme Court has ruled that water fluoridation in the country must end by 2014, according to news reports. This landmark decision goes even further than legislation by the health minister Yael German earlier in the year that would have ended mandatory fluoridation nationwide, reports the Irish publication Hot Press. Israel is one of the few countries that widely fluoridates, besides the United States, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. Fluoridation, the addition of fluoride to public drinking water supplies to reduce cavities, is the subject of intense controversy, especially outside of the United States. But opposition to the practice,...

Early returns showed Portland residents voting to keep their city the largest in the U.S. without fluoride in the water. With more than half the expected ballots counted Tuesday night, the Multnomah County election website showed the fluoride proposal failing, 60 percent to 40 percent. Voters in Portland twice rejected fluoridation before approving it in 1978. That plan was overturned two years later, before any fluoride was ever added to the water. The City Council voted last year to add fluoride to the water supply that serves about 900,000 people. But opponents quickly gathered enough signatures to force a vote...