This week, the UK government announced plans to mandate fluoridation of public water supplies. A statement was made by the United Kingdom’s Chief Medical Officers – from England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland — endorsing the practice. This will be accomplished using the Health and Care Bill currently being considered by members of parliament, and would give the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, unilateral power to force communities throughout the country to add fluoridation chemicals to the public water supplies.
In response to these actions, three British scientists have raised the alarm for citizens, and have sent a public letter to Prime Minster Boris Johnson. Below is their important press release and letter, which has already generated media coverage.
STAY TUNED! We will continue to provide the latest updates on the situation in the United Kingdom, and post all media reports in our UK News Archive.
Thank you,
Stuart Cooper
FAN Campaign Director
PRESS RELEASE:
Three British Scientists Slam CMO’s Statement On Fluoridation Of Drinking Water And Have Written To Boris Johnson
According to three British scientists (Vyvyan Howard, MB, ChB, PhD, Spedding Micklem, PhD, and Paul Connett, PhD) who have followed the debate closely for many years, “This is not a good time for the British government to mislead the public on the dangers posed by the practice of water fluoridation.”
They point to a recent statement from the four Chief Medical Officers of Health for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which was given prominent coverage in the British media. Their statement extols the weak benefits of this practice for teeth but ignores the far stronger evidence that fluoride damages the developing brain.
According to Howard, Micklem and Connett, “The dental lobby has controlled this debate for far too long. You can repair a damaged tooth but early damage to the brain (especially during fetal development and infancy) cannot be repaired or reversed. This is so serious for the future of our country that the matter should not be resolved by the kind of ‘sleight of hand’ used by those who wrote the script for the CMOs’ statement.”
This “sleight of hand” occurred in the two short paragraphs that dealt with the risks of the practice. The CMOs write:
There are adverse associations between much higher levels of natural fluoride in drinking water and the prevalence of dental mottling, referred to as dental fluorosis…
There are some weaker studies, which claim an association with hip fracture, Down’s syndrome, kidney stones, bladder cancer or osteosarcoma (a cancer of the bone). However, there is conflicting evidence to support these claims and prevailing public health opinion is now that there is no significant association between water fluoridation and these conditions. [23 September 2021]
Note that the CMOs failed to mention the many human (over 60) and animal studies that indicate that fluoride is neurotoxic even though this subject has engaged the serious attention of the National Toxicology Program in the USA for nearly 5 years. Nor that the US EPA is currently being sued by Food and Water Watch and others in US Federal court to prohibit the deliberate addition of fluoridated chemicals to the public drinking water because of the threat they pose to the developing brain. The judge is expected to issue his ruling in early 2022.
Most significantly, in ignoring these studies on the brain, the CMOs failed to acknowledge the several high-quality US government funded studies published since 2017 (Bashash 2017, 2018; Green, 2019 and Till, 2020) which have found effects on the developing fetus and infant at the very fluoride levels used in artificial water fluoridation schemes. These effects include lowered IQ (between 5 qnd 9 IQ points reported) and increased ADHD symptoms. These findings make complete nonsense of the CMOs claim that health effects only occur “at much higher levels.”
The three British scientists added that, “In our view the way the CMOs treated the health effects posed by fluoridation is a gross dereliction of their duty to protect the health of the British people.”
Howard, Micklem and Connett, have explained this alarming new science in an open letter to Boris Johnson calling on him to halt plans to extend water fluoridation to other communities in the UK:
Dear Prime Minister:
SUBJECT: Leading Scientific researchers concur that fluoridated tap water has the potential to damage the fetal and infant brain
We are writing to you because we believe that neither you nor your chief advisers are aware of the recent serious findings that fluoride, at the doses people experience living in fluoridated communities, has the potential to damage the brains of children. We are concerned that this compelling new evidence has not triggered any warnings from any health department in the UK, especially warnings to pregnant women.
The following key scientific research forms the basis for our concerns:
- Well-designed prospective cohort studies funded by both the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [NIEHS] in the USA as well as Health Canada, have shown a loss of IQ and increased symptoms of ADHD in offspring when pregnant women are exposed to fluoride at doses commonly experienced in fluoridated communities in Canada (Bashash 2017, 2018 and
Green, 2019). The consequences are very serious. According to Dr. Philippe Grandjean, from Harvard University,“Fluoride is causing a greater overall loss of IQ points today than lead, arsenic or mercury”, as detailed in this risk analysis. - In addition, Till et al., 2020 have shown a large reduction in IQ when children were bottle-fed as babies in communities, which were fluoridated, compared with babies who were bottle-fed in non-fluoridated communities.
- According to Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., former Director of the U.S. NIEHS (2009-2019) and two leading public health researchers (Bruce Lanphear, MD, MPH, and Christine Till, PhD) who authored two key fluoride-IQ studies (Green, 2019 and Till, 2020), ingestion of fluoride during pregnancy confers no dental benefit to the fetus, so this is a situation where risks are being taken for no proven benefit (see their editorial published in Environmental Health News, Oct 7 2020).
- In addition, an important well-conducted study from Sweden has shown an increased prevalence of hip fracture in post-menopausal women associated with long-term exposure to natural fluoride at levels in water in the same range as the UK fluoridates its water [Helte et. al. 2021]. This is very serious because, as you probably know, hip fractures in the elderly are debilitating, costly to treat, lead to a loss of independence and often shortens the life of those impacted. This finding also underlines the fact that fluoride, which accumulates in the bone and other calcifying tissues, can impact our health over a whole lifetime of exposure.
Given the extensive evidence that ingesting fluoride does little to reduce tooth decay and that fluoride is harmful to both the young and the old, please cancel plans to expand the water fluoridation programme and seek an end to existing fluoridation schemes. Until that end is achieved please make sure that a) pregnant women be warned to avoid ingesting fluoride and b) parents be warned not to use fluoridated water to make up infant formula.
While we recognize that right now the UK, along with many other countries, is being forced to deal with the health risks imposed upon us by the pandemic, we should not be imposing unnecessary risks on our population via the water supply.
In summary, Prime Minister, we sincerely hope that your health advisers will acknowledge the strong scientific evidence of fluoride’s neurotoxicity (and other ill health effects) and put the health of our people above promoting what appears to be a well-intended but clearly outdated practice of water fluoridation. This would not be the first time that a well-entrenched medical or dental practice has had to give way to advances in scientific understanding of unexpected side effects.
Yours sincerely,
Emeritus Professor Vyvyan Howard MB. ChB. PhD. FRCPath.
Retired pathologist. Past President, International Society of Doctors for the Environment (ISDE)
Professor Paul Connett, PhD,
Retired professor of chemistry,
Director of the Fluoride Action Network, www.FluorideALERT.org
Dr H.S. Micklem, D.Phil (Oxon)
Edinburgh, Scotland
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