With Fluoride Back in the News, Americans Are Once Again Being Told to “Trust the Science”
Why does the corporate media continue to fail so horribly when it comes to reporting on water fluoridation?
In the days before Donald Trump was elected to be the 47th President of the United States the topic of water fluoridation was heavily discussed by the corporate media. While most of the stories acknowledge recent scientific and legal developments surrounding the practice of water fluoridation, most of the mainstream reporting displays an authority bias and unwillingness to question the narrative that fluoride is safe and effective.
Much of the recent increase in attention can be attributed to Trump’s one-time opponent, now champion of his “Make America Healthy Again” brand, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Three days before the 2024 Presidential election, Kennedy stated that on January 20th, Trump’s first day in office, he would advise “all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
He called fluoride an “industrial waste” which has been linked to arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.
Trump was later asked about Kennedy’s statement by NBC News and stated, “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me.”
Almost immediately the corporate media unleashed an onslaught of fact checks and official statements reassuring the public that all was well, and fluoride was indeed still considered one of the CDC’s top ten public health achievement’s of the 20th century. The fervor only increased after Trump announced he was nominating Robert F. Kennedy as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The NY Times made sure to inform their loyal audience that the idea of fluoride being unsafe was “immediately criticized by many public health experts as anti-science misinformation”.
Interestingly, NY Times writer Emily Oster acknowledges, “there’s a real danger to painting everyone with concerns about fluoride as a conspiracy theorist”. However, she blames the complexity of the topic and public health experts failing to explain such complexity as a reason many Americans are skeptical of the claims that fluoride is safe.
Overall, the message is that Americans are too dumb to understand why fluoride is so complex, and that public health officials need to do a better job at explaining to the masses why fluoride is good for them.
Oster then repeats the well worn (and false) mantra that “studies show” fluoride is completely safe and not harming anyone at the current levels typically found in U.S. municipal water supplies.
“Overall, water fluoridation has benefits and is safe at the levels we use in the United States,” she claims.
Scientific American also responded to the news of Kennedy’s nomination with less than truthful reporting. SA said that Kennedy’s claims about fluoride exposure and arthritis, bone cancer, thyroid disease, IQ loss, and neurodevelopmental conditions were all inaccurate. Unfortunately, the data showing the harms of fluoride continue to pile up.
What the Corporate Media Gets Wrong
The New York Times, Scientific American, and many other corporate media outlets repeatedly claim that fluoride is safe and also dismiss the use of the term “industrial waste” to describe water fluoridation chemicals. However, if we take a look at the largest supplies of fluoridation chemicals we find companies like Mosaic Co. based in Tampa, Florida.
Mosaic is the largest U.S. producer of potash and phosphate fertilizer. Fluoridation chemicals like Hydrofluosilicic Acid are byproducts of Mosaic’s phosphate production. It is this chemical waste which the EPA recommends be added to municipal water supplies around the U.S. It is, in fact, an “industrial waste” which companies like Mosaic Co. sell to cities and towns for millions of dollars rather than having to spend millions to dispose of the toxic substance.
The corporate media also implies that all the scientific studies indicating fluoride’s neurotoxicant effects are exclusively related to levels of water fluoridation which are much higher than the currently recommended limits.
However, as TLAV has previously reported, in late August the long-delayed and censored final report from the U.S. National Toxicology Program found “moderate confidence” that fluoride exposure is “consistently associated with lower IQ in children”. More to the point, the NTP scientists noted that these findings were relevant to U.S. populations at current exposure levels.
This didn’t stop the corporate media from focusing on the line “higher estimated fluoride exposures” and portraying the NTP’s conclusions as irrelevant to the United States. One of the most widely distributed articles from the Associated Press was 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 NTP’s 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 are likely to 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.
The corporate media also ignores the history of the NTP report itself, namely the fact that it was the most peer-reviewed study in all of NTP history. Additionally, emails released as part of the Fluoride Action Network’s (FAN) lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) highlighted how Rachel Levine, current head of the HHS, directly intervened in an attempt to prevent the release of the NTP report.
Only weeks after the NTP’s final report on fluoride’s neurotoxicity, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that fluoride “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children”. The ruling was the latest outcome in an 8-year legal battle between the EPA and FAN. During that time Judge Edward Chen reviewed numerous studies presented by both sides, as well as testimony from expert witnesses.
In the end, Chen sided with FAN. Although he noted that his ruling does not “conclude with certainty” that fluoridated water is “injurious to public health”, he did find there is “an unreasonable risk of such injury”.
Judge Chen’s ruling is also regularly ignored by corporate media who would rather selectively report the facts in an effort to keep the public trusting in an outdated and dangerous policy like water fluoridation. For example, none of the mainstream outlets reporting on the fluoride lawsuit, or the discussion around fluoride since RFK Jr’s nomination, have quoted from Chen directly. If they did they might be forced to report statements like this one:
“The Court finds that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter (“mg/L”) – the level presently considered “optimal” in the United States – poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children,” Chen wrote.
Judge Chen found that there was sufficient risk to require the EPA to enact a regulatory response. The EPA now has until January 20th, 2025 to file a notice of appeal. If the deadline passes without an appeal, the EPA would be required to draft regulations to eliminate the unreasonable risk posed by water fluoridation chemicals.
The Public Reacts to the NTP Report, the Judge’s Ruling, and RFK Jr’s Nomination
In the weeks following the release of the NTP’s final report on fluoride’s neurotoxicity and Judge Chen’s ruling, numerous cities around the United States announced they were halting or temporarily pausing their water fluoridation programs. This includes Davis County, Utah; Abilene, Texas; and Yorktown and Somers, New York.
Some of these battles preceded the NTP report and court ruling — like the fights in Clearfield, Pennsylvania and Union County, North Carolina — but those developments factored into the concerns of citizens demanding an end to water fluoridation.
There is perhaps no clearer example of the push back against water fluoridation than the state of Florida.
On November 22nd, Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced that he was advising all communities in the state to end the practice of adding fluoride to the water “due to the neuropsychiatric risk“. Ladapo specifically cited the NTP report and the federal court ruling in his list of reasons for speaking out against water fluoridation.
“The ruling several months ago prompted me and other people to look more closely at the issue,” Ladapo stated at a press conference announcing the new guidelines.
“It is also the case that fluoride is neurotoxic and the effects, in terms of any neurologic effects or any behavioral effects, are actually something that have been in the literature for many years.”
Lapado also emphasized that his decision was based on studies which focused on pregnant women and children.
“Those are clearly the most sensitive and vulnerable populations for fluoridation in terms of these adverse neuropsychiatric effects,” he stated.
In the weeks since Lapado’s announcement numerous cities and towns in Florida have begun voting on whether or not to continue fluoridating their water. Florida already had a higher rate of towns where residents voted to end water fluoridation than many U.S. states, including Brooksville. However, the statements by Lapado and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have inserted more energy into the fight against water fluoridation.
More recently, areas which have voted to end the practice include Collier County, Naples, Stuart, and Winter Haven. Other cities will vote in the coming months on whether they should remove fluoride from the local water supply, including Bartow, Tallahassee, and Tavares.
Justin Harvey is a community activist with We Are Change Orlando who has been opposing water fluoridation for more than a decade. Harvey recently spoke at Tavares City Council about the dangers posed by the practice and was interviewed on local media about his opposition.
Harvey says he couldn’t be more optimistic about the potential for ending water fluoridation.
“At this point to me, the writing is on the wall. I’ve always been an optimistic advocate, but this really shows me that we’ve sort of won the fluoride fight, and we’re just watching it play out,” Harvey told TLAV.
Despite the recent wave of attention stemming from Trump’s election and nomination of Kennedy to HHS, Harvey says it is up to local activists to push the fluoride discussion further towards ending the practice.
“I think we as local communities should still work as hard as possible, as fast as possible… to get it out of our local communities,” Harvey stated. “Use the court case, use the Florida Surgeon General as momentum to show people, ‘hey, these conspiracy theorists may have had something right here, this does lower IQ’”.
The Fluoride Lobby Stands in the Way of Truth
This brings me back to the original question:
Why does the corporate media continue to fail so horribly when it comes to reporting on water fluoridation?
To answer this question we need to refer back to testimony provided by Dr. Philippe Grandjean during the first and second phases of the fluoride lawsuit. Grandjean is a Danish scientist working in environmental medicine. He is the head of the Environmental Medicine Research Unit at the University of Southern Denmark and adjunct professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Grandjean has an extensive history researching mercury.
In an interview with Dr. Grandjean during the second phase of the lawsuit, I asked about statements he made in the 1st phase of the lawsuit regarding threats made against him at Harvard, and the “fluoride lobby” exerting influence over the World Health Organization.
Grandjean told me that after he began researching fluoride and its impacts on IQ, members of the Harvard University staff became concerned.
“A professor from Harvard University came to my office and asked me to sign a statement that my work on fluoride had nothing to do with fluoridation. He actually wrote this draft,” Grandjean stated. “And since I didn’t sign this immediately, he instead went to my dean and had the dean sign a statement that he supported water fluoridation in accordance with the policy of the CDC.”
Grandjean would later be told by “the leadership at Harvard” that his research on fluoride was “unwanted” and had never been approved by Harvard.
“Because we couldn’t agree on my, what I would consider academic freedom, I left Harvard.”
Grandjean also discussed what he meant by the “fluoride lobby” influencing the WHO. He said he had been invited by the WHO to help develop a “environmental health criteria” document on fluoride. Once he began gathering data, including animal data and epidemiological studies, changes were made to his draft.
“They inserted changes in my draft indicating that fluoride could perhaps be toxic, but only at immense concentrations,” Grandjean said. “I protested and said that in accordance with the scientific documentation, it would be wrong to insert the word immense.”
“And so WHO published a document, without my name because I’d asked to have my name stricken, but then they inserted some other colleague’s name as the author of the draft, which is, of course, erroneous. But that was what WHO felt was necessary in order to protect the interests of water fluoridation.”
If we are looking for organizations which might make up such a “fluoride lobby” we can look no further than the American Dental Association, the American Fluoridation Society, and companies like Mosaic Co.
The list of Board of Trustees and other governance positions are not listed publicly on the ADA website, but instead only available to members. The AFS does not publicly list donors either.
The ADA is perhaps the biggest lobbyist for water fluoridation. Originally founded in 1859, the organization has grown to include the ADA Foundation, the ADA Science and Research Institute, the ADA Political Action Committee, and the recently established ADA Forsyth Institute, an organization funded by taxpayers via the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The importance of the ADA was on full display in the leaked fluoride emails. Emails obtained via FOIA by FAN showed the ADA attempting to influence the allegedly independent, gold standard National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM). One set of emails showed several fluoride lobby groups coordinating a letter writing campaign asking the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to adjust the language of the NTP findings on its website.
Together, the ADA and the AFS do their best to ignore the overwhelming evidence showing fluoride’s harms. When local activists begin to organize against water fluoridation, the ADA or AFS will often send representatives to dismiss any concerns relating to water fluoridation. Public officials who do not fully understand the issue of water fluoridation will often side with ADA officials because they fall for the appeal from authority fallacy, falsely believing that dentists have the credentials to rule on the toxicity of fluoride.
Despite the renewed interest in the topic of water fluoridation it appears that much like COVID-19, the science around fluoride will remain heavily politicized and partisan. Each “side” will quote from their favorite experts and continue to dig in their heels. Red cities and counties will likely end or limit water fluoridation, while areas which lean left will likely remain skeptical of any new developments relating to fluoride so long as they are coming from RFK Jr. or Donald Trump.
Whether water fluoridation is limited or halted altogether under a 2nd Trump term remains to be seen, but ultimately each individual bears the responsibility of making informed choices about their health, and the health of their loved ones.
For a deeper look at the history of the fluoride lobby and the role played by organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation I recommend reading The Fluoride Deception by journalist Christopher Bryson.
