I’ve been giving it more though. Reading more of the information provided on the pages of the link Merilyn provided me, I have found the same usual story; dogmatic science fixated on a cause unwilling to acknowledge the “truth” and yet hard done by scientists and vigilant members of the community are fighting the good cause.
It really isn’t worth much reflection. Evidence speaks louder than hot air. Moreover, anyone whom has grown up in fluoridated areas can easily say they’ve seen cancer, emphysema and osteoporosis, but how many of us have seen severe cases of fluorosis or dumbing down of generations that could only be due to fluoride?
I know the following is pretty weak. There are many confounding issues (immigration and state variation in education policies being the most obvious) that reduce the confidence significantly. However, I’m not planning to submit it to any science journal and I’m being honest with my readers by initially pointing out – don’t read too much into it.
However, I looked around for data on education around Australia, because, honestly, who cares about how high one’s IQ is; what matters are the results. The best I could find were the NAPLAN results. As Brisbane’s water became fluoridated as of 2008, I looked at the data from 2008 and compared results from metro Qld (thus, not only Brisbane – again, don’t read too much into it) to metro SA and metro Tas, both of which began fluoridation of drinking water in their capitals in 1971 and 1964 respectively.
The *weak* results were interesting;
|
Metro data from NAPLAN, 2008 (percent at or above the national minimum standard) |
|||
| Year |
SA |
Qld |
Tas |
|
Level 3 |
92.1 |
88.9 |
94.1 |
|
Level 5 |
90.8 |
88.5 |
91.0 |
|
Level 7 |
94.2 |
93.9 |
94.6 |
|
Level 9 |
92.2 |
91.4 |
92.8 |
It’s difficult to see how Brisbane children were doing better without fluoride.
Turning to a trusted source of information, The World Health Organisation, I found the following in the introduction of the WHO report, Fluoride in drinking water;
“Fluoride is one of the very few chemicals that has been shown to cause significant effects in people through drinking-water. Fluoride has beneficial effects on teeth at low concentrations in drinking-water, but excessive exposure to fluoride in drinking-water, or in combination with exposure to fluoride from other sources, can give rise to a number of adverse effects. These range from mild dental fluorosis to crippling skeletal fluorosis as the level and period of exposure increases. Crippling skeletal fluorosis is a significant cause of morbidity in a number of regions of the world.”
Fluoride use has its benefits, but like pretty much anything, too much is no good. Too much in this case is exacerbated by naturally high fluoride water levels and most concerning, anthropogenic pollution. Adding fluoride to water supplies in such regions would be silly, to say the least – a point WHO pretty much goes on to make.
In subchapter 7.4 of the report, WHO point out the high levels of exposure to fluoride throughout most regions of China. For instance, on page 99, WHO report that as much as 26 million people in China have fluorosis due to high levels of fluoride in drinking water and another 16.5 million due to coal smoke pollution. For this reason, it’s understandable as to why the Chinese researchers are paying a lot of attention to this.
However, does this really translate to low levels of exposure? I would argue that it does not. I suspect there would have been little difference between the IQ of students from metro Qld schools than any other Australian school where the students had only drunk fluoridated water.
Bundaberg; here is your window to demonstrate how your children have a higher IQ than children from the capital of every other state. I wait with bated breath…
Interesting, nowhere in the WHO report is IQ discussed…
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