As Donald Trump’s Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy could pursue a rigorous, high-quality study regarding the efficacy of fluoride in drinking water and whether or not it’s hazardous to our health.
Instead, he’s glommed onto a flawed study on the matter and now we’re here, with Kennedy confidently telling the president at a cabinet meeting Wednesday that “all the science on fluoride” agrees that “the more you get, the stupider you are.”
Kennedy mentioned the “finding” as part of his justification to attempt to change federal guidelines on fluoridation of drinking water.
“[EPA Administrator] Lee Zeldin and I are working together to change the federal fluoride regulations, to change the recommendations, and we’re looking at the science now,” he told Trump. “In August, the national toxicity program... did a meta review of all the science on fluoride and found that there’s a direct inverse correlation between fluoride exposure and low IQ in children.”
“So the more you get, the stupider you are.”
Like many of Kennedy’s scientific utterances, he’s dabbling in half-truths.
While meta-analyses of fluoride in drinking water have suggested there may be an inverse association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ scores, the data itself is riddled with problems.
Steven Novella, M.D., a clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine, debunked the findings in a blog for Science-Based Medicine in 2023.
Novella’s criticisms are primarily twofold:
- The studies relied upon are predominantly from communities in China, where the water is naturally fluoridated with much higher concentrations of fluoride than is found in U.S. water. While the CDC recommends 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water, some of the data was as high as 16 milligrams per liter.
- Even the data with high levels of fluoride exposure isn’t all that compelling with respect to cognitive function. “The effect, in other words, if it is real, does not appear to be clinically dramatic,” said Novella.
“Of course, all potential neurotoxicity to the developing brain should be taken very seriously. Every IQ point is a precious human resource,” Novella wrote.
“What I think all this means is that current drinking water fluoridation levels are safe, and provide a significant benefit for dental health. But also, we need to conduct higher quality studies to show if there even is a real neurotoxic effect, and to zoom in on the levels in managed drinking water.”
The federal government already leaves fluoridation decisions up to state and local governments.
To the great dismay of the American Dental Association, Utah banned fluoride in its public drinking water in March, becoming the first state to do so. Florida is poised to follow suit.
The American Dental Association strongly supports water fluoridation. Evidence suggests the mineral is strongly correlated with decreased dental diseases.