Fluoride and the Brain

Fluoride and the Brain

Fluoride’s ability to damage the brain is one of the most active areas of fluoride research today. Over 300 studies have found that fluoride is a neurotoxin (a chemical that can damage the brain). This research includes:

• Over 100 animal studies showing that prolonged exposure to varying levels of fluoride can damage the brain, particularly when coupled with an iodine deficiency, or aluminum excess;
• 50 human studies linking moderately high fluoride exposures with reduced intelligence;
• 45 animal studies reporting that mice or rats ingesting fluoride have an impaired capacity to learn and/or remember;
• 12 studies (7 human, 5 animal) linking fluoride with neurobehavioral deficits (e.g., impaired visual-spatial organization);
• 3 human studies linking fluoride exposure with impaired fetal brain development.

Based on this accumulating body of research, several prestigious reviews — including a report authored by the U.S. National Research Council, a meta-analysis published by a team of Harvard scientists, and a review published in The Lancet— have raised red flags about the potential for low levels of fluoride to harm brain development in some members of the population.

In November 2016, FAN, together with a coalition of environmental, medical and health groups served the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a Petition calling on the Agency to ban the addition of fluoridation chemicals to public water supplies due to the risks these chemicals pose to the brain.