(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The National Institutes of Health is apparently getting on the same page as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s set to oversee the agency when he becomes the next head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy has been outspoken about removing fluoride from the drinking water on the grounds that it may have negative impact on mental and physical health. On Monday, the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, or NIEHS, published a study that supports Kennedy’s position on the matter—finding “significant inverse associations between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ scores.”
According to the study, children’s IQ’s decreased by about 1.63 points for every per 1-mg/L increase in urinary fluoride. The studies underpinning the NIEH’s findings were conducted outside the U.S.
“There is concern that pregnant women and children are getting fluoride from many sources, and that their total fluoride exposure is too high and may affect fetal, infant and child neurodevelopment,” NIEHS epidemiologist Kyla Taylor, the report’s lead author, told the New York Times.
The NIEHS study follows a September order from a federal judge for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water because high levels could pose a risk to the intellectual development of children.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.
Chen’s order was first time a federal judge has made a determination about the neurodevelopmental risks to children of the recommended U.S. water fluoride level, said Ashley Malin, a University of Florida researcher who has studied the effect of higher fluoride levels in pregnant women.
She called it “the most historic ruling in the U.S. fluoridation debate that we’ve ever seen.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
