A new study finds cognitive function defects, like IQ, in children are not significantly related to fluoride in drinking water. But they are associated with medium and severe dental fluorosis.
This interests me for two reasons:
The report is by Choi and Grandjean who had also authored the 2012 meta-review often used by anti-fluoride activists to claim that community water fluoridation causes a lowering of IQ (the authors subsequently pointed out the high fluoride concentrations in the papers they reviewed meant that conclusion is not valid)
The data reported is consistent with my suggestion in Confirmation blindness on the fluoride-IQ issue that reported relationships between IQ and drinking water fluoride concentration could really indicate a relationship with severe dental fluorosis, and not drinking water fluoride itself.
The new report is:
Choi, A. L., Zhang, Y., Sun, G., Bellinger, D., Wang, K., Yang, X. J., … Grandjean, P. (2014). Association of lifetime exposure to fluoride and cognitive functions in Chinese children: A pilot study. Neurotoxicology and Teratology.
Firstly – this is only a pilot study and has several acknowledged weaknesses – the small number of children studied (51) being the most obvious. However, this is what was found:
“Sixty percent of the subjects examined had moderate or severe fluorosis. These children were exposed to elevated fluoride concentrations in drinking water. Children with normal or questionable Dean Index were all from households with a water fluoride concentration of 1 mg/L and had urinary fluoride excretion levels below 1 mg/L.”
The children were placed in 3 groups according to their degree of dental fluorosis:
Normal/questionable (N=8)
Very mild/mild (N=9)
Moderate/severe (N=26)
The high proportion of children with moderate/sever dental fluorosis indicates the study involved an area of endemic fluorosis.
And the results of neuropsychological tests:
“Results of multiple regression models show that moderate and severe fluorosis was significantly associated with lower total and backward digit span scores when compared to the reference combined categories of normal and questionable fluorosis (Table 4). Although the associations between fluoride in urine and in drinking water with digit span were not significant, they were in the anticipated direction. Motor coordination and dexterity were not significantly associated with fluoride in drinking water and fluorosis although higher levels were associated with poorer scores as well. Other outcomes did not reveal any association with the fluoride exposure.”
The authors used a number of neuropsychological tests. The digit span test results suggest a “deficit in working memory” for the children with moderate and severe dental fluorosis. None of the other tests used show any signficant relationship with indices for fluoride exposure.
So, this pilot study did not show any association of neuropsychological tests with fluoride concentration in drinking water but it did find an association with medium and severe dental fluorosis. This is consistent with my speculation in Confirmation blindness on the fluoride-IQ issue that “a physical defect like dental and skeletal fluorosis could lead to decreasing IQ.”
I argued that:
“minor physical anomalies are known to be associated with learning difficulties and emotional illness in children (seeHilsheimer & Kurko 1979). It seems entirely reasonable that a physical anomaly like severe dental fluorosis could lead to learning difficulties in children which could be seen as lower IQ values.”
There are many problems with the studies anti-fluoride activists promote relating IQ to fluoride in drinking water. But it could be that any real effect seen with the higher fluoride concentrations could simply be explained by effects of the physical anomaly of medium and severe dental fluorosis common at these higher concentrations.
Unfortunately the authors of this study still do not consider this possibility. I guess it could be that someone with a hammer only sees nails, and chemical toxicologists are only capable of considering brain damage caused by toxic chemicals. The effects of physical anomalies on learning difficulties are probably quite outside their training and experience.
Their confirmation bias and mental blockage on this meant they were considering dental fluorosis as just another indicator of dietary fluoride intake. However, even that assumption has its problems because genetic differences are also known to be involved in dental fluorosis.
I think this must be why they ended with a conclusion that could well be quite unfounded:
“This pilot study in a community with stable lifetime fluoride exposures supports the notion that fluoride in drinking water may produce developmental neurotoxicity”
Dental fluorosis and community water fluoridation
Fluorosis is endemic in many parts of China and the high prevalence of medium/severe dental fluorosis (60%) among the children in the Choi et al (2014) pilot study shows their situation is not at all similar to that in areas of New Zealand and USA using community water fluoridation (CWF).
The figures below give some context.
Here are examples of the different degrees of dental fluorosis.
The graph below shows the situation reported for New Zealand in the 2009 New Zealand Oral health Survey (see Our Oral Health). No severe and only 2% moderate dental fluorosis reported.
This figure (taken from Fluorosis Facts: A Guide for Health Professionals) shows the amount of moderate and severe dental fluorosis in the US is also very small.
Perhaps we can now contrast the situation here, in areas where CWF is common, with the situation in China in areas with endemic fluorosis where these studies were undertaken. The figure below is a slide from a presentation by Xiang (2014) to Paul Connett’s recent anti-fluoride “get-together” (Xiang 2014). This is not the very mild dental fluorosis attributed to CWF.
(Anti-fluoride people also often single out the study of Xiang, et al (2003). Effect of fluoride in drinking water on children’s intelligence. Fluoride, 36(2), 84–94, because unlike the others it is more detailed. Xiang’s team has studied areas where fluorosis is endemic.)
Conclusion
Anti-fluoride activists often promote the meta-review of Choi et al (2012) in their arguments against CWF. However, there are many problems with these studies including the fact reported IQ effects were associated with much higher drinking water fluoride concentrations than occurs with CWF.
The new study of Choi et al (2014) did not confirm any association of neuropsychiatric measurements with drinking water fluoride concentration. However, it did show association of negative neuropsychological effects with medium/severe dental fluorosis.
This is consistent with the physical anomaly of severe dental fluorosis being the real cause of IQ effects and not any direct chemical toxic effect.
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