President-elect Donald Trump’s inbound administration might attempt to get rid of fluoride from drinking water, according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, who was tapped recently by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, called fluoride an “hazardous waste” and connected it to cancer and other illness and conditions while marketing for Trump.
“On January 20, the Trump White House will encourage all U.S. water supply to get rid of fluoride from public water. Fluoride is a hazardous waste related to arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental conditions, and thyroid illness,” Kennedy composed Nov. 2 on X. Kennedy connected to a video from a lawyer who just recently effectively took legal action against the Environmental Protection Agency to take extra steps to control fluoride in drinking water.
Kennedy, who has actually long promoted ending water fluoridation, continued with his promise following Trump’s election win. When asked before the election whether his administration would get rid of fluoride from drinking water, Trump stated, “Well, I have not spoken with him about it yet, however it sounds okay to me. You understand it’s possible.”
Kennedy is a prominent vaccine skeptic whose project of conspiracy theories made PolitiFact’s 2023 “Lie of the Year.”
Long time research study has actually discovered that including fluoride to U.S. drinking water is a safe method to enhance kids’s oral health. Considering that 2015, the advised level in the U.S. has actually been 0.7 milligrams per liter. Public health companies, consisting of the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, support the practice.
Current research studies, nevertheless, have actually revealed possible links in between fluoride and bone issues and kids’s IQs, especially when fluoride is above the U.S. suggested levels.
“There is proof that fluoride direct exposure has actually been connected with the illness [and] conditions that RFK noted, however with cautions,” stated Ashley Malin, who is an assistant teacher in the University of Florida’s Epidemiology Department and has actually studied fluoride’s results in pregnant ladies.
Malin described research studies revealing that greater fluoride direct exposure, especially throughout pregnancy, is related to decreased kid IQ, which prenatal direct exposure likewise is connected to reduced intellectual performance and executive function. For high direct exposure in pregnancy, the research studies revealed signs related to other neurobehavioral concerns, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity condition.
Numerous of these research studies took location in nations other than the U.S. and looked at fluoride in drinking water at in some cases two times the United States’ suggested level. Some of the other disorders that Kennedy noted, such as an association with bone cancer, have less robust proof and require more research study.
“Aside from fluoride’s influence on neurodevelopment, I believe that there is more that we do not learn about health results of low-level fluoride direct exposure than what we do understand, especially for adult health results,” Malin stated.
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David Bellinger, a Harvard Medical School neurology teacher and teacher in Harvard School of Public Health’s Environmental Health Department,