Early Fluoride Exposure Could Affect Children’s Cognitive Abilities: Study

Research suggests that prenatal exposure to fluoride may contribute to cognitive declines in children later in life.

As health officials nationwide debate whether to continue water fluoridation efforts, which were intended to help prevent tooth decay, new research suggests that exposure to fluoride during prenatal development and early childhood may impair cognitive abilities among children between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.

In a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives on March 5, researchers determined that intelligence scores in a group of Bangladeshi children had an inverse relationship to the amount of fluoride exposure for both the pregnant mother and the children themselves.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral, which is known for its ability to support dental health by strengthening teeth and gums. Since the 1950s, health professionals have advocated for adding fluoride to public drinking water in the U.S. and other countries, after studies showed it helped significantly reduce tooth decay in children.

However, newer studies have raised concerns about potential health risks linked to fluoride exposure, with some research questioning the benefits of adding fluoride to drinking water and a California judge ruling that fluoride side effects could decrease children’s IQ.

Research and decisions such as this have now led to numerous fluoride lawsuits targeting children’s dental products, raising allegations that the fluoride levels in certain toothpastes and mouthwashes marketed to children can cause severe harm and, in extreme cases, may even be fatal.

In the new study, a team of international researchers looked at 500 mother-child pairs from rural Bangladesh, who took part in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Interventions in Matlab (MINIMat) birth cohort.

The study, led by Maria Kippler from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, involved measuring fluoride levels in the urine of pregnant women during their eighth week of pregnancy and again in their children at ages 5 and 10. 

To assess the children’s intelligence, researchers used the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale for Intelligence-Third Edition when the children were 5 years old, and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition at age 10.

Researchers determined that urinary fluoride content for both the mothers and their children had an inverse relationship to the children’s intelligence.

As a result, the researchers suggest that prenatal and early childhood fluoride intakes have a negative effect on children’s intellectual development.

“For both prenatal and childhood exposure, associations were most noticeable with perceptual reasoning, but also verbal scores,” Kippler said. “The estimate for the association between urinary fluoride at 10 years and perceptual reasoning became 18% lower after adjustment for prenatal exposure. Non consistent sex-specific differences were observed.”

Utah Bans Fluoride in Drinking Water

On the heels of Kippler’s research, the state of Utah has passed a bill banning fluoride in drinking water, which the state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, has said he will sign into law.

Utah’s ban of fluoride in drinking water comes less than six months after the new U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said on social media that president Donald Trump would make moves to remove the substance from drinking water.

Fluoride has already been removed from many municipal water systems throughout the country, but Utah is the first place poised to do so at a statewide level.