The Fluoride Fraud: Unsafe at Any Dose

RICHARD GALE, DR. GARY NULL

For more than 70 years, fluoride has been deliberately added to public water supplies on the assumption that it prevents tooth decay.

Presented as a safe and cost-effective public health measure, fluoridation has long enjoyed institutional protection from dental and pediatric associations, medical journals, many federal agencies, and town and county public health officials. Yet beneath the seemingly confident assurances lies a troubling reality. The fluoride used in municipal water is not a purified pharmaceutical drug but an industrial by-product of the aluminum and phosphate fertilizer industries. It is an industrial waste so toxic it cannot be dumped in soil or rivers. At certain concentrations, fluoride is more poisonous than arsenic.

Fluoridation has always carried the specter of a grand experiment. Entire populations have been exposed to this chemical without consent. Rarely has there been any transparency about what dose is received and what adverse systemic health effects may follow. Today, an ever-growing body of scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals links fluoride exposure to serious risks, which include ADHD and lowered IQ in children, thyroid and endocrine dysfunction, bone damage, skeletal fluorosis, and other chronic health conditions. One would think this evidence alone should have been enough to halt fluoridation.

But the story of fluoridation is not simply a matter of medical science and debate. It is a case study in how consensus is manufactured and defended. When dissenting scientists raise legitimate concerns, they are often marginalized. Their findings are delayed or discredited. Their careers are placed at risk. As with other controversies in modern medicine, federal officials and health authorities project a stale air of infallibility. To question them is framed as questioning “science itself.” This hubris, which is echoed in Anthony Fauci’s infamous declaration that “attacks on me are attacks on science”, captures the deeper ethos that has shielded fluoridation from proper scrutiny. The result is that the nation’s fluoridation policy endures not because the evidence is conclusive but because institutional power resists any acknowledgement of error.

This is not new. More than 50 years ago, two courageous scientists —Dr. John Yiamouyiannis and Dr. Dean Burke, a co-founder of the National Cancer Institute, were among the first to publicly challenge fluoride’s safety. They published dozens of papers and testified before city halls, universities, and legislatures to warn against mass fluoridation. Both men were professional friends of mine and both lived to see their warnings drowned out by the powerful weight of the medical establishment and a compromised media hostile to dissent. The establishment declared victory, and fluoridation remained entrenched.

Half a century later, however, the landscape looks different. Independent scientists, medical researchers, environmental advocates, and legal challenges are once again forcing the question: why does fluoridation continue? Why are the voices of caution still dismissed? And what does this tell us about the larger corruption of science when consensus, not sound evidence, is treated as the final arbiter of truth?

This paper revisits the fluoridation controversy as a call to re-examine one of the longest-running human experiments in modern public health.

The introduction of fluoride into the U.S. water supply was less a straightforward public health measure than a convergence of industrial interests, government promotion, and very successful public relations campaigns. Early in the 20th century, dentist Frederick McKay and G.V. Black discovered that many residents of Colorado Springs suffered from mottled and stained teeth. This was later traced in 1931 to fluoride contamination in the town’s local water supply. What became known as “Colorado Brown Stain” caused visible dental damage.[1] However, McKay and other investigators noted that affected teeth appeared more resistant to cavities. At the same time, the aluminum and phosphate fertilizer industries faced a growing problem. Their manufacturing plants were producing massive amounts of fluoride waste that posed legal and environmental risks if it were ever to be identified as a public hazard.

The Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) quickly recognized the importance of controlling this environmental narrative. Alcoa’s labs confirmed fluoride as the cause of mottled tooth enamel. Company-linked researchers, such as Gerald Cox, began promoting the idea that small amounts of fluoride could prevent cavities. In 1939, Cox publicly proposed fluoridating the nation’s water supplies. Cox wasn’t a medical expert but an industry scientist working for a company that was deeply threatened by potential liabilities from fluoride pollution. The U.S. Public Health Service soon took up the idea. H. Trendley Dean of the National Institute of Health asserted that “fluoride levels of up to 1.0 ppm in drinking water did not cause mottled enamel; if the fluoride exceeded this level, however, fluorosis would occur.”[2] By framing fluoride as beneficial rather than hazardous, the aluminum industry found a way to dispose of its fluoride waste while reshaping public perception.

The campaign for fluoridation quickly gained momentum. In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first American city to fluoridate its water. The experiment was intended to last 15 years, but within just two years, dozens of other communities had followed suit.[3] All the while the Public Health Service and the American Dental Association endorsed water fluoridation in order to turn it into a nationwide publicity effort. This effort was further spearheaded by Edward Bernays, a pioneer of modern public relations and a nephew of Sigmund Freud, who successfully recast fluoride from rat poison to necessary health products. As medical writer Joel Griffiths observed,

“Almost overnight…the popular image of fluoride, then being widely sold as rat and bug poison, became that of a beneficial provider of gleaming smiles, absolutely safe, and good for children, bestowed by a benevolent paternal government. Its opponents were permanently engraved on the public mind as crackpots.”[4]

Many of fluoride’s strongest opponents were not fringe figures but respected physicians who initially supported fluoridation but later changed their minds. Drs. George Waldbott and Frederick Exner were among the first to document government-industry complicity in hiding fluoride’s hazards. Both doctors risked their careers by going public. Waldbott later reflected that from the very beginning the controversy over fluoridation was “a political, not a scientific health issue.”[5] Nevertheless, their criticisms were drowned out by toothpaste advertisements and public relations campaigns. Looking back, their work, however, foreshadowed later evidence that debunks fluoride’s safety and necessity.

By 1950, fluoridation had become firmly entrenched in the nation’s health psyche. It was supported by government agencies, medical and dental associations, and private industries. But the scientific foundation to support fluoride was far weaker than the public was led to believe. The largest U.S. fluoridation study conducted in the 1980s on nearly 39,000 schoolchildren found no significant difference in cavity rates between fluoridated and unfluoridated communities.[6] Around the same time, a World Health Organization review confirmed that dental decay had declined at similar rates in Western Europe, where nearly all countries rejected water fluoridation. In fact, in some cases, European children enjoyed better dental health outcomes than their American counterparts.[7] Additional studies raised further doubts: a University of Arizona study in 1992 reported that “the more fluoride a child drinks, the more cavities appear in the teeth,” and Native American children on fluoridated reservations were found to have disproportionately higher rates of dental decay and other oral health problems than regions where fluoridation was limited.

Almost a half-century ago, Drs. John Yiamouyiannis and Dean Burk, former chief chemist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), released a study that linked fluoridation to 10,000 cancer deaths per year in the U.S. Their inquiry, which compared cancer deaths in the ten largest fluoridated American cities to those in the ten largest unfluoridated cities between 1940 and 1950, discovered a 5% greater cancer rate in the fluoridated areas. Unsurprisingly, the NCI refuted its own findings. To settle the matter, a Congressional subcommittee instructed the National Toxicology Program (NTP) to perform another investigation. That study, due in 1980, was not released until 1990. In the meantime, the EPA raised the standard fluoride level in drinking water from 2.4 to 4 ppm. Critics of the EPA decision charged it with being politically motivated without any concern for public health.  

From its inception, the fluoridation movement was shaped by politics and industry interests. Early discoveries about fluoride’s toxicity were simply reframed to emphasize marginal dental benefits. Critics were marginalized and health risks minimized. This history reveals that fluoridation was not simply a benevolent public health intervention but, as some early critics charged, a “capitalist-style con job of epic proportions.” As Dr. Yiamouyiannis once stated,

“We would not purposely add arsenic to the water supply. And we would not purposely add lead. But we do add fluoride. The fact is that fluoride is more toxic than lead and just slightly less toxic than arsenic.”[8]

Over the past two decades, there has been an expanding body of scientific research raising serious questions about the safety of community water fluoridation and fluoride exposure more broadly. While American health authorities continue to endorse fluoridation as a cost-effective strategy for dental health, studies from across the North American continent and abroad increasingly identify serious risks to neurodevelopment, thyroid function, and overall systemic health. In 2022, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research released a comprehensive report showing that oral health in the U.S. has not improved in 22 years. In fact, it has declined and 70 percent of children and adolescents are now fluoride-overdosed. 

The tension between emerging science and an entrenched public health policy that defends fluoridation underscores the urgent need for the medical community and health authorities to reexamine fluoride’s role in drinking water, consumer dental and other products.

One of the most consistent themes across recent studies is the link between fluoride exposure and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. For instance, very recent research this year found associations between early-life fluoride exposure and elevated rates of neurodevelopmental disorders. The authors’ conclusions recommend a reassessment of U.S. fluoride exposure limits. Longitudinal research in Canada, such as the MIREC cohort, has also been especially influential in tracing these risks. In 2020, Green, Till, and colleagues reported that prenatal fluoride exposure correlated with increased symptoms of ADHD,[9] and Farmus et al. documented reduced cognitive performance in children at ages three to four linked to higher maternal urinary fluoride levels.[10] Similarly, an Indian study found that Indian children with higher urinary fluoride concentrations displayed reduced memory and learning performance.[11] It is important for us to notice the global consistency in these findings that reinforce the urgent demand to reevaluate fluoride’s purported benefits. Together, these studies add to mounting evidence that fluoride is not simply a benign additive; it is a toxic chemical capable of undermining brain development in very scientifically measurable ways.

Parallel to the concerns about neurodevelopmental disorders are findings that fluoride can disrupt thyroid function. Thyroid health is particularly critical during pregnancy when hormone imbalances can impair fetal brain development. One nation-wide analysis reported that fluoridated regions had a higher prevalence of hypothyroidism and suggests fluoride acts as an endocrine disruptor.[12] Complementary evidence comes from the MIREC cohort, which found maternal fluoride exposure associated with altered thyroid hormone profiles in both Canadian and American populations.[13] Earlier reviews also warned that fluoride exposure contributes to thyroid dysfunction and questioned whether the purported benefits of fluoridation outweigh these systemic risks.[14] These studies establish a consistent pattern that fluoride compromises the body’s endocrine balance and increases risks not only for thyroid disorders but also for cascading neurodevelopmental effects.

The evidence linking fluoride to learning difficulties further strengthens the case for caution. Barberio et al. analyzed surveillance data from North American children; the researchers found higher fluoride exposure correlated with greater odds of reported learning disability diagnoses.[15] Similarly, a study out of the University of Southern California’s School of Medicine analyzed fluoride levels in mother–child pairs at pregnancy and later evaluated the children’s behavior after three years. Children exposed to increases in fluoride in the womb were twice as likely to develop neurobehavioral problems including emotional reactivity, anxiety and somatic complaints. When viewed alongside ADHD- and cognition-related findings from Canada and India, these results reveal a broader picture of fluoride’s threats to learning capacity, attention, and memory. This convergence of evidence across different populations and methodologies further underscores social concerns that fluoride impairs children’s educational and developmental outcomes.

A 2021 meta-analysis on fluoride and bone health revealed a U-shaped risk profile. Although very low levels may provide protection, higher exposures increase fracture risks.[16] With heart disease as the major killer of Americans, a 2022 Spanish study now demonstrates that fluoridated water calcifies and hardens arteries. People with chronic renal disease were observed to be especially at high risk.

However, perhaps the most consequential development in recent years is the reassessment of fluoride as a potential human neurotoxin. Drs. Grandjean and Landrigan are leading authorities on developmental neurotoxicology. In their 2023 study published in The Lancet Neurology, they determined fluoride now meets the established criteria for reclassification as a developmental neurotoxicant.[17] Their review emphasized that while safe thresholds require further refinement, the totality of epidemiological, toxicological and biomolecular evidence aligns fluoride with other federally recognized industrial neurotoxins. This classification has profound implications. It will effectively reframe fluoridation policy as an issue of chemical safety rather than dental prevention.

Despite these warnings, our federal health agencies continue to promote water fluoridation and dental fluoride use. This stance stands in stark contrast to the policies of many other countries. Over the past decade, most of Western Europe, including Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands, has either never adopted or actively phased out community fluoridation programs in favor of alternative dental health strategies. Israel halted fluoridation in 2014, and many Canadian municipalities, including Calgary, Windsor and Waterloo, have put an end to water fluoridation. Meanwhile, China avoids artificial fluoridation altogether due to its already elevated natural fluoride in groundwater. The United States, however, continues to fluoridate nearly three-quarters of its public water supplies despite all of the health indicators and scientific findings pointing to disease risks.

Taken together, this body of research points to a troubling disconnect between the scientific evidence and our nation’s public health policies. Given the weight of more recent findings, reassessing exposure limits and halting blanket fluoridation is crucial. More important, prioritizing fluoride’s risks to vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and children is urgently warranted. Our government’s consistent failure to act has placed public health behind outdated dogma in order to negligently ignore the growing consensus that fluoride poses more harm than benefit in our contemporary society.

Aside from the ever-growing number of scientific studies calling into question fluoride’s safety profile, there are numerous documented episodes revealing institutional resistance. This includes suppression of scientific dissent, altering of scientific language, delays in publication of inconvenient findings, legal battles, and rapid public relations responses aimed at preserving the medical associations’ reputations and the status quo of the nation’s fluoride policies. 

In 1990, a senior science advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), William Marcus, raised concerns about fluoride’s health risks and the integrity of EPA’s regulatory statutes. Marcus claimed that the agency was ignoring the scientific evidence about fluoride toxicity. His internal criticisms triggered administrative action, which culminated in his termination from the agency. Two years later, an administrative law judge ruled that Marcus’s dismissal was a retaliatory act, a pretext for punishing him for dissent, and ordered his reinstatement.[18]

The case is one of the clearest examples in this period of institutional suppression of a dissenting voice on fluoride’s risks. It demonstrates that even within the EPA, questioning fluoride’s safety standards will incur punitive measures.[19] But the long-term effect was more ambiguous. The EPA remained committed to fluoride policy as is despite many later researchers reporting similar suppressive pressures even as scientific evidence against fluoride accumulated.

Although the William Marcus case is now decades old, it still echoes today. In recent years, researchers and scientists have reported difficulty getting funding to investigate fluoride’s risks, confronting obstacles with peer review or publication in high-impact journals whenever studies show fluoride’s adverse effects, or facing direct pressure from their institutional funders.

In 1995 Dr. Phyllis Mullenix and her colleagues published a damning study: “Neurotoxicity of sodium fluoride in rats” in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology. The study reported that rats exposed to fluoride produced serious neurobehavioral changes. Specifically, fluoride was found to be capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and potentially cause behavioral alterations, notably excitability and aggression.[20]

What followed was an intense institutional pushback. Mullenix was criticized for experimental design flaws, demands for replication, accusations of over-interpretation, and sharp rebuttals from dental and industry-aligned scientists. Mullenix stated in interviews that she faced threats to her career as a consequence of challenging the official narrative. Today, health scholars investigating the politics of fluoride frequently cite the Mullenix episode as emblematic of what they call “coercive persuasion” by the medical industry. The Mullenix case is important not only for its scientific content but as another case study in how dissent from fluoride orthodoxy is persecuted within the scientific community.

One of the most significant recent debates has been over the nation’s National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) monograph on fluoride exposure and neurodevelopmental and cognitive disorders.[21] Over several years, draft versions of the monograph included stronger hazard classifications such as language declaring fluoride “presumed to be a cognitive neurodevelopmental hazard to humans”. This was especially true at exposure levels above ≥1.5 mg/L threshold.

However, following rounds of external peer review, including a review by the National Academies of Sciences and public comments, as well as legal pressure to release earlier document drafts, these stronger hazard terms were edited or removed in the final version published in August 2024. Although the final monograph still recognizes “moderate confidence” in the associations between higher fluoride exposure and reduced IQ, the reformulation and removal of more forceful language has been viewed as a “walk‐back” under institutional pressure.

The monograph’s procedural history is well documented. However, among the critical responses are commentaries in academic journals and investigative journalism pointing out that the “strongest” earlier claims were among those most diluted or removed despite the supporting epidemiological data not themselves refuted.[22]

In the Food & Water Watch, Inc. et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, lawsuit decided on September 24, 2024, a U.S. District Court evaluated the evidence collected over many years about fluoride exposure’s effects on mental cognition. The plaintiffs argued that the current federal fluoridation practice violates the Toxic Substances Control Act because of human health risks, particularly children’s neurological development.[23]

The judge found that the peer-reviewed epidemiologic studies, draft NTP materials and expert medical testimony “provides substantial and scientifically credible evidence” that fluoride exposure at levels under current fluoridation norms is associated with lower IQ in children. The court decision ordered the EPA to take immediate regulatory action.[24] Moreover, the case provides a clear judicial recognition that fluoride’s risk is no longer just a speculative claim by private industry and its control over our federal regulatory agencies.

This ruling is pivotal because it transforms scientific debate into a legal obligation. It also forced the federal agencies to make internal scientific and policy materials public.

Following the NTP’s final monograph and the Food & Water Watch ruling, pro‐fluoride associations and advocacy groups —notably the American Dental Association (ADA) and the American Fluoridation Society (AFS) – in addition to community water boards rapidly mobilized to reassert their claims about the safety and benefits of its standard fluoridation practices.

The ADA issued press releases claiming the new document stating that higher exposure levels were responsible for observed neurodevelopmental effects was a “misuse” of the NTP data.[25] Likewise, the American Fluoridation Society published arguments that the findings of fluoride’s hazards to human health had gone overboard. Critics have noted the speed with which certain pro-fluoride declarations appeared, such as within days of the NTP release.  

Fortunately, the tides are turning. Concurrent with the growing scientific controversy has been political and regulatory pushback at state and local levels. Earlier this year, Utah passed a law banning the addition of fluoride into its public water supplies. This law represents one of the first state-wide bans in modern American history; the ban was passed in the context of increasing public concern and recent scientific findings about fluoride’s neurodevelopmental risks. 

From the Marcus whistleblower case through the Mullenix findings, to the recent NTP report and the Food & Water Watch v. EPA ruling, the period from 1990 to 2025 has been marked by growing tension between emerging evidence of fluoride’s harm and the institutional resistance to change fluoride regulatory policies. The pro-fluoride entities, such as private industry, the water utilities, professional dental associations, and public health agencies, have repeatedly defended their diminishing positions. As more rigorous epidemiological and toxicological data accumulate, continuing to treat fluoride exposure in water or dental products as inherently benign is becoming harder to justify. The evidence is now strong enough to seriously consider a nationwide moratoria or phased reductions. The institutional and reputational defenses that were once sufficient to sustain the nation’s widespread fluoridation policy are now increasingly challenged by science, public concern, and legal mandates.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Notes

[1] National Institute of Dental Research. The Fluoride Story.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Griffiths J. Fluoride: Commie plot or capitalist ploy? Covert Action. Fall 1992;42:30.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Waldbott GL et al. Fluoridation: The Great Dilemma. Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press; 1978..

[6] Sierra Club. Letter to: WK Reilly, EPA. July 21, 1989.

[7] Brunelle JA, Carlos JP. Recent trends in dental caries in U.S. children and the effect of water fluoridation. J Dent Res. February 1990;69:723–727.

[8] Yiamouyiannis J. Interview. 1995 Mar 10. His statement is referenced in the Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products. 5th ed. Williams and Wilkins.

[9] Green R, Till C, et al. Fluoride exposure and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in Canadian children: Findings from the MIREC cohort. Environment International, 2020;134: 105229.

[10] Farmus L, Till C, et al. Prenatal fluoride exposure and cognitive outcomes in children at 3–4 years of age in Canada. Environment International, 2021;146: 106223.

[11] Saxena S, et al. Fluoride exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes in Indian children. Neurotoxicology, 2022;88: 36–45.

[12] Malin AJ, Till C. Exposure to fluoridated water and hypothyroidism risk in the United States: A county-level analysis. Science of the Total Environment, 2021;762: 143092.

[13] Till C, Green R, Flora D, et al. Fluoride exposure and thyroid function among Canadian and U.S. pregnant women in the MIREC cohort. Environment International, 2020; 134: 105229.

[14] Peckham S, Awofeso N. Water fluoridation: a critical review of the physiological effects of ingested fluoride as a public health intervention. The Scientific World Journal, 2014; 293019.

[15] Barberio AM, Hosein FS, et al. Fluoride exposure and reported learning disability diagnosis among North American children. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 2020;111(2): 210–218.

[16] Yu X, Chen J, et al. Fluoride exposure and bone health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Osteoporosis International, 2021;32(5): 895–904.

[17] Grandjean P, Landrigan P. Developmental neurotoxicity of industrial chemicals: Update on fluoride evidence. The Lancet Neurology ,2023; 22(1): 15–25.

[18] Herbert HJ, “EPA Ordered to Reinstate Whistleblower,” Associated Press, December 8, 1992

[19] Deseret News, “Whistle-Blower Gets His Job Back at EPA,” December 10, 1992.

[20] Mullenix P, Neurotoxicity of sodium fluoride in rats, Neurotoxicology and Teratology, 1995. PubMed ID 7760776.

[21] National Toxicology Program, Monograph on the State of the Science Concerning Fluoride Exposure and Neurodevelopment and Cognition, Final version, Aug. 21, 2024.

[22] Schulson M, “Baring Teeth: The Long Battle Over Fluoride Comes to a Head,” Undark, March 6, 2024.

[23] Food & Water Watch, Inc. et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 17-cv-02162-EMC, Memorandum Opinion (N.D. Cal.), Sept. 24, 2024.

[24] Reuters, “EPA must address fluoridated water’s risk to children’s IQs, US judge rules,” Sept. 25, 2024.

[25] ADA News, “ADA Reaffirms Support for Community Water Fluoridation,” August/September 2024.

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This article (The Fluoride Fraud: Unsafe at Any Dose) was created and published by Global Research and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the authors Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null

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