Editor’s note: Beginning Feb. 1, The Defender will provide daily updates on the fluoride trial taking place this week in San Francisco.
Fluoride should be banned from drinking water and the U.S. government must warn people — especially pregnant mothers — about the serious health risks of drinking fluoridated water, attorney Michael Connett told journalist Kim Iversen.
Connett is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in a landmark federal trial on the neurotoxicity of water fluoridation brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The trial — which resumed today after a four-year pause — seeks to prohibit the addition of fluoride to water.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco set aside nine days for testimony and cross-examination of experts and fact witnesses.
In yesterday’s episode of the “Kim Iversen Show,” Connett discussed the case and why it’s so important. He said:
“We now have data — high-quality data funded by the NIH [National Institutes of Health] — linking maternal exposure to fluoride with deficits in IQ … that’s really the focus of our lawsuit.
“The court has one question before it, and that is: Does fluoridation present an unreasonable risk of neurodevelopmental effects? … If the court rules that it does, then the EPA will be mandated by law to take action to address that risk.”
Although the court can’t tell the EPA how to address the risk, the EPA has the authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act to ban fluoridation.
“If we win,” Connett said, “and the EPA does what logic would seem to dictate — namely if their obligation is to eliminate the risk posed by fluoridation chemicals — then the obvious way of doing that is to ban this practice.”
Currently, the choice of whether to fluoridate water rests at the state and local levels. But if the EPA bans the practice, “no municipality — even if it wants to — can fluoridate its water because EPA would be the highest authority on that issue.”
Today more than 200 million Americans in thousands of communities drink fluoridated water.
Most major cities — including Los Angeles, where Iversen resides — fluoridate their water. “I certainly don’t want to drink fluoride anymore,” Iversen said.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) on Jan. 13 released a documentary, “Fluoride on Trial: The Censored Science on Fluoride and Your Health,” in which Connett and CHD President Mary Holland discussed the suppression of scientific research revealing the toxic effects of fluoride, particularly on children.
Connett also spoke of that suppression with Iversen.
For example, when the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) 1,573-page systematic review concluded that 64 out of 72 studies showed a link between fluoride and lowered IQ, dental officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH’s National Institute of Dental and Cranial Facial Research put pressure on the U.S. Department of Human Services assistant secretary of health, Dr. Rachel Levine, to prevent the review from being published.
Levine told the NTP to not publish the report but to put it on hold and allow for further review…
Children's Health Defense 
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