Top health official last week advised governments across the state to stop adding fluoride to their water, citing the neuropsychiatric risk — particularly for pregnant women and children — associated with the practice.
“It is public health malpractice, with the information we have now, to continue adding fluoride to water,” Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo said.
Ladapo made the announcement last week during a press conference. His office also issued written guidance detailing the latest research showing that exposure to fluoridated water can lead to neurodevelopmental issues in children, including lower IQ.
Given that risk, along with the wide availability of toothpaste, mouthwash and other alternative sources of fluoride, Ladapo recommended against community water fluoridation.
Florida’s new written guidance includes a tool for communities to determine if their local government fluoridates their water so they can contact local officials to discuss.
Ladapo said that as a physician, he previously supported water fluoridation because he learned in medical school that it was an important public health intervention. However, the landmark ruling in September by a California federal judge prompted him to review the science.
In that ruling, Judge Edward Chen concluded water fluoridation at current U.S. levels poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health. He ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take regulatory action in light of recent scientific findings.
Ladapo said that once he better understood the science, “I was appalled, frankly,” because scientists have been publishing high-quality studies demonstrating these neurotoxic effects for years yet the public has been largely unaware of those findings.
Stuart Cooper, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) — a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the EPA — told The Defender, “Dr. Ladapo’s response is exactly how leaders ought to be reacting to this urgent public health crisis affecting over 200 million Americans, including 2 million pregnant women and over 300,000 exclusively bottle-fed infants who rely on fluoridated tap water for most of their nutrition.
Cooper added: “He’s not alone. Municipal and state officials from around the country are now beginning to respond, by suspending or ending fluoridation locally …
“Citizens need to realize that politicians are voluntarily authorizing the addition of this neurotoxin to the water. The harm is needlessly self-inflicted, but that also means the solution is simple: ban the use of fluoridation chemicals.”
Ashley Malin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Epidemiology joined Ladapo at the press conference. She is the lead author of a recent study of women and children in Los Angeles that found children born to women exposed during pregnancy to fluoridated drinking water were more likely to have neurobehavioural problems.
Malin said in the last seven years there have been several “high quality, rigorously conducted, prospective pregnancy and birth cohort studies in North America.” These studies showed that chronic, relatively low prenatal fluoride exposure levels are associated with poorer neurodevelopmental outcomes — including reduced IQ, more symptoms of ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) and declines in executive functioning.
Ladapo’s new guidance also cited several other recent key peer-reviewed studies linking water fluoridation to neurodevelopmental issues. These include a 2017 study in Mexico that linked prenatal fluoride exposure with lower IQ in children ages 6 to 12, a 2019 Canadian study that found an association between exposure to fluoridated water and ADHD among children and adolescents between ages 6 and 17, and several other studies.
Since 2023, towns in North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas have decided to stop the practice. And most Western European countries have ended the practice.
