CNN Claims Fluoride Is Safe for Cognition and Possibly Beneficial
Updated
A CNN news story gleefully announced Fluoride in drinking water does not negatively affect cognitive ability — and may actually provide benefit, study finds.
Benefit?
It’s 2025, and The Science™ is still debating about whether indiscriminately adding a neurotoxic, bioaccumulating chemical into the public drinking water supply is safe and sound…even beneficial.
The CNN headline was spawned by a new study looking at how children’s fluoride exposure is associated with cognition across the life course.
The study is presumably in response to the raging debate and ongoing legal battle against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to keep the practice of water fluoridation.
Speaking to The HighWire, lead attorney in the case against EPA concerning water fluoridation, Michael Connett stated:
“The introduction to this “scientific paper” reads like a press release from the American Dental Association, littered with exaggerated statements about fluoridation’s benefits and misleading dismissals of the research indicating harm.
One can only hope that the authors did not conduct their study with the same degree of bias that is indicated by their “summary” of prior research.”
Speaking more specifically about the new study’s potential blind spots, Connett continues:
“While the title of the study indicates the authors looked at fluoride “across the life course,” they had no data on fluoride exposure from conception through fifth grade — a critical window of time when fluoride’s risks to neurodevelopment is at its zenith.”
Evolving Science Meets Legal Action
In August 2024, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) released its comprehensive systematic review of the research on fluoride and the brain. It identified 72 studies investigating the relationship between fluoride and IQ in human populations, including 19 classified as “high quality.”
According to NTP, these “high-quality studies (i.e., studies with low potential for bias) consistently demonstrate lower IQ scores with higher fluoride exposure.” The NTP thus concluded, “with moderate confidence,” that higher fluoride exposure “is consistently associated with lower IQ in children.
Last year, a federal judge in California turned the NTP’s scientific momentum into policy action by ordering the EPA to change regulations for fluoride in drinking water, saying the chemical poses an unreasonable potential risk to children at levels that are currently typical nationwide.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled that the EPA could pursue a number of options, from a warning label about fluoride’s risks at current levels to steps toward tightening restrictions on its addition to drinking water.
“One thing the EPA cannot do, however, in the face of this Court’s finding, is to ignore that risk,” he wrote.
Lee Zeldin’s EPA and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appealed the decision and are currently engaged in a legal battle to overturn Judge Chen’s ruling and preserve the status quo on water fluoridation. A bizarre and unpopular move in direct opposition to Kennedy’s directive at HHS and the MAHA agenda, which voted in leaders to end the chronic disease epidemic.
Despite Zeldin, Bondi, and the EPA’s fluoride foot-dragging, the legal battles and investigations are moving forward against industry with fury.
Industry In The Crosshairs
In May, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened civil probes into both Procter & Gamble and Colgate, stating:
“…toothpaste manufacturers continue to flavor their products and deceptively market them in ways that encourage kids to ingest fluoride toothpaste and mislead their parents to use far more than the safe and recommended amount of fluoride toothpaste.”
Colgate resolved its probe in September by agreeing to depict “safe, age-appropriate amounts of toothpaste” on packaging for its Colgate, Tom’s of Maine, and hello products.
Meanwhile, an Illinois district court judge ruled Procter & Gamble can be sued over Kid’s Crest toothpaste packaging for misleading consumers about fluoride safety.
The real science to inform true change via legal avenues is underway. As the challenge is being put to longtime industry influence, corporate media gatekeepers and willful government apathy, cracks in the fluoridated house of cards are appearing.
Industry is being forced to defend its ‘safe and effective’ position for the practice of water fluoridation against the evolving science on fluoride and the brain…and is losing.
While the corporate media desperately attempts to make the IQ-lowering effects of water fluoridation a limited hangout, a tidal wave of evidence has mounted linking fluoride to:
–Increased risk of bone fractures
For now, all eyes are on the EPA’s ongoing fight to defend the practice despite a judge’s ruling to the contrary.
