Dr. Ashley Malin (Epidemiologist)

I think a big part of it is that it wasn't acceptable to ask these questions up until recently. To even ask the question, you'd be considered a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Probably up until 10 years ago. Wow. Yeah. That recent. Yeah.

I was drinking a bottled water and they said, don't drink that. There's fluoride in it. And I said, yeah, well, it's good for my teeth. And they said, no, fluoride lowers IQ. And I said, there's no way that something would be added to the drinking water that could potentially lower IQ. And what about it felt kind of implausible?

Yeah, I was skeptical because this is a widely used public health intervention that's supposed to be protecting our teeth and it's supposed to be something that's good for us. So I just said they wouldn't add that to the drinking water if it was harmful in any way. Like I couldn't even fathom that that was a possibility.

But there were no studies on lower exposures really at that time.

It'll ask symptoms of autism, anxiety, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, physical symptoms, so stomach aches, headaches, temper tantrums.

Yeah, so it's rated from 0 to 2, and it'll capture whether the behavior is either typical or kind of over and above what would be considered typical for that developmental stage. Okay.

I'm like, oh my gosh, someone, I want someone to check this to make sure this is real. Yeah. Because what did you see? We found that higher levels of fluoride in pregnant women's urine was associated with more neurobehavioral problems in their children by age three.

Their children had nearly double the odds of exhibiting the clinically relevant neurobehavioral problems by age three. Whoa. Double the odds. Nearly double. It was almost double.