The Highwire with Del Bigtree - EXPERT ATTORNEY EXPOSES DECADES OF FLUORIDE HARMS

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Fresh off a historic win against the EPA over the use of fluoride in drinking water, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Connett, Esq., discusses the decades-long concealment of the significant harms fluoride poses to human health and its implications for the future of water fluoridation.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

One of the biggest stories that came across my desk is this fluoride trial that just recently ended. And remember, fluoride was one of the, if not, greatest public health achievements of all time. And now it's not so much because of a court ruling. And this is what it looked like in the news. New concerns about fluoride and drinking water. A federal ruling is questioning how much of it is safe. A federal judge in California has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to address the potential impacts of fluoride in drinking water. Researchers with the Department of Health and Human Services analyzed previously published research

and said they determined, quote, with moderate confidence that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The Environmental Protection Agency could challenge that ruling which could send the case to the Supreme Court. Lawmakers in some states aren't waiting for the courts. It's time to update this law. Let's take this out. The city of Monroe is considering removing fluoride it puts into its joint. water. The city of Abilene isn't taking any chances. As of right now, I've directed the utility department to stop adding fluoride to the city's drinking supply until the EPA makes a final ruling on what they're going to do. 200 million Americans living communities that put fluoride

in its tap water, and almost every toothpaste has fluoride in it. Unfortunately, the CDC and the American Dental Association have ignored really decades worth of studies indicating harm from fluoride and chosen to work on the health of the tooth over the health of children's brains. And that is just some of the media coverage by a world-changing ruling by Judge Edward Chen. And this ruling came down just recently. We're looking at about a month ago. And if we look at this ruling, I want to go into this ruling here because a lot of times judges err on the side and they're sometimes liberal. They don't want to take a hard stance on. their judgment, but we look at this ruling, and here's just one excerpt of this.

I encourage everyone to go read this ruling, and he says the court finds that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter, the level presently considered optimal in the United States, poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children. The court finds there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response. He goes on to say one thing the EPA cannot do. you, however, in the face of this court's finding is to ignore that risk. I'm here with the attorney, Michael Conant, who is responsible for having this ruling come down and arguing all

of the facts. Michael, thank you for joining me today. Jeffrey, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's wonderful. So public health has been rocked to the core. A lot of the public's assumptions of what they thought fluoride was and wasn't. It has really become very clear. Obviously, fluoride is one of the top 10 greatest public health achievements according to the CDC this they're probably gonna have to go back to the drawing board on this one and the ruling itself as you saw there where I was reading that it dealt with lowering children's IQ so I think a lot of the people watching may say well I'm not a child I mean my children are grown up we got we got past that moment so we don't

have to worry about that lowering IQ business but one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is there's a lot of other issues with water fluoridation with fluoride in the human body than just lowering children's IQ. So let's lay this out because, you know, we've spoken over the past couple weeks and you've sent me to say loads of data, emails upon emails of the robust science surrounding this. So I want to lay this out in a fashion that someone could take this and just send it to a family member and say, oh, by the way, you may want to check into this too. So let's take a historical perspective on this really quick. So we look at the Manhattan Project. We have a gentleman

named Harold Hodge, and a lot of people know the Manhattan Project from maybe the film Oppenheimer. You have Los Alamos. They were working on kind of the physical part of the Manhattan project, but there was also other people in the University of Rochester, New York, that were working on the kind of the toxicological effects of uranium, of fluorine, and things like that. And coming out of that, you have this document. this research that Harold Hodge did, and he was looking at the effects of fluoride exposure on people that have kidneys that aren't functioning optimally, which means they can't really, they can't really get this stuff out of their body, get these toxicants out of their body.

And this is what he found. I'm going to read just a quote here. This is declassified in 1995. And he looks, he's talking about renal dysfunction. He looked at two patients here. And he's basically saying one patient with kidney disease was. only able to excrete 20% of the ingested fluoride. The second patient with a bacterial kidney issue with hypertension could excrete none of the fluoride. So that's a huge problem. And so

what he does there, does he tell the world, he goes on less than 10 years later in 1956 to write this. And I'm going to give you the floor, but I just want people to show you, this is kind of the first instance of government, purposeful government misinformation around this topic. And he writes this, Sometimes the question is raised. What would happen if there were a mechanical breakdown at the fluoridation plant and all of one day's supply of sodium fluoride or sodium silica fluoride was suddenly dumped into the water? If this large weight of fluoride could be dissolved, mixed, and distributed within an hour,

there would still be a factor of safety sufficient to predict that the water could be drunk for 10 years or more without serious toxic consequences. It is clearly impossible to produce acute fluoride poisoning by water. water fluoridation. He sticks the flag in the ground there and says, this is safe. Take it from here. I'd like to really talk about this part with people with kidney problems. Right. Harold Hodge was a very significant figure in the promotion of water fluoridation. He was the chief toxicologist, among other things, for the bomb program, the Manhattan Project. And that was where he started his work on fluoride toxicity.

And as part of his work, as you mentioned, he was looking not just at humans with kidney disease, but animals with kidney disease, okay? And his animal research and human research in the 40s consistently found that people with kidney disease have a very difficult time excreting fluoride from the body, which is a problem, because the more fluoride that builds up in the body, the more likely you are to have an adverse effect. So Harold Hodge was aware of that in the 40s, but he never published those findings. Instead, what Dr. Hodge did is he told the public in that paper that you just showed, in that paper he said, people with even severe kidney disease do not accumulate more fluoride

than people with healthy kidney. And along with children, people with kidney issues are arguably the most vulnerable population to the ingestion of fluoride because they can't clear it. Right. But Harold Hodge never told the public of the findings that he had for the bomb program. Instead, he goes and writes a paper for the Journal of the American Dental Association and says, people with kidney disease do not accumulate more fluoride. There's no issue for the kidney patients, right? And that had, it had significant. consequences and one of the consequences it had is on dialysis patients. And one of the things that's a little appreciated fact about water fluoridation is that in the

1970s scientists discovered in a large number of studies that dialysis patients were being poisoned by the fluoridated water that was getting into the dialysis. And fluoride was causing a severe bone disease in the kidney patients, osteomalacia, which is a softening of the bone, and other bone pathologies that was causing incapacitating pain in the dialysis patients. And as a result of those findings, in the early, 1980s, dialysis centers began removing the fluoride that was added to the water so that it's not getting into the dialysis.

And you can appreciate why dialysis centers and other members of the public wouldn't have considered fluoride in the water to be a problem when you have Dr. Hodge, the government's main expert, primary expert on the safety of fluoridation, saying that you can literally dump this stuff, the entire supply of fluoridation chemicals in the water plant. You can dump it into the water every day for 10 plus years and nobody will suffer any adverse effect as a result. That's what the public was told about how safe this program was. So he's setting this standard saying, you can dump it, don't worry about it, just dump it and you can drink it for 10 years, no problem. Were there any real world examples of that actually

happening? Yes, there have been periodic fluoridating. accidents since the program began. And, you know, Harold Hodd said that you could have a fluoridation accident ongoing for 10 years, and you still wouldn't have poisoning. And just to show you how wrong that was, within one day, within one day, you have poisoning going on in the community. And that's been documented dozens and dozens of times. With one accident in one day.

One accident, one day. One accident, one day. Harold Hodd said you could have an accident every day for you. every day for 10 years and people would not be harmed. But what real life experience has shown is one accident, one day you have poisoning in the community. We're talking about the dialysis patients. They have died when there have been fluoridation accidents. In Annapolis, Maryland and in Chicago, you have actually had dialysis patients die

when you have an overfeed of fluoridation chemicals into the drinking water. So I think that's really telling that that's really telling that, how fluoridation, the safety of fluoridation was presented in the 1950s, you know, and how wrong that was, like this notion that you could just dump it, uncontrolled every day for 10 years and you won't have a problem. No wonder people thought this was an entirely, perfectly safe program, but reality has shown that that was just not the case. And I think people need to appreciate, too. The public has has been drilled with this idea of misinformation and disinformation is a, you know, a threat

to our way of life. But here we have literally the government's main expert sending the signal out, sidelining doctors, sidelining the intelligentsia of the medical community to even think about this being a problem. Dialysis units aren't even looking for it, aren't even filtering for it. Huge problem. And I want to go into also the standards, too. So surrounding this, moving through the 40s, 50s, 60s and into the 40s.

the 80s, the standards around fluoride, you were able to depose one of the experts, one of the specialists at the NSF, the National Sanitation Foundation. And just to give people, you know, like a fly-on-the-wall view of what you were looking at and how you were speaking to these people in court, we have a video of this, and we're talking about the safety standards of fluoride. Let's take a look. So I'm moving now to topic seven of the deposition notice, which reads what NSF has done, if anything, to determine the potential for fluoridation chemicals to cause neurotoxic effects. So let me ask you, has NSF taken any steps to determine the potential for fluoridation chemicals to cause neurotoxic effects? No.

Does NSF have any position on whether fluoridation chemicals can cause neurotoxic effects? Since we have not conducted our own risk assessment on the fluoridation chemicals, we do not have a position. position on whether they are able to cause neurotoxic effects. Okay. Has NSF taken any steps to determine the upper tolerable daily dose of fluoride that will not cause neurotoxic effects in humans? We have not. Does the NSF have a position on what the upper tolerable daily dose of fluoride that will

not cause neurotoxic effects is? Since we have not conducted risk assessments on any of the fluoridation chemicals, we do not have a position on a daily dose that would be appropriate to prevent or to reduce the risk for neurotoxic effects from fluoride exposure. Now, she was from the NSF, and that's kind of like a company. It's something outside of the government. This is something that regulates these chemicals in things like water. So did you find that astonishing when she answered like that?

Well, I didn't find it astonishing. It's what I expected, but it was good to have it confirmed. The NSF is a private organization that certifies the chemicals that are added to drinking water. EPA delegated that authority to them in the 1980s. But I asked those same questions to the EPA, to the CDC, and to the FDA, as well as to the three major companies in this country that sell fluoridation chemicals. to water municipalities for fluoridation. I asked all of them, can you point me to any study

that shows that adding fluoridated, adding fluoridation chemicals to drinking water is safe for the brain? Okay, just one. I wasn't asking for hundreds. I was just asking for one. And every one of those organizations came back and said, we are not aware of any safety data on that point.

And to put that in perspective, In local debates on fluoridation, the proponents of this practice will often say there's thousands of studies. Thousands of studies that show that fluoridation is safe, right? And here I had the opportunity under penalty of perjury to ask these organizations, I'm not asking you for thousands of studies. Can you point me to one study on this particular issue of the effects on the brain? neurological effects. Can you point me to any study that shows that water fluoridation is safe? And every single one of those organizations came back and said, no. Wow, this reminds me for our audience. So probably remember this. Can you show me a vaxed versus unvaxed study of chronic illness and children?

The robust data, they really can't produce those. Let's talk about the EPA, because you sat down with Dr. Joyce Donahue. He didn't sit down with her. You deposed her. And you were kind of asking the same questions about these safety standards. Surely the EPA, a, a, a, a top scientists at the EPA would have some answer for you if a private company didn't. Here's what she had to say. You would agree that this study right here adds further reason why we need to do a reassessment of the fluoride safety standards in the United States. I think it's a reason for doing not just the United States. I think it's a reason for doing an update to the fluoride assessment.

everywhere. Well, for anybody who's interested in fluoride and the need for regulation of fluoride exposure. Right. Anyone interested in making sure that fluoride is safe for consumption? That people are not overexposed. Right. Okay. So obviously this is a problem now where you're picking up rocks and you're saying, well, Well, does someone have an answer for me here?

Because I'm really concerned. We have a lot of data showing this. This is lowering, it's hurting children. It's lowering their IQ, but no one seems to give me a, have a standard anywhere I can find. Right. And so what I did there with Dr. Johnny Hughes is I showed her some of the new studies on IQ, you know, some of the birth cohort studies, high quality studies funded by the NIH, which have found that prenatal fluoride exposure is significantly correlated with reductions in IQ.

I showed her those studies and she agreed that they're high quality studies and that they warrant a reassessment of all of the safety standards that we now have for fluoride. So, you know, the court took note of that testimony and found it significant. Right. So let's go back to the kidney issues in fluoride because what was found also was it, it wasn't just hurting these people on dialysis, but it was also causing it to accumulate, causing this fluoride toxin to accumulate in bone. and that brings us to the conversation of bone cancer, of accumulation of fluoride in the bones, and there's a long list of studies and epidemiological evidence showing this. So yes, in the 1970s, Congress,

based on some concerns at that time that fluoridation could be associated with increased cancer rates, Congress mandated the Department of Health and Human Services to do an animal study to look at whether fluoride causes cancer, as cancer and animals. And the National Toxicology Program, NTP, completed that study in about 1990.

And that study found that the male rats exposed to elevated fluoride had a dose-dependent increase in bone cancer, a particular type of bone cancer called osteosarcoma. And that then prompted some studies of human populations here in the United States, the National Cancer Institute in 1990, published. an analysis of data which found that in fluoridated communities, that there was a correlation between floated water and osteocircoma in boys, but not in girls, and which was consistent with the NTP's animal study. And then 1992, a scientist at the New Jersey Department of Health, Perry Cohn, did a study in

New Jersey and found the same correlation, increased rates of osteosarcoma in young males, but not in females connected to fluoridated water. And there's been additional studies since that time. So there is a concern that fluoridated water could cause osteosarcoma, and particularly in young males. Right. It's accumulating in the bones. So what's that doing to the integrity of the bone?

Is that making them more susceptible to issues? Yes, there is a very large body of data that shows that fluoride reduces the quality and the strength of the bone, and thereby increases bone fracture rates. We know that through animal studies. Animal studies are consistent in showing that when you expose animals to elevated fluoride,

their bone strength is lowered. Their bones, a fracture with less force. Wow. We have human, clinical trials? Because fluoride was actually used in clinical trials as an experimental drug with the goal of potentially offsetting the impacts of osteoporosis by increasing the density of bone. That was the idea. And what those clinical trials showed is that fluoride increased bone fracture rates rather than reduced bone fracture rates. In many of the clinical trials on fluoride,

what's striking is it caused spontaneous hip fracture. spontaneous hip fracture, meaning that the patient suffered hip fracture without force being applied to the hip. Oh, that is devastating. I mean, hip fracture for an elderly person is akin almost to a death sentence. If they have to go to a rehab facility and go into a home for rehab on that, this is a devastating situation. It's a serious condition. And it's, and in addition to the clinical trials that we have, there have been studies of human populations exposed to fluoridated water and elevated levels of fluoride in water. And while not all the studies have found in effect, there's mixed data, we have a number

of studies finding that people in fluoridated areas have higher rates of bone fracture, including hip fracture. And this is at the level of fluoride that we add to water. there are studies already showing that there are increased rates of hip fracture. So you have a considerable, consistent body of data in animals. You give them more fluoride, their bones are weaker. You have human clinical experiments where the patient's exposed to fluoride for two years, three years, four years, at higher levels, right, higher doses, but short periods of time,

and you have consistent data showing bone fracture, hip fracture, right? So then the question is, okay, what about lower levels of fluoride over longer periods of time? 60 years, 70 years, 80 years, because that's how long humans are exposed to fluoridated water. You're not just exposed to fluoridated water for two years. You're exposed for 70 years, right? And we have studies showing correlations between fluoridated water and bone fracture. So it is a significant, real, in my view, one of the most important issues with fluoridation is the impact. on the integrity of the bone.

Wow. And so clearly there's this accumulation in the bones. It almost seems, why do you think it's always being drawn to the calcified tissue, the bones, and we know the teeth too. We're going to get in that in a second. We have dental fluorosis where there's these spots on the teeth, and it's almost like the entry-level window to see like, okay, there may be some excess fluoride exposure in these individuals that have these spots.

Why do you think it's being pulled into the bones? Right. Accumulates in mineralized tissue which includes the teeth and the bone and so fluoride is very much attracted to calcium and so the bones become a sink for fluoride And and that is in in part that's the defense mechanism of the body To sequester fluoride into the mineralized tissue so that the fluoride which is a very toxic ion does not get into soft tissues where it would be a real problem so it's partly a defense mechanism for the body. However, if you accumulate too much fluoride,

you will start to see pathology and pathological effects in the bone and in the teeth. In teeth, you have a, fluoride causes a mineralization disorder called dental fluorosis. And this manifests sort of blotching of the teeth, white blotches, and then in more severe forms of dental fluorosis, it increases the porosity of the enamel. It's an under mineralization,

which leads to pitting and crumbling of the enamel in its severe forms. One of the striking things today is when, the most recent national statistics from the CDC showed that 68% of American children now have dental floresis. 68%. And now, mostly in the mild form, so it's going to be white splotches and streaks, right? But that is, that shows you that you have a significant overexposure problem to fluoride today. And one of the concerns is the teeth have sometimes been called the shop window to the bones.

And if fluoride is causing this mineralization disorder in the teeth, teeth, what could it be doing to the bones? And we know that fluoride does cause bone disease, including a disease called skeletal fluorosis. And this is crazy because we're told, we're told that we need fluoride to lower cavities. But here we are, literally, there's these negative effects on the teeth. I mean, it's somewhat unsightly. I'm sure people that have it are, they don't want to smile as much. And in fact, I think you deposed a couple people and asked them about dental fluorosis and what do they have, what do you have to do if you have that? What do you think you should do? This is one of the experts here we just saw, as

Joyce Donahue, I believe. In severe dental floresis, the porosity of the enamel is so severe that the enamel begins to pit and crumble. That's the definition that's been accepted as the definite, you know, that's when it becomes severe. When you agree that a child or adolescent, unless they had an adolescent in high school, if they had extensive black staining of their front two teeth, that that could cause pretty severe embarrassment with their peers. Can you agree with that? What they would do would be avoid letting people see their teeth. All right, so that doesn't sound very scientific.

And one of the things we spoke about is there's people that aren't smiling as much. If you avoid smiling and letting people see your teeth, that opens up a whole other issue of not being able to express yourself at the very least, but, you know, depression, we talked about this. EPA was aware in the 1980s that children with this disfiguring condition of severe dental fluorescence, that that could have real impact on their emotional health. there is, you know, there's lots of research indicating that if a child is very embarrassed about their appearance, especially their teeth and their smile, that that can cause problems,

mental health problems for kids. And EPA actually went to the National Institute of Mental Health and asked them to look at this issue and to advise the agency on whether severe dental fllerosis could be a mental health, could cause mental health problems. and the National Institute of Mental Health came back and says, yes, it likely will because of the embarrassment and the impact on self-esteem. But despite getting that conclusion, EPA said, yeah, we're still going to consider it a cosmetic effect only, not an adverse health effect, and EPA did not protect people from that condition. This next clip I want to show, I think if anybody, we're doing a deep dive into this conversation, obviously. And some people may, you know, hopefully they're with us this whole time, but I want people to remember this next clip here because this is Paul Price.

He is literally responsible for creating, you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, creating the EPA's definition, the standard. He wrote the standard. And you asked him that same question about dental fluorosis. Right. Just to put this in context, we're talking here about EPA safety standard for fluoride, which EPA created in the 1980s. The safety standard is the maximum level of fluoride in drinking water that EPA considers safe that communities do not have to remove from their water. Okay?

And under that safety standard, severe dental fluorosis. So the type of fluorosis that causes crumbling of the enamel, it causes widespread black staining, brown staining of the enamel, a very disfiguring condition. Under the EPA safety standard, that is not an adverse effect. Children can have that condition and it's considered perfectly safe. So EPA did not protect people from that effect. And so here in this clip, I deposed Paul Price, who as you mentioned, he wrote the safety standard.

But simultaneous to writing the safety standard, Dr. Price circulated at the EPA a mock press release, where he discussed the safety standard, and he called dental fluorosis, teeth, quote, gross enough to gag a maggot. In his press release that, you know, he circulated to his colleagues, he basically said, yeah, we've just created a standard that allows kids to have teeth gross enough to gag a magga maggot.

Going back to the press release or the mock press release that you wrote, the last sentence of it reads, EPA selected this level based upon a cost-effectiveness study which showed that it is cheaper for people to keep their mouths shut than to remove the fluoride. That's what you wrote, right? That's correct. And what did you mean by it's cheaper for people to keep their mouth shut than to remove the fluoride? I meant to be funny. I don't find anything funny about that, do you?

Well, it certainly wouldn't be funny for a child who develops this disfiguring condition simply from drinking tap water. And, you know, but to be fair to Dr. Price, I think it reflects, his statements there reflected the discomfort that EPA scientists had in actually having to defend this safety standard. And in fact, Jeffrey, EPA scientists were so outraged by this that they tried to join a lawsuit filed by an environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, against the EPA. They tried to sue their bosses

over the inadequacy of EPA's fluoride standard. A court did not allow them to join that lawsuit, but it shows you, like that's very unprecedented for EPA scientists to go to court

and try to sue their bosses about a safety standard. And they did that for fluoride. I don't think that's ever happened for any other chemical. Wow. So let's go back. In 1942, Washington, D.C. doctors are convened to look at the toxic effects of fluoride.

In 1944, they have this meeting and they're presenting their findings. And one of the big findings they present is they find that fluoride causes debilitating, crippling joint damage, damage to the human skeleton, essentially. The spine, and it softens the bones of the extremities. They're finding this. And you're starting to see this in the literature. And this is one of the biggest conversations that really a lot of people are talking about is fluoride's effect on the human skeletal system when it comes to osteoarthritis and joint damage.

Right. It is known today. There's no dispute that fluoride causes bone disease. It is proven through like a very large amount of data, animal data and human data. And the, the bone disease that fluoride causes includes arthritis, osteoarthritis, as well as bone fragility leading to bone fractures. And that's like, there's no dispute about that. The only question is, what is the dose and how does that dose vary based on an individual susceptibility? But importantly here, in 1942, as you mentioned, the federal health officials were considering this notion of water.

fluoridation and whether we should add fluoride for dental health purposes. And there was a conference held, 1942, an H. Trendley Dean, who is considered the father of fluoridation, said, before we start fluoridation, we should do some studies to see if it's safe. Sure. Make sense, right? And what he advised doing is looking at a community that has high levels of fluoride in the water, higher than we add, that was proposed to be added to water, okay? And let's see if we can detect evidence of harm, okay?

Because the idea is, if you look at a high level of fluoride exposure and you're not seeing harm, then we can have some comfort that the lower levels that we're going to add to water are safe. That was the thinking. That seems somewhat reasonable on face value. Right. So they go ahead in 1943, government scientists go down to Texas, Bartlett, Texas. which has eight parts per million fluoride in its water.

So eight times more than was being proposed to be added to water. Okay? They do this study and what do they find? They find that the people living in Bartlett had elevated rates of bone disease, including this osteoarthritis-like condition, bony spurs, calcification of the ligaments, things like that. And this was a condition that was found already in industrial workers exposed to elevated fluoride.

Again, this is this condition called skeletal fluorosis. So the federal government goes and does the study and finds that, yes, we're seeing the same condition that we see in these industrially exposed workers, this osteoarthritis type condition, we're seeing it in the fluoride community. But the important thing here is they never published a study. They never disclosed those findings to the public.

Why do you think they didn't do that? Well, that's a good question. You know, I think they ultimately, the federal government ultimately saw its role as promoting fluoridation, this idea of fluoridation, and didn't want sort of the ugly facts, the inconvenient facts, to get in the way of their promotion. But, you know, essentially, this was the safety test that the government set forth to determine. whether water fluoridation was going to be safe. It failed this government's own standard. The standard that the government set, like, let's look at a high fluoride community, see if we can detect harm, if we can't detect harm, it's okay, if we can detect harm, it's a problem.

They detected harm, and then they just scrapped the test. And I only got, I was only able to find out about the findings of that study by doing extensive research at the National Archives, where I was able to get a present, that H. Trendley Dean gave internally to the FDA where he summarized those findings. I have tried for years to actually get the manuscript of the study, right? But I have not been able to access it. I did Freedom of Information Act requests and other things. So no one has ever actually seen the underlying study, but I have the description of the findings, which from a document that I got at the National Archives.

Wow. I have to say, your amount of research is incredible. here on this subject, just how far you've went to really get to the, just take every stone and turn it over. So we have some of the experts that you depose on skeletal fluorosis, crippling it's called skeletal fluoresis. Right. Well, so here's, so skeletal fluorosis is something that I spend a lot of time researching. And here's one of the, I think, really astounding facts about our fluoride safety standard that EPA established in 1980s. Skeletal fluorosis is a bone disease that has various stages of severity. So in the early stages, you can't really see anything on x-rays going on in your bones,

but you can have joint pain, joint stiffness, right? Most people just think, I'm getting older. I have arthritis. Right. And then as you ingest more fluoridins and as the condition advances, it becomes more and more apparent on x-rays and the calcification of the ligaments becomes more and more severe. And you ultimately end up with this condition in its most advanced degree called crippling skeletal fluorosis. Now, as the name implies, this is a crippling condition where the spine is completely fused. Okay, you have muscle wasting, you have nerve compression, and it's extremely painful, I would imagine. It's a very painful condition, and it's an overt systemic poisoning of the body.

Now, that condition, Jeffrey, crippling fluorosis, was selected by EPA as the only health effect of fluoride to protect against. And so, under EPA safety standard, which is still in effect as we sit here today, okay, under EPA safety standard, until you develop crippling skeletal fluorosis, you are not harmed by fluoride. Until you are crippled, you have not been harmed by fluoride. I think people should hear it from the actual expert's mouth as well. Take a look. So according to EPA, the first adverse effect that can occur to the human organism from fluoride exposure is crippling skeletal fluoresis. Correct.

Okay. There it is. This should be absolutely shocking to everybody. This is the high bar, the low bar they set. This is anything below that, you're good to go. And I want to talk about, so people listening to this are probably. thinking, oh my God, you know, I hope a lot of people are having a realization that this is beyond lowering children's IQ. And that's not the only clip you sent over. We have Joyce Donahue once again

talking about this. Let's take a look. EPA did not believe it would be an adverse health effect for a person to suffer chronic joint pain from fluoride exposure so long as they were not crippled, right? By the definition of crippling skeletal fluorosis, one can, again, basically, based on what was written, it would appear they did not. Now, I can react to this, but what's going through your mind, as these people are saying to that? Well, I knew that going into that deposition, that that is in fact the case. Now, EPA never, they don't like to say that. They don't, they don't sort of promote that point on their website.

Why not? But I was able to, you know, elicit those admissions from EPA scientists because that is in fact the case. causes chronic joint pain. There's no dispute about it. And fluoride causes chronic joint pain well before you are crippled. So you don't have to be crippled by fluoride exposure to get chronic joint pain. And as Dr. Donahue admitted right there, EPA's safety standard does not consider chronic joint pain to be an adverse effect.

and EPA did not protect against that condition. So people watching this are probably going, oh, my God, I need to get myself tested. Is there a test that I can figure out what kind of fluoride exposure I've had throughout my life, what my levels are in my body? What happens if they go into a doctor's office, your average doctor's office, how do they test for that? Is it a sufficient test? This is something that should be of significant concern. Because the only, the sort of test that doctors have that was established many, many years ago to look whether you have a skeletal fluorosis, okay?

The only thing they really know how to do is they look at your spot, they take an x-ray of your pelvis and your spine, okay? And they look to see if there's a hyperdense bone, osteoschlerosis of the lower spine and the pelvis region, okay? And that is considered under sort of the current diagnostic standard for skeletal fluorosis. If you don't have that on your x-rays, then doctors in the United States will say you don't have skeletal fluorosis. You need to have at least that for doctors to say you have skeletal fluorosis or may have skeletal fluorosis.

So the final physical manifestation when it's doing that to your bones is the level that, I mean, It's not the final manifestation. That osteoschlorosis of the spine is not the final manifestation, but it's part of that clinical spectrum. But what research shows over the past 40-plus years is that the people with skeletal fluorosis manifests very different radiological signs. Some people will have the osteoscarosis in the spine early up. on, some people won't have it at all. Some people, the primary manifestation of skeletal fluorosis will be osteoarthritis of the knees

and there won't be this osteoschlorosis of the spine. So the problem that we have is we have a diagnostic standard that we know will not identify skeletal fluorosis in many people who have the condition. You cannot rely on that test to accurately identify people who have skeletal fluorosis. So we essentially have no idea, as we sit here today, we have no idea how many people in the United States have some form of skeletal fluorosis. I mean, by the EPA standard, this crippling skeletal fluorosis, it's almost like saying, it's almost like you take alcohol. unless you are passed out in your car in a ditch, then anything before that,

if you're swerving the lines, if you're firing shots with your friends at the bar, if you can't walk straight, you're good, but that's the standard there. It seems absolutely ridiculous that this is the standard of safety science in America today. Right. I mean, if you're only protecting against the most severe form

of chronic poisoning, then by definition you are not protecting people from the adverse effects of the substance. And a similar situation used to apply with lead, okay, another toxic substance. And in the 60s and 70s, the view of the medical establishment and our safety standards was this until you have overt lead poisoning

like where you like often the gums would turn blue but overt lead poisoning you're not you're nothing to worry right you're good yeah and so it's a very

crude way of of assessing the safety of a chemical And again, that safety standard for fluoride. So with lead, we now have much more refined, much more sophisticated safety standards to protect people against the subtler effects of lead exposure,

like reduced IQ. We have safety standards now that do that for lead. And it's almost like a PR thing. Lead is a buzzword. Oh, don't have your kids get any type of lead exposure. But fluoride, it's like, well, maybe we'll get around and get in a filter in the house, honey. Right.

And so with fluoride, we still have. have the safety standard based on crippling skeletal fluorosis. That is the government safety standard for fluoride, still in 2024. And you know, in 2006, the National Research Council, which is part of the National Academies of Science, did a comprehensive review on the science of the toxicology of fluoride. And the NRC concluded in 2006

that this safety standard based on crippling is unsafe. The safety center is too high, and it needs to be lowered. It's currently four parks per million. The NRC told the EPA you need to lower this standard. And 18 years later, EPA has still not done anything about it. I want to read something from the 80s. You had the NIH, they convened, and they talked about that standard. And it was, again, a candid discussion. You have this talk, and this is a jaw-dropping admission. Someone says in here, I believe it's Dr. Wallach, he says, you would have to have rocks in your head, in my opinion, to allow your child much more than two parts per million. What did they do after that? Right. So Dr. Wallach was part of a

committee of doctors that the Surgeon General's Office convened at the request of the EPA to advise EPA on what the safety standard should be. And after Dr. Wallach said that statement right there, Dr. Roe, another doctor on the committee, said, I think we would all agree with that. So Dr. Wallach says, you need to have rocks in your head to allow your kid much more than two parts per million. Dr. Roe responds, yeah, I think we'd all agree with that. And yet the EPA set the standard at twice that level, at four parts per million. So Dr. Wallach, the expert that EPA is, consulting with to advise the agency says you'd need to have rocks in your head to you to have a standard higher than two parts per million and EPA goes okay we'll make it four parts per million twice as high

this is reckless i mean it's just regulatory recklessness is is only a way to describe this i want to talk about something that you had sent over as well some information as i was preparing for this entire show i just did a segment on alzheimer's and the dominant theory of alzheimer's this amyloid beta plaque is in the brains of people with Alzheimer's, and that's where all the drug development is going towards. And they're finding out that this may not be the direction we thought it was. So it's back to square one, really, for Alzheimer's. And you sent over a clip, and I watched it,

and it really set off a light bulb in my head. And I want to show the viewers that. This is during your deposition, and you ask about the brain effects of fluoride exposure. I want people to take a look at this. The next paragraph begins. Fluorides also increase the production of free radicals in the brain through several different biological pathways.

These changes have a bearing on the possibility that fluorides act to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Did I read that correctly? Yes. And CDC agrees with that finding of the toxicologic literature. Yes. Now, this is Casey Hannon, the director of the Division of Oral Health, at the CDC.

That's right. So that's the director of the oral health division at the CDC, which is the division of the CDC which aggressively promotes fluoridation. What I did there is I read for him one of the findings from the National Research Council's 2006 report. And as you can see, he agreed with that finding that in animal studies, fluoride causes changes in the brain that parallel and sort of mimic some of the changes that we see in the human brain with dementia.

And there is, you know, on this issue, you know, a lot of the focus at our trial was on early life exposures to fluoride, prenatal exposures and infant exposures to fluoride. And there's a lot of concern with that because of the vulnerability of the developing brain. But we also had evidence at trial that the elderly brain is also vulnerable to fluoride's impact on the brain. Well, this, when I hear that, my question is, why aren't kids coming up with Alzheimer's? Why aren't we seeing these problems in kids? Why is it the elderly?

Well, the, I would say that there's various mechanisms and various reasons why the elderly brain is, has a unique vulnerability to fluoride's effects. And I'll talk about a couple of those. The first is, you know, we've been talking about the bone. We've been talking about how fluoride can cause various bone effects because it accumulates in the bone. And as I mentioned earlier, that is in part, the bone sequestering fluoride is in part a defense mechanism.

Yeah, it's a sponge. And it even looks like a sponge too. Right. But one of the problems we have is as you get older for women after menopause, the bones start to break down. Okay? some of our density in our bones. And as part of that process, the fluoride that has been sequestered over time, the fluoride

that has accumulated in the bone for decades starts to get released back into the blood. So you start to see an increase in your blood fluoride levels in your 50s, 60s, 70s, and later. So you start to have more systemically available fluoride. in your body. And sort of during that same time frame, you also start to see declining kidney function. And obviously... Declining ability to filter.

Right. So then you lose some of the efficiency at removing fluoride from your body, which again, contributes to higher circulating levels of fluoride in your body. So there's a double negative there. It's coming out of the bones and you can't get it out. Right. And then we also see that there is an increased permeability of the blood-brain barrier. Now, the blood-brain barrier plays a very important role in keeping toxicants out of the brain.

It blocks most chemicals from getting into the brain, which is a really good thing. We don't want toxic chemicals getting to the brain. But as you age, and in the elderly years, that barrier starts to degrade. And so the chemicals that are circulating in your body start to have more access to the brain. So with fluoride, what's concerning is we know that in animal studies, if you give fluoride to animals in well-controlled laboratory conditions, you absolutely see damage to the brain. the brain cells. No question about it. I mean, the studies are voluminous, no question. And some of the changes that you see in the brains of animals look a lot like changes in the brain that you see with patients with dementia. And so, you know, there's an increased access to the brain in the

elderly years. And so I think there is a reason for concern on that point, the neurological potential. And I want to ask you about the thyroid, too, because a lot of people present day are struggling with thyroid issues. And it was known in 1968 in the Merck Manual that given fluoride to people actually lower the functioning of their fluorides. So people with hyper thyroidism, overactive thyroid, you give people fluoride and it slows it down. So why, obviously I'm asking a loaded question here, but is there effects of fluoride when it's given to the water and we can't control the dose to people? Right. So when people think about fluoride, we typically think of it as a drug for preventing tooth decay or treating tooth decay.

And what's not as well known is what you just pointed to, which is back in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, there were doctors in Europe and South America who used fluoride as a drug to lower thyroid activity in patients with hyperthyroidism. So these are people whose thyroid is like in overdrive. And so in patients with hyperthyroidism, you want to therapeutically lower thyroid function. That will provide a medical benefit to those patients. And fluoride was prescribed for that purpose. Now, the concern with fluoride has long been.

Well, if fluoride lowers thyroid function in patients with hyperthyroidism, could it also be lowering thyroid function and people with normal thyroid or people with low hypothyroid, right? And we now have studies, animal studies,

as well as studies in human populations, linking fluoride exposure, including at low levels with hypothyroidism, underactive thyroid. I think most compelling is a study published last year in Canada, which found that there was a significant correlation

between fluoridated water and hypothyroidism in pregnant moms. And hypothyroidism is a particular problem if you have it during pregnancy, because it's known that that can affect the child's mental development. It can cause permanent deficits in the child's IQ. It can also cause other neurological problems. So that's not the only study that has linked fluoridation with hypothyroidism.

There was another large study from the UK in 2015 by Peckham at all, which found a significant association between fluoridated water and hypothyroidism in England. So it's a major red fluoridivism. flag today that we should be concerned about, which is, you know, fluoride's impact on the thyroid gland. Oh, Michael, it's wonderful to see your passion on this topic. I wish all lawyers could be as passionate as you are with topics of health that are affecting the public the way fluoride is.

I wish we had an army of people, and I know you have joined with Aaron Siri, and you're part of the partner on that law firm. And I want to share with you an early book I purchased. around, I think, 2011 or so, it actually brought it with me here, just to bring it out, is it's the case against fluoride. And I looked at the author, and I saw someone named Paul Connett, Ph.D. And is there any relation there to yourself? Yes, Paul Conant is my father.

And we have worked very closely together for quite some time on the fluoride issue. Yeah, yeah. And I want to just show people a clip of your father was out there. you know, over a decade ago, really trying to champion this issue. And a lot of pushback at that time, a lot of people weren't ready to hear it. So take a look at this. Fluoride is a part of a compound. The element is fluorine when it combines with other elements, it becomes fluoride.

And the thing that got me going 20 years ago on this issue is the fact that the level of fluoride in mother's milk is extremely low. So much so that a bottle-fed infant today in a fluoridated community, is getting 250 times more fluoride than nature intended. We have 43 studies, Ken, which shows a lowering of IQ associated with fairly modest exposure to fluoride. Those studies were done in communities with high natural levels of fluoride in China, India, Iran, and Mexico. It's a topical mechanism.

It works on the outside of the tooth, not from inside the body. In fact, in 1999, the center of disease control admitted that they thought that the floor, fluoride had to be ingested before the tooth had erupted. So babies needed it early to protect the enamel under the gums. But they said in 1999, not enough fluoride actually gets into the enamel that way. And the predominant mechanism of action is topical. It works on the outside of the tooth, not from inside the body.

And that removed the whole rationale for water fluoridation. Because if it works on the outside of the tooth, we've got fluoridated toothpaste, mouthwashes, readily available. And use that and spit it out this way you avoid exposing all the other tissues in the body, including the brain, the bone, the thyroid system, and so on, and you're not forcing it on people that don't want it. And that's the real problem with fluoridation. It's a violation of the individual's right to inform consent to treatment.

Growing up in the 80s, my dad had this big metal water distiller, and it was just known. You just drink the water that comes out of there if you're going to drink water. I really understand why, but how was it growing up in your household? What was the conversations around the dinner table like? Well, we didn't, the fluoride issue didn't come into our lives until somewhat later. It was when I was in college and our town of Canton, New York, was considering whether we should stop our fluoridation program. And my father, at that time, my father's an environmental toxicologist, and he's worked for many years on the adverse effect. of certain chemicals like dioxin and furins and heavy metals,

he was skeptical that fluoride is a problem. He always thought that, you know, the people opposed to fluoridation were kind of like, you know, kind of nuts. And he thought that they were making some basic elemental mistakes about fluorine and fluoride. So he was very skeptical. But when he started looking at the literature, at the request of my mom, who is also an environmental health researcher,

He was concerned by what he was seeing at that time. And so it was, you know, in my college years when I started to become aware of it myself. But if I could follow up on a point that my dad made there, which, you know, became part of our lawsuit, which I think is significant. As my dad mentioned there, when we started fluoridation back in the 40s, we believed we needed to swallow fluoride to get the benefit for dental health, okay? systemic effect. And then in 1999, the CDC acknowledged that it's predominantly a topical effect, meaning you don't actually need to swallow this to get the purported benefit. Well, in the court case, I deposed Dr. Casey Hannan, who's the director of CDC's oral health division, and I asked about some of the implications of that. And I said, okay, let's look at a pregnant mom.

And is there any benefit to the baby in the womb? Is there any benefit to the baby, to the baby's teeth from the mom drinking fluoridated water? And his answer was, no, there's no evidence of any benefit of that, right? So no benefit from the prenatal exposure. And then I asked, is there any benefit when the young infant is drinking Florida? Is there any benefit from that? He says, no, there's no benefit there. And what's really important about that is this is a period of life in the womb and early infancy

when there's a heightened vulnerability to fluoride's impact on the brain. Absolutely. And we have now high quality data linking early life fluoride exposure to reductions in IQ. And at that period of life, which is where you have that vulnerability, there is no benefit, no benefit. So what you have is a situation where you have a risk, a clearly identified risk to the brain from prenatal exposure and early infant exposure, and you have no benefit, even according to the CDC's director of oral health, right? And so that to me, because we could sit around and talk about fluoride and teeth, you know, all day, but we now know that for a very vulnerable population in our society, there is no. no benefit from having this in the water, but there is a risk. Right.

So I think it really raises a pretty serious question about this whole program of water floored. You know, the conversation does center around dental health, obviously. So what would you say to those people that say, okay, there may be some toxic effects, but if we take it out, we're going to create another problem with dental health? Well, the first thing I would say is that the vast majority of Western Europe has rejected water fluoridation. They don't add fluoride chemicals to their drinking water. They make fluoride available in toothpaste and other dental products, so people in Europe have ready access to fluoride toothpaste and whatnot.

And what's important there is that World Health Organization data, the World Health Organization compiles tooth decay data for each country. And when you look at the World Health Organization's data, you see that Europe generally has lower tooth decay rates than we do here. in the U.S. and Europe has seen the same decline in tooth decay over the past 50 or 60 years, that dentist here in the U.S. attribute to water fluoridation. So you talk a dentist in the U.S. and they say, well, we had high rates of cavities in the 50s and now we have low rates, and that's because we added fluoride to the water. Well, go to Europe where they didn't

add fluoride to the water and you see the same decline in cavities. So I think that's the first point I would make. The second point is a couple weeks ago, the Cochran collaboration in the U.K., which is the gold standard... One of the most respected collaborations of

almost a lot of independent scientists coming together as well. Right. And so the Cochran Center, they do systematic reviews on the efficacy of medical treatments. And they just did a systematic review on the efficacy of water

fluoridation and they concluded that the evidence today is so weak that they cannot exclude water fluoridation having no benefit at all. Wow. And, you know, one of the reasons they point to for that is that, you know, kids and we all have so much fluoride through our dental products and whatnot that, like, actually getting a benefit from adding more to your water is. you know, it's very questionable whether you get any additional benefit adding it to your water. And I think there's no benefit from adding it to the water when you consider that it's not a systemic benefit.

It's a topical benefit, right? And so, and those are some of the considerations. Yeah, it seems like just a historic blunder at this point. As I sit here and listen to you, and it's not for me to decide that, but I think it's the court of public opinion at this point. Yeah, and hopefully with the court's ruling, finding that water fluoridation poses an unreasonable risk, that EPA will issue a rule that will follow the path of Europe and end water fluoridation. Because we have fluoride and toothpaste for those people who want it.

There's no need to be adding it to drinking water anymore and it's certainly plenty of reason to be concerned about what it could be doing to people's overall health. Michael, how do people follow your work and what do you have plan next? Just if people wanna really get into this issue, where do they go? Well, I encourage people to check out the Fluoride Action Network's website and Twitter page.

Fan is very active in following the latest developments with fluoride. Moms Against Floridation is another organization working to raise awareness about the impacts of fluoride exposure. Moms Against Flordation was also a plaintiff in our court case. So certainly, you know, those are organizations that provide a lot of information. All right. Michael, I'm really excited about the hype and the enthusiasm that this court case, all of the work that you've done has generated throughout the world. I don't, please don't underestimate the impact that you had. And keep up the good work.

We're looking forward to the next steps on this and what you have next. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate it.