The study used tests and modeling to analyze the impact of fluoridated water on cognitive abilities.
Drinking fluoridated water is not linked to lower cognitive abilities, researchers said in a new study. Critics, meanwhile, said the study had significant limitations that undercut its conclusions.
Students who lived in areas that added fluoride to water tested better in school, John Robert Warren of the University of Minnesota and other researchers said in the paper, published Nov. 19 by Science Advances.
“We find robust evidence that young people who are exposed to typical, recommended levels of fluoride in drinking water perform better on tests of mathematics, reading, and vocabulary achievement in secondary school than their peers who were never exposed to sufficient levels of fluoride,” the researchers said.
“Based on our findings, we conclude that fluoride exposure─at recommended levels─does not negatively impact young people’s cognition. In fact, it may even have modest positive effects,” Warren, who has a doctorate in sociology, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The scores came from 58,270 high school students across 1,020 schools in the United States in 1980.
Tests of memory, fluency, and attention completed by 13,980 of the former students in 2021, when they were about 60, found no differences between people who had lived in areas with fluoridated water and those who had not.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Alzheimer’s Association. Conflicts of interest included one author being paid for work on cognitive assessments by several companies, such as IQVIA.
“NIH funding of a study does not imply that the agency agrees with its findings,” Andrew Nixon, communications director for the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the NIH and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Limitations of the study included not knowing how much fluoride the participants actually consumed, and assuming that children spent their entire childhoods in the same place where they went to high school.
“We now have access to different data that─while representative of only a single state, not the whole country─allows us to overcome both limitations,” Warren said.
