Prominent MD Joins Chorus Demanding Feds Investigate Fluoridation

NEW YORK, April 21, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Prominent physician, Mark Hyman, MD, author of 9 New York Times best-selling books and a Huffington Post medical editor warns that swallowing fluoride poses risks to the brain and thyroid, and that communities of color and underserved communities are disproportionately harmed. Dr. Hyman supports, "federal investigative hearings looking into why our cities and towns are allowed to continue to add fluoride to public water sources and why the whole story about fluorides is only just now coming out," reports the Fluoride Action Network (FAN).

Hyman joins a growing number of health, civil rights, and environmental leaders who are speaking out against the addition of neurotoxic and thyroid disrupting fluoride chemicals to water, including civil rights icon Andrew Young, and well-known environmental activists such as Erin Brockovich, Ed Begley, Jr. and Lois Gibbs.

Andrew Young says, "I formerly was a strong believer in the benefits of water fluoridation for preventing cavities. But many things that we began to do 50 or more years ago we now no longer do, because we have learned further information that changes our practices. So it is with fluoridation."

Erin Brockovich says, "My career has been about making people aware of harmful exposures and the deception that often accompanies those exposures. Drinking water fluoridation is harmful, [but] we've been deceived to believe it is safe."

Ed Begley says, "I'm concerned because there are many studies that indicate an association between lowered IQ and levels of fluoride [in water] which offer no margin of safety to protect all our children…I urge citizens throughout North America to help end this outdated practice of water fluoridation."

Lois Gibbs, says, "We're finding out that the story we were all told about the addition of fluoride to public water systems was not the whole story. . . . We oppose water fluoridation as it harms our health, it harms the environment, and is a textbook case of environmental justice harm affecting low income and families of color."

Dr. Hyman says "There are numerous mechanisms by which uncontrolled dosing of fluorides through water fluoridation can potentially harm thyroid function, the body and the brain…Communities of color and the underserved are disproportionately harmed by fluorides."

Spanish-language station, Telemundo, aired a three-part expose on fluoridation's hazards. LULAC, the nation's largest Latino civil rights organization, calls for an end to the practice.