USA - Marilyn Griffith: The lead-fluoride connection

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Marilyn Griffith, of Rutland, a retired Proctor Elementary School teacher and special educator at Black River High School, who now substitutes with Head Start, EEE, and the Northwest Elementary School in Rutland.

Lead in our children’s drinking water at their schools is not acceptable. As a certified special educator and teacher for 40 years I worked with many more children at the end of my career who needed special ed services than when I started teaching. It is my position that exposure to the neurotoxin hydrofluorosilicic acid in Rutland’s water directly contributes to the need for more remedial instruction and specialized services.

In May 2000, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility published a report titled “In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development.” The authors suggest from their studies on animal and human populations that fluoride exposure may have adverse impacts on the developing brain. In 2006, the well known medical journal Lancet published an article “Developmental Neurotoxicity of Industrial Chemicals.” It says that silicofluorides (fluorosilicic acid) as water fluoridating agents are directly connected with greater uptake of lead into the bloodstream. The fluorosilicic acid added to Rutland’s water increases leaching of lead from brass fittings as indicated by Masters and Coplan in their studies with Brazilian researchers published in the April 2010 journal Toxicology. Citizens of Rutland can refer to www.fluoride.org/articles/iq-facts/ for more information regarding fluoride. Read the article on reduced IQ here.

In September 2018, the Vermont Department of Health released a pilot report on Vermont schools that tested lead in the water supply of communities. There was never any mention of whether the water was fluoridated or further treated with the chemical chloramine. That makes the report incomplete to me. Ignoring recent reviews on fluoridation disturbs me because the report misses a vital relationship between fluoridation and lead.

The authors R.M.M. Sawan, G.A.S. Leite, and M.C.P. Saraiva state in their article “Fluoride Increases Lead Concentrations in Whole Blood and in Calcified Tissues from Lead-Exposed Rats” that fluoride could enhance the brain damage caused by lead exposure. The authors found that exposure of rats to a combination of fluoride and lead in their drinking water increased the uptake of lead into blood some threefold over exposure to lead alone.

Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine is not looking out for our children’s health. He needs to become more informed and read up on new studies that show that fluoride consistently increases lead levels in children living in water-fluoridated communities. It is well established that even very low levels of lead exposure can compromise intellectual development and behavior of young children.