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FDA's Fluoride Toothpaste Warning and Children in the Womb Fluoride toothpaste has a FDA-mandated warning: "If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away." "Children under 6 years of age: use a pea-sized amount" of toothpaste that contains approximately 0.25 mg of fluoride. When a child swallows 0.25 mg of fluoride, about 85% of the ingested fluoride is absorbed = 0.21 mg of fluoride. Exposure levels are measured in milligrams of fluoride per kilogram of weight, therefore a 5-year old 20 kg child's "intake level" of fluoride = 0.01 mg/kg. Eight cups of US tap water "optimally" fluoridated at 0.7 mg/l contains 1.33 mg of fluoride. About 85% is absorbed, so 1.13 mg enters the bloodstream. Late in the third trimester, the 3 kg baby is 5% of his mother's weight (60 kg). If that fluoride is evenly distributed* then the unborn child takes in 5% of 1.13 mg = 0.056 mg of fluoride. The fetal fluoride "intake level" (0.056/3) = 0.019 mg/kg: twice the 5-year old's "contact a Poison Control Center" level. Worse: this overdose is daily for the months its developing brain is most vulnerable to developmental neurotoxicants, which fluoride is. The genesis and wiring of the human brain during fetal development is one of the most remarkable feats in all of biology. During the last trimester, dynamic changes occur in the two brain areas most important to cognitive processes: the cerebellum whose surface area increases 30-fold; and the cerebral cortex whose white matter undergoes striking changes. – Pregnancy and Fluoride Do Not Mix (page 5) Pregnant women are still being advised to: Drink fluoridated water throughout the day or to swallow fluoride supplements. They're told to do this, despite that last year a major study (Bashash et al. 2017) funded by the National Institutes of Health confirmed that higher levels of fluoride in pregnant women are associated with lower IQs in their children. The 12-year study was conducted largely by specialists in the field who did similar studies on other neurotoxicants. In March 2018, the authors further concluded: "Our findings add to our team's recently published report on prenatal fluoride and cognition at ages 4 and 6-12 years by suggesting that higher in utero exposure to fluoride has an adverse impact on offspring cognitive development that can be detected earlier, in the first three years of life. In light of of this new evidence, telling pregnant women to consume fluoride in water or in supplements is a human rights violation. Worse, it is human experimentation. *Although a best-case (least-dose) scenario that ingested fluoride is evenly distributed to mother and child, it is unknown. Also, animal research shows that fluoride concentrations can vary in different parts of the body. For example, in immature ducks it averaged 201 mg/kg in their skulls, 189 mg/kg in their brains, and 814 mg/kg in their pineal glands. (Table 1 for immature females and males.) "Compared with humans, the pineal gland of adult ducks had an almost 40 % lower concentration." The brain's pineal gland is the central structure in the circadian system that governs most aspects of physiology and behavior in mammals, including sleep-wake cycles. The National Research Council said, "Fluoride is likely to cause decreased melatonin production and to have other effects on normal pineal function, which in turn could contribute to a variety of effects in humans." It's estimated that children may ingest up to 40% of their toothpaste. Fluoride may accumulate in a child's pineal gland, as it's known to do in adults, especially since the pineal gland is outside the blood-brain barrier. The prevalence of circadian-rhythm sleep disorders tends to be much greater in young children with learning disabilities: "about 86% of children aged up to 6 years." – Bruni and Novelli (2010) FDA Confirms Ineffectiveness of Fluoridated Water After reviewing the best available evidence, FDA would only allow this very weak Health Claim for Fluoridated Water: "Drinking fluoridated water may reduce the risk of tooth decay." OMG! The chance of getting a cavity might be reduced. The same can be said for drinking clean water.