Belchertown Bulletin October 2017

Belchertown Bulletin October 2017

Mexico study: Prenatal fluoride exposure reduces children’s intelligence

   A study of nearly 300 mother-child pairs in Mexico has found that children born to mothers with higher levels of fluoride in their urine during pregnancy suffered greater loss of intelligence as measured by intelligence test scores.

   The authors emphasized that the level of fluoride that caused the neurotoxic effect is not high, and is found in the broader public.

   In their paper, published in the September issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, the authors write, “higher levels of maternal urinary fluoride during pregnancy (a proxy for prenatal fluoride exposure) that are in the range of levels of exposure in other general population samples of pregnant women as well as nonpregnant adults were associated with lower scores on tests of cognitive function in the offspring at 4 and 6–12 y old.”

   The authors’ failed to note that several previous studies found a neurotoxic effect from fluoride levels in water below the level the US Environmental Protection Agency says is safe.

   Most of the authors of the report are based at researcher centers in Canada and the USA. While the article discusses the regulation of toxins in water in the USA, it says nothing about the control of such chemicals in Mexico, where fluoride is not added to the drinking water.

   Coverage of this story can be found at the CNN and Newsweek websites.

Public Health researchers “sell” their goals to the public

   Most public health researchers focus their advocacy on the need to “sell” their goals to politicians and the public rather than facilitate public understanding and participation in public health matters, according to a new study in Social Science and Medicine.

   The authors of the report, K.E. Smith and E.A. Stuart of the University of Edinburgh, interviewed 147 health professionals, asking them, “What role, if any do professionals concerned with public health feel researchers ought to play in advocacy?”

   They concluded, “Two deeply contrasting conceptualizations of ‘advocacy’ exist within public health, the most dominant of which centers on strategies for ‘selling’ public health goals to decision-makers and the wider public. This contrasts with an alternative (less widely employed) conceptualization of advocacy as ‘facilitational’. This approach focuses on working with communities whose voices are often unheard/ignored in policy to enable their views to contribute to debates.”