Deputy Director of the National Poisons Centre blows the lid off fluoridation Jim Mora : Without going through all the debating points as I said is the jury in any sense still out regarding the safety of Fluoride? Dr Michael Beasley: Well I think it is. Jim Mora: Is there never the less still work to be done to investigate neurotoxicity? Dr Michael Beasley: Yeah, I think so Read the transcript here: Joining Jim Mora on the Panel was Dr Michael Beasley on 29 July JM: Dr Michael Beasley is about to join us because a paper in the Lancet and this is only thing we want to ask Dr Michael Beasley. With Fluoride being newly categorised as a neurotoxin a type of chemical that has links to brain damage and IQ loss that further research should now be carried out concerning the possibility of a link between Fluoride and neurological development. And to again say that the American Council on Science and Health says the Lancet paper is just a call for the precautionary principle and it points out there are tens of thousands of chemicals in our environment and our consumer products and if we got rid of the ones that could actually harm us if wed have to abandon our way of life. Dr Michael Beasley joining us now. Medical Toxicologist and Deputy Director of the National Poisons Centre. Good Afternoon Michael. MB: Yes, Good afternoon, Jim. JM: Without going through all the debating points as I said is the jury in any sense still out regarding the safety of Fluoride? MB: Well I think it is. Certainly the question really is the safety of fluoride at what level? I mean if you go, this is toxicology, the sort of basic tenet that one is bred into one really is the fact that the concept of the response is being a function of the dose and really the dose determines a lot of what happens and certainly there is a lot of literature out there which indicates that if you certainly if you give enough fluoride to test animals or someone overdoses on fluoride it has a range of toxic effects. JM: Yes but at the level at which we are administering. What is it between 0.7ppm - 1ppm is it likely to do anyone any harm? MB: Well it seems unlikely. Virtually all the animal studies have been done with levels of drinking water fluoride much much higher than that and most of the epidemiological studies including the one you just mentioned earlier involves a meta analysis out of China and basically the Fluoride levels that they were testing there were sort of 4ppm right up to 10ppm or more so the study that came out of China really doesnt tell us a lot about the risks or otherwise of levels of 1ppm. JM: Okay so if the Lancet research published research is alarmist as its detractors say? MB: Yeah. JM: Is there never the less still work to be done to investigate neurotoxicity? MB: Yeah, I think so. Yes I think even Choi and the authors of the paper sort of say that and there is of course a paper thats come out from New Zealand recently by Jonathan Broadbent and co and they did a study all be bit with not a massive numbers but they did as part of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study. They did a review of people in Dunedin who were exposed to fluoridated water and compared them to those who werent exposed to the fluoridated water and they found no significant difference in the IQ between the two groups. So I think studies like that which are human studies which are dealing with relevant levels of Fluoride in drinking water as opposed to much higher levels in China have a role to play and it would be good to see a few more studies of that type. radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20143545 from 18m18s
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 05:47:25 +0000
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