It is the trip everyone dreads. It is the appointment no one wants to schedule. It is: going to the dentist. Adults and children can both agree that this is never a desired trip, no matter how many incentives there may be for healthy teeth. However, children of this generation have one more thing to worry about than adults. We have to worry about the “fluoride treatment” at the dentist. Fluoride is a natural mineral found in foods and water that we drink. Basically, the argument pertains to the impact on children’s neurodevelopment. Harvard researchers have found neurotoxicity in adults, which alters the activity of the nervous system and damages nervous tissue. Rodent studies were also conducted, reporting negative impacts on memory. Twenty-seven studies done by Harvard School of Public Health and China Medical University in Shenyang have found that fluoride alters children’s cognitive development. People were alarmed by these findings and more research is currently being done.

Reading this article, however, it shows that none of the human studies completed were done on Americans. The studies turned out to be “differed” or “incomplete.” One study was only done on students up to age fourteen. The article factored in that there is a “speculation” toxic effect could have taken place earlier in the lives of the children. It was reported in this study, fluoride created an average loss in about seven IQ points. A professor of environmental health at HSPH noted, “Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain. The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us.”

This was a review of a study done to investigate fluoride and what it does to memory. This study does not apply to anyone of this generation that is fourteen and up, or from anywhere besides China. Although twenty-seven can seem like an impressive number, especially attached to a Harvard Medical study, it was not as well conducted as it could have been. I take it that there are some people who do not regularly visit the dentist to receive these kinds of treatments anyway. (We are trying to avoid the thirty minutes after a fluoride treatment that forbids food, I know.) So how many people are getting too much fluoride? How many people get these treatments at all? Will we be able to determine from people’s teeth how much more is needed to prevent tooth decay or gum diseases? There can be many other factors that make people’s IQ lower. I am not sure that it is worth stopping fluoride treatments, but maybe it is worth the argument to spend less time in the dentist’s office…