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[Music] hi i'm robert f kennedy jr and i'm very very privileged and proud to have today to have a chance to talk to michael conat who just argued this extraordinary case against fluoridation the northern district of california okay let's talk about your lawsuit set the stage for that because you brought the lawsuit and it was brought under the toxic substance control act oscar and it was a unique provision of toxic that actually allowed you to go to trial and to depose witnesses and actually to depose the agency's cdc and epa which was uh extraordinary it is an extraordinary provision of law it's section 21 of tosca and you're the first one ever to bring it to trial yes tosca was passed in 1976 so 44 years ago and our trial is the first time that a citizen group has ever taken a citizen petition under tosca all the way through to a federal trial tell us what happened from filing the petition right so we filed the petition in 2016 with the epa with the epa and the petition was based on this new data that was that has kind of come about over the past 20 to 30 years on fluoride's effects on the brain oh and at the stage task allows epa to declare that the risks are unreasonable right so tosca gives epa the authority to ban the particular use of any industrial chemical that presents an unreasonable risk to human health so we have been dealing with epa for the past 20 years um trying to get epa to to to implement a safer um water standard for fluoride we've been dealing though with the office of water at epa and they've been dragging their feet for years and haven't really responsibly acted to protect the public so this act tosca allowed us to sort of bypass this kind of you know the the foot dragging at the office office of water and go to the separate office at epa and this act gives epa the authority to straight up ban fluoridation if it presents an unreasonable risk so in our petition in 2016 we compiled over 300 studies that have both animal studies and human studies which have found associations between fluoride exposure and damage to the brain and it's more than an option if you can show that it does indeed present an unreasonable risk they have to ban it well they have to take some action to eliminate the risk so our argument is if there's not if fluoridation chemicals present an unreasonable risk when they're added to drinking water the the obvious way to eliminate that risk is just don't add the chemicals to water so i think that's the you know if epa fine if the court finds that there's an unreasonable risk i think that's the obvious answer for the epa they need to ban it so ebay said no epa looking at 300 studies that you brought to them right the epa denied the petition and we then exercised the right afforded by the statute to go to federal court and it allowed us to introduce evidence into the record that wasn't yet available when we filed our petition in 2016. at epa when it came to the trial refused to call its own scientists or any of the scientists from the federal and instead hired an industry consultant firm the epa does have experts at the agency on fluoride but the epa did not name any of those experts as experts in this case instead they retained experts from exponent some call them rented white coats for the chemical industry monsanto dow 3m syngenta pesticide manufacturers routinely go to exponent to basically give their chemicals a clean bill of health i was quite stunned to see that epa would go to exponent to defend fluoridation and not go to any of its own scientists um and like as you noted at trial we called as witnesses epa's actual in-house experts on fluoride and we asked them for their assessment of the new data on fluoride neurotoxicity and dr christina thayer who is currently the director of the integrated risk information system iris at epa she testified that yes fluoride damages the brain in animal studies and the animal data supports the biological plausibility of fluoride causing neurotoxic effects in human beings that was epa's own scientist in this case we also deposed joyce donahue who is the um the chief scientist on fluoride at the office of water you would agree that this study right here adds further reason why we need to do a reassessment of the fluoride safety standards in the united states i think it's a reason for doing not just the united states i think it's a reason for doing an update to the fluoride assessment everywhere well for anybody who's interested in fluoride and the need for regulation of fluoride exposure right and anyone interested in making sure that um fluoride is safe for consumption that people are not overexposed right okay the fluoride standards today are all based on this notion that the most sensitive effect of fluoride exposure on human health is is crippling bone damage and a severe it's called severe dental fluorosis which is this very extensive brown and black staining of the tooth enamel that currently those effects crippling skeletal fluorosis and severe dental fluorosis are currently considered by the federal government to be the most sensitive effects of fluoride exposure meaning until you suffer one of those effects you can't be harmed by fluoride exposure can't be harmed and what dr donahue admitted in this case is actually these new studies on fluoride in the brain warrant a whole reassessment of this entire paradigm that we have with fluoride this notion that the bone and the teeth are the most sensitive parts of the body to fluoride exposure and i think that's a really important admission and i think it highlights that we are reaching a i think a turning point in how we approach fluoride fluoride intake fluoride exposure how we safely use this chemical for whatever beneficial properties it might have and you got the same kind of damning admissions from the cdc scientists of course well the cdc the deposition of the cdc was very helpful for our case it's correct to say that cdc does not have any data to any data on the tolerable upper fluoride intake for neurotoxic effects for infants yes okay and you see how the definition also includes toddlers so cdc does not have any data on the tolerable upper fluoride intake for neurotoxic effects on toddlers that's true okay and you see how the definition also includes children yes so cdc does not have any data on the tolerable upper fluoride intake for neurotoxic effects on children right as stated in our response to the issue on 10 and 11 we don't conduct research ourselves related to tolerable upper like tolerable upper fluoride intake again that's under the jurisdiction of epa's drinking water and they set maximum and minimum containment levels about notifying people when levels are exceeded okay and cdc as you see here today is not aware of any data in the published literature that would define the tolerable upper fluoride intake for neurotoxic effects on children for children as a rep of cdc to my knowledge we don't have any knowledge about that okay they admitted that they don't have any safety data on fluoridation and the brain fluoridation and iq fluoridation and neurological health they said epa takes care of that well epa also didn't have any safety data on fluorination in the brain in this case in fact one of the notable things in this case is i asked the epa to identify every primary study that demonstrates or supports the neurological safety of prenatal fluoride exposure epa identified one study but it was a study by phyllis molyneux from 1995 which actually shows that prenatal fluoride exposure is neurotoxic and even epa's experts in this case admitted that the mullinic study shows neurotoxicity from fluoride exposure so the one study the one study that epa identified to demonstrate the safety of prenatal exposure actually shows neurotoxic effects so but going back to the cdc deposition the cdc representative admitted they have no safety data on neurological health for fluoride and i i asked the cdc rep about the nrc report seen in 2006 the national revolution okay the the national research council which is a you know authoritative institution in this country for scientific research 2006 the nrc published a landmark report on floyd toxicity about 500 pages and that report really is what got the scientific community interested in this notion of fluoride neurotoxicity and the nrc called the scientific community to do more research more studies to better understand how fluoride may be affecting the brain at lower levels such as we add to water based on the concerns that the nrc was expressing here both in the neurotoxicity review and the endocrine review there were some big potential problems from fluoride exposure that needed to be investigated right i i would agree with you there okay the nrc looked at this this new animal data this new toxicologic data which is which was consistently finding that animals exposed to fluoride have damage in the brain various neurochemical and anatomical effects and the nrc concluded that fluoride does damage the brain in animal studies and i asked a cdc representative about the nrc's findings i walk through them i go i read the various findings from the nrc that fluoride causes changes that are similar to the changes seen in humans with dementia and i asked them does the cdc agree with this finding and you see the next highlighted portion in that paragraph i do it reads the substantial enhancement of reactive microglia the presence of stained intracellular neurofilaments and the presence of igm observed in rodents are related to signs of dementia in humans the magnitude of the changes was large and consistent among the studies did i read that correctly yes and cdc agrees with the nrc that this is a correct summary of the hazard correct so cdc agrees with nrc that it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means yes cdc in connection with the intergovernmental work group the cdc accepts all of the findings of the nrc that fluoride does damage the brain and animals the cdc agrees with that accepts those findings i think so we we played that testimony at trial so you got cdc you got a epa and the fda and fda and then you had the two scientists who are superstar scientists proof of bruce lamphere who i've worked with for many many years at howard who they're conducting the nih these huge multi-year longitudinal nih studies that found profound neurological damage right and and br and dr elaine fear and doctor who who who i have they were what what are called non-retained experts they weren't appearing on behalf of any party in this case but to their credit i think to their to their true credit as scientists they said they felt a a responsibility to explain to the court what their studies have found they considered it a public service and i i have to say i have immense respect for them for doing that and what they explained to the court is they explained the extensive vetting that their methodology underwent when they applied for funding from the nih they explained for the court the extensive peer review that the study underwent when the studies underwent when they submitted it to the scientific journals publication and these studies you know there's been two studies now from the doctor who's birth cohort in mexico city and there's been two studies from the canadian cohort that dr landfield has been working on all four of these studies have found significant and large associations between early life fluoride exposure and adverse neurodevelopmental effects they really focus primarily on exposures during pregnancy prenatal exposures these aren't high they're not looking at high levels you know they're not these studies are not dealing with high levels of fluoride exposure they're looking at the levels of exposure that pregnant women in the united states ingest every day if they live in florida areas so the focus of these nih studies is on so-called optimal levels of fluoride that people ingest in fluoridated areas and they are finding significant and large effects on iq in fact dr landfield and dr who who were both experts on lead and iq both dr who and landfield have done seminal research on lead and iq they testified in this case that the impact of fluoride on iq is on is in the same same range as the impact of lead on iq so i think what we are seeing today and i argued this is one argument i made in this case that this fluoridated the situation today with fluoridated water and brain development is analogous to what we once saw with leaded gasoline and brain development you have a situation where you have hundreds of millions of people being exposed every day to a neurotoxicant that is linked to reduced iq adhd symptoms and other neurodevelopmental harm and i think it's a very serious situation that really requires a rethink about how we use fluoride this isn't and we did not go into this case and didn't argue about banning our fluoride it's about how do we use fluoride safely and i think the writing on the wall today is you have to ban it you have to ban it from the water supply right take it out of the water and for those people who want to use it for dental health purposes they can get it from toothpaste and other individual products which they can spit out and not swallow some of the impacts that you brought out so incredibly skillful is you know the actual mechanism of what happens in the womb when and the women of course you know we all know this they a lot of people think well you only get a few drinks so if you switch to bottled water you won't get exposed but people get exposed when they take a shower they get exposed and when they cook food and if it's in the water supply it's pretty it's impossible to escape with the impacts on the the blood-brain barrier of the fetus um and all these other mechanisms of injury that you uh you really elucidated so skillfully right because fluoride is added to so many water supplies in the united states it doesn't just go into the water it goes into countless processed beverages and processed foods sodas beers um sport drinks you name it i mean fluoridating a lot of medicines in a lot of medicines it's getting into many products because you can't add a chemical to the water of 200 million people and not expect it to get into a lot of other places so there's that concern but in going to your question about sort of some of the mechanisms by which fluoride can cause harm um during the prenatal period and early infancy the in this trial it was an undisputed fact that fluoride gets through the placenta and gets into the fetal brain and it was also an undisputed fact this means that the epa agreed and did not dispute this that the blood brain barrier which is a protective membrane that as healthy adults and and older children keeps most neurotoxicants from getting into the brain it protects us from harmful chemicals but prenatally when you're in the womb and for the first six months of life that blood-brain barrier is not yet developed and so chemical so a child a young child in the womb or a neonatal period if they if they ingest a chemical that's that's toxic to brain development that chemical will get access to the brain and that's the case with fluoridated water and fluoride so that was an important i think piece of this trial is sort of explaining to the court that we need to be very careful about exposing kids in utero and in early infancy to chemicals that are linked to neurotoxic harm and one of the unexpected um impacts that you were able to bring out during the trial was the impact not only on brain development but on thyroid it's well known and well established that if you reduce thyroid hormone levels in pregnant women that that can have an effect on the developing brain the developing brain is very sensitive to even minor changes in thyroid levels and with fluoride fluoride actually back in the 40s and 50s it was prescribed not only as a drug for preventing tooth decay it was also prescribed by some doctors to lower thyroid activity in patients with hyperthyroid with overactive thyroid gland and in those patients fluoride exposure was found to be effective at lowering the thyroid activity so that has created a concern well what about in healthy people people who have normal thyroid could flood exposure reduce the thyroid activity a little bit and certain and actually in the past few years there have been some some significant and large epidemiological studies that have found just that that fluoride exposure from fluoridated water is associated with reductions and impairment in thyroid activity so we it is it was an issue that we discussed at the trial and i do think it can explain in part some of the findings you're seeing on fluoride and iq now the funny thing is about fluoride i mean there's so many analogies in my lifetime about chemicals that all of the industry pushed and at the captive regulatory agencies then signed off on and we can all think many many um other chemicals that sort of went through the same dynamic but fluoride is kind of unique because during the 1950s when i was a kid everybody said you know if the government is telling us this is safe and it must be safe but it was a waste product of aluminum smelting right when we started we started fluoridating the water we started in 1945 first experiment in grand rapids and then it sort of quickly unfolded from there in those early days the chemicals that we used to fluoridate water were both waste products from the aluminum industry as well as the fertilizer industry phosphate and originally the nuclear the refining of uranium right well so where the manhattan project comes in that is the war department manhattan project they used fluoride and they needed fluoride on a massive level to refine the uranium to make the bomb and so what you saw in the 1940s was an explosion in fluorine chemistry by these manhattan project scientists who found out that this fluoride chemical and fluorine had this amazing property of helping to refine the uranium but it was an exceptionally corrosive and dangerous chemical and so you have if you look through the records of the war department you'll see a lot of workers in the manhattan project getting injured and some killed by using these fluoride chemicals and the war department was very concerned about fluoride pollution and we have documents showing that communities downwind of some of the industries producing the fluoride chemicals for the for the manhattan project were suffering serious effects of fluoride pollution vegetation was being damaged cattle were being killed and the war department was very concerned about communities becoming concerned about fluoride pollution and actually intervened to prevent fluoride litigation at that point in time in the 40s so the the general picture that you see when you look at the history and politics of florida it's very clear is that the war the major industries in this country the aluminum industry the steel industry the fertilizer industry and the bomb industry all had very serious fluoride pollution problems and one of the consequences of that is you start to see an effect on the science that was being published at that time and you start to see sort of a suppression of data that indicated harm to human health because that data was damaging to the bottom line of these industries so you sort of see in the early days a corruption of the science and i don't think that has been fully grappled with or understood by the public health community and how did it go from being a waste product all these bad industries to getting in our water well the politics is fascinating and i still think we there's some things we don't know don't understand fully but the public health service did endorse fluoridation in 1950 before a single trial was ever completed for fluoridation so the the public health service was very enthusiastic in endorser of fluoridation before we had any data on safety and that's one of the problems with the early with with fluoridation as we started this program you know this is during the days of better better living through chemistry where we had uh we failed to appreciate sort of the potential unintended consequences of widespread dispersal of toxic chemicals like fluoride it wasn't ultimately a federal mandate it's it was something that was recommended by cdc and the public health agencies but the individual the mandates to actually put it in water supplies came from the state governments and from the local water districts that's correct it's never been nationally mandated federally mandated it's always been up to local communities and states and but at the same time the cdc and the public health services has very actively promoted this policy so i don't think you would see as many communities or states you know fluoridate their water without that sort of national push as we sit here today we are in a situation where a number of states like california mandate fluoridation at the state level so any community in california that has more than 10 000 people hooked up to a water supply has to fluoridate in california and other states have similar mandatory laws are there many water districts that do not use fluoride absolutely portland oregon is the in 2013 voted against fluoridating its water it's the largest city in the united states that does it most big cities in the united states fluoridate their water supplies and when i was growing up we the the toothpaste company is cress and colgate it's that uh advertised that we have fluoride in our toothpaste and that's why it was put in the water for my primarily to stop the development of cavities does it actually reduce cavities well that's a good question so anything good about it well so certainly when we started fluoridating back in the 40s the whole idea was that fluoride is like calcium it's a it's a nutrient it's a it's something that you need to swallow you need to ingest it and if you ingest it it ultimately incorporates into the developing tooth that makes the tooth stronger for life that was the idea you needed to swallow it which is why we added it to water it's why we added it to pills but in 1999 centers for disease control came out with a statement that surprised a lot of people the cdc said actually we were wrong in those early days you don't actually need to swallow fluoride the predominant benefit comes from the topical contact with teeth which you can get by brushing this fluoride on your teeth through toothpaste so i think there's there's certainly evidence that fluoride applied topically is beneficial to some degree in preventing cavities but adding it to water really doesn't make sense because you're adding you're exposing your entire body to something which you don't even need to swallow you can just put it on your teeth and spit it out and most of west most of western europe in fact 90 about 98 of the western european population does not have any fluoride chemicals added to their water they rejected it they have it in toothpaste they have it in dental products they don't have it in their water and world health organization data shows that european countries have just their cavity rates are just as low and often lower than the cavity rates in the united states really that surprises me yeah in fact and in the u.s when i was growing up was regarded as having one of the things that we had better than anybody else we had the best teeth right that's true i mean that's definitely the perception you look at the sort of jokes about the british you know my father's british you know plenty of jokes about the british having horrible teeth but the when you look at the world health organization data what you see is back in the 40s back in the 50s and back in the 60s europe had a massive problem with tooth decay just like the united states did so it wasn't like they've always had low cavity rates they had very high cavity rates but over the past 50 60 years they've seen a massive decline in cavities without adding fluoride to their water so this notion in the united states which is many dentists have that well we used to have a lot of tooth decay in the united states but then we started adding fluid to the water and boom now kids don't have any cavities that notion is just completely tunnel visioned it's it's it's it's it fails to consider the experience of other industrial nations and other western countries tell us we're we're running out of time tell us the current status of the case and what's going to happen now right after we made our closing arguments the court made a number of comments on the record and he um the judge noted that we had presented serious evidence and that this evidence raises serious questions about this policy fluoridation and he also noted that the epa for this three plus years of litigation has used the wrong standard to assess this evidence so he encouraged the parties to see if we could agree to let the epa give this a second look the judge would like the epa to give this evidence a second look using the right standard of review i did explain to the court my apprehension as someone who has tried to get the epa to take this issue seriously for many years um that i have a concern about having this dragged out for years and get you know i don't want to see that happen i think we have enough evidence now to take protective action and i was encouraged that the court responded by saying i'm not thinking about years i'm thinking about months but he does want to see and one of the points the judge should make is you know a lot of the evidence that we presented at trial we didn't present to the epa in our initial petition back in 2016 and that's because all these nih studies have come out subsequent to filing the petition so the judge sort of wants to give the epa another chance at the administrative level to consider those new studies and so we'll see if we can reach an agreement with the epa on that if we can't the judge made it clear that he has the evidence and that he will issue a ruling hey well thank you michael conant um i feel so grateful to you for taking on this battle and then bringing it to the place where you brought and i feel like you spent a lifetime preparing for this and that you executed it perfectly just it was uh it was like picasso is like mozart what you did on that trial and i feel at this point like you can sit back and light a cigar and put your feet on the desk and relax for the rest of your life and that your life was one that was well spent because of what you did in this trial so i want to thank you on behalf of myself and millions of american children and parents who you know who have been poisoned for generations and that i think because of your work um we're going to see an end to this well thank you and it's it is an honor to be here today it really is an honor thank you michael conant and thank you for all of you in the audience for joining us today thank you you