Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
About 90 percent of the fluoride that is added to the water takes the form not of pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride but ... fluorosilicic acid ... This material is a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer manufacturing ... several studies have suggested that this form of fluoride can leach lead from pipes. ...other work shows that children in fluoridated areas have elevated blood lead levels, and fluoride may also increase the absorption of lead into the body... Lead itself is a potent neurotoxin and has been shown to play a role in ADHD.
What is the likelihood that in areas with lower spending on municipal water that lead pipes are still used and they use the cheapest for of fluoridation available?
This freaks me out a little.
For "other nasties" see http://grist.org/living/is-it-safe-to-drink-water-out-of-pla... "Some of the latest research coming out of the NSF project tested several brands of PEX tubing for chemical leaching – and found it."
> Overall state water fluoridation prevalence (not distinguishing between fluoridation types) was also significantly positively correlated with state prevalence of ADHD for all but one year examined. [...] The relationship between fluoride exposure and ADHD warrants future study.
Still, it will be interesting to see what more comes out of this.
Further, your cursory read of the abstract somehow missed the clause "after controlling for socioeconomic status"
This article might hold up, but my past experience with statistics in medical papers does not give me great hope. For a while, my job was to review the math in interesting papers (well, interesting to who ever flagged it) from medical journals. In the three years that I did this, I encountered exactly zero that didn't commit some grave statistical sin.
Even if you have a problem with the stat analysis (i don't), The fact that it's a stronger predictor than SES is quite damning regardless of controls.
Again: the paper might be correct, but past experience has taught me to be skeptical.
I was bothered by this study, and particularly this bit:
"After adjusting for sociodemographics, other drug use and childhood depression, we found no significant associations between lifetime use of psychedelics and increased likelihood of past year serious psychological distress, mental health treatment, suicidal thoughts, suicidal plans and suicide attempt, depression and anxiety."
It seems they test life time usage, yet only "past year" serious psychological distress, mental health treatment, suicidal thoughts, suicidal plans and suicide attempt, depression and anxiety.
Can I get your opinion on whether that "past year" applies to just "serious psychological distress" or all the terms, including: "mental health treatment, suicidal thoughts, suicidal plans and suicide attempt, depression and anxiety".
It would seem to me that "past year" applies to all of the terms. In my opinion the study misses the rather obvious problems that cause somebody to quit psychedelics permanently, allowing them to recover. Those that quit long ago would not report issues because they didn't happen in the immediate 12 month period previous.
Also acquaintances of mine who have ended up permanently hospitalised, are obviously not going to be part of a survey like this.
Do you agree or disagree with any of that?
>Past year mental health indicators new to this study were suicide thoughts, suicide plan...[etc]
So, it looks like 'past year' applies to all of the terms. I think the study was looking at the long term effects, so if people who quit long ago didn't report any issues, that would support the thesis that 'taking psychedelics doesn't affect long term mental health'. I'm generally not a fan of studies about illegal activity that use voluntary surveys, but this one doesn't look poorly run. However, once you start putting maths to psychology, things get weird very quickly and it's difficult to tell what's valid and what isn't.
I find it really objectionable that it's titled:
"Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior: A population study"
while looking at whole lifetime usage and comparing with past year effects.
If there was suicidal behaviour("successful" or otherwise) and mental health problems in the immediate aftermath of taking psychedelics over a lifetime, they don't really have any way of capturing that information unless it's happened in the last 12 months. We agree that the "past year" applies to all of the terms.
Just seems really irresponsible to me, but I'm clearly biased.
I also suspect that fluoridation does not track with socioeconomic status. I mean, look at how Portland Oregon's got rid of fluoridation.
Nevertheless, reading the article, it does look like they have rat studies that show that fluoride in rats causes mental impariment.
Things to note: they soaked cultures of rat hippocampus neurons in various concentrations of sodium fluoride. They didn't make the rats drink fluorinated water. It's difficult for fluoride to cross the blood brain barrier.
From the abstract: "For prenatal exposures, dams received injections (SC) of 0.13 mg/kg NaF or saline on gestational days 14-18 or 17-19. Weanlings received drinking water containing 0, 75, 100, or 125 ppm F for 6 or 20 weeks, and 3 month-old adults received water containing 100 ppm F for 6 weeks."
So...
> Fluoride can readily cross the placenta, accumulate in the infant brain and easily exert neurotoxic effects, such as decreasing norepinephrine in the parietal and occipital lobes, decreasing serotonin in the parietal lobe and increasing serotonin in the frontal and occipital lobes [42-45].
So maybe it passes the blood-brain barrier more easily in infants or in utero?
Also if you search for "rats' in the original article, http://www.ehjournal.net/content/pdf/s12940-015-0003-1.pdf then you'll see them referencing studies that has rats drink or be injected with fluoride. They weren't referencing the study you linked.
Or looking at it another way, my point is that since most correlations like this turn out to both have economic development as a common cause rather than being themselves causally related, I require extraordinary evidence to the contrary before I believe it.
I would guess that this would make it difficult to control for misdiagnosis, and I would also guess that there are a fair number of misdiagnosed kids with ADHD seeing as about 2/3 of them "grow out" of it last time I checked.
(Note: I have ADHD. It was obvious as a kid, but I wasn't diagnosed until I was 24 due to my parents religiosity. I know there are valid childhood diagnoses, and that we've made quite a lot of progress with understanding and being able to diagnose neuropsychiatric disorders. There also seem to be quite a few "social pressure" and "fad" diagnoses of ADHD in the USA -- if this study wants to be taken seriously, they might consider repeating it in other countries.)
[1]: it's classified with critieria since ICD-9, which was defined in 1978.
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The only topic that gets worse comments than science on HN is gender issues.
Edit: and killed by mods. From +25 at the top to the bottom
The feedback from the HN community on science articles is some of the best on the web. It honestly comprises about a third of the reason I visit. I wouldn't know where else to get that.
Granted, I may have a different perspective given that I did a biochem undergrad and can read primary literature. Some of my experience and frustration with the popular media coverage and editorial behavior has given me a lens with which to evaluate coverage of other disciplines. But shouldn't we expect everyone here to have or develop a similar critical thinking patten? Why do we need to treat our community with baby gloves?
There's an analogy to startup investing here. The habit of dismissing the easily dismissable—the obviously lame, the obviously bad idea—guarantees failure even though it's almost always right. This is what the masters of the art keep trying to tell us.
I marked this subthread as off-topic because it's off topic; it doesn't mean we don't agree.
The post has been hammered by both the flamewar detector and a ton of user flags. We turned the former off, but not the latter. Doing more would probably make things worse.
I think you're unfair there. If you want to see a diversity of opinions, that's exactly what we have--the fact that you disagree with one side or the other is quite your own problem.
> For all the intellectual firepower of people in the tech community, there is a curious strain of anti-intellectualism that comes forth in projects like this; an eagerness to discount the expertise of people who have studied a subject for their entire lives, just because they weren't CS majors. It's like trying to send a man to the moon without working with any aerospace engineers. I honestly do not understand it.
At the same time, when I go into forums like these, I'm aware of what kind of crowd I'm going to get: while most people give their off-handed dismissal "Omg, that n size. 120 is way too small for something so important."
What we might need is a general and informal rule that science-based posts should have at least several studies in good standing.
The "truthiness" factor of anything published in Newsweek lies somewhere between Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm.
Any chance I can get a more elaborate correction?
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/the-sanest-arguments...
I understand the whole fluoride issue has been tainted by conspiracy theories, but honestly, it's not that unscientific to think that ingesting a known endocrine disruptor might have a biological effect.
Further, I disagree regarding whether anyone should receive 'the benefit of the doubt'; we should defer to the many public health studies on the benefits of fluoride.
It's in the Newsweek article, which discusses several posible biological mechanisms
for problems from fluoridation, complete with sources, many of which are direct links
to studies. Perhaps read it?
[1] http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11571&page=265