Brain drain forum

A few days back an article was published in the US stating that the Food and Drug Administration indeed had restrictions on the use of mercury fillings ready for publication in 2011 but this was stopped by forces outside of the FDA:

” The proposal, approved by top FDA officials in late 2011 and kept secret since, would have told dentists they should not use mercury fillings in cavities in pregnant women, nursing moms, children under 6 and people with mercury allergies, kidney diseases or neurological problems.”
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article28017817.html

A few hours ago the American Dental Association responded, https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article28446745.html

Kind regards
/Ulf B

The FDA has decided not to make any major changes to its recommendations regarding dental mercury fillings, http://www.orthodonticproductsonline.com/2015/01/fda-updates-dental-amalgam-consumer-advisory/

This is the response from International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, IAOMT,
http://iaomt.org/wp-content/uploads/Mercury-Lawsuit-Press-Release-1_28_15-Final.pdf

Let me just point out that a new paper on mercury/dental amalgam and neurobehavioral effects in genetically susceptible children has just been published ahead of print.

Woods et al strengthens the evidence of a substantial genetically susceptible subpopulation,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X14001399

As you can tell from earlier postings I have been interested in CNS-affecting and other chemicals used in dentistry. It has been surprising to find the scarcity of information on ingredients in dental materials used daily all over the world. We know more about ingredients in cosmetics than in dental materials.

In the field of dentistry it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to disclose ingredients he think might be of importance to the dentist or the patient. The only mandatory legal regulation to my knowledge is that the manufacturer must provide a Materials Safety Data Sheet or MSDS. This is mandatory for any chemical product and lists ingredients that might be hazardous during transport, handling or in the case of fire. It does in no way take into account that the product is intended for use inside the body.

Most manufacturers provide an MSDS and nothing else. The result is that a majority of the ingredients are not disclosed. The database DMN (only in Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish unfortunately) said to provide information on ingredients of dental materials is a prime example on this lack of information, http://www.dmn.odont.umu.se/

This might serve as an example, http://www.dmn.odont.umu.se/default.aspx?id=4709#

Faced with the pressure to phase down the use of dental amalgam the Council of European Dentists, CED, has made the following statement also giving evidence of the fact that dental products of unknown content are marketed within the EU:

“3. The profession urges manufacturers to fully declare the chemical composition of the alternative materials;”

“6. In the best interest of the patient, dental professionals should consider not choosing to use a material where the manufacturer has not made a full qualitative declaration of its chemical composition.”
http://www.eudental.eu/library/104/files/CED-DOC-2013-075-FIN-E-20131126-1916.pdf

Back in 1990 I wrote a report on endodontic materials and medications (in Swedish unfortunately) finding a number of questionable ingredients including arsenic, cadmium, creosote of wood tar, phenol, lead oxide, chloroform and much more. I was told by the Swedish dental establishment at the time that many of these were no longer used even if they could still be present in individual patients. This was not true seen from a European perspective. Some of these dental materials and medications are still on the European market to this day. 24 years after my report the European Medicines Agency has recently acted on arsenic containing products used in dentistry,
http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/news_and_events/news/2014/04/news_detail_002087.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac058004d5c1

The disclosure of the content of dental products must in my opinion be made mandatory as a first step towards removing unsuitable products from the market. Unfortunately the dental community has not been able to do that on their own as the example above shows.

Cochrane has corrected and published a new version of the paper “Direct composite resin fillings versus amalgam fillings for permanent or adult posterior teeth” due to new information provided. See mine and their comments at the end of the link below,
http://cochraneohg.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/amalgam-fillings-versus-resin-composites/#comment-922

The re-published version,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD005620.pub2/abstract

Mothers and Children Overdosed by Synergism of Fluoride and Acetaminophen

1) In the study published this week involving 64,322 children and mothers, children whose mothers used acetaminophen during pregnancy were at a 13% to 37% higher risk of later receiving a hospital diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorder, being treated with ADHD medications or having ADHD-like behaviors at age 7.

The longer acetaminophen was taken — that is, into the second and third trimesters — the stronger the associations. The risks for hyperkinetic disorder/ADHD in children were elevated 50 percent or more when the mothers had used the common painkiller for more than 20 weeks in pregnancy.

Acetaminophen can cross the placental barrier, a senior author noted, and it is plausible that acetaminophen may interrupt fetal brain development by interfering with maternal hormones or through neurotoxicity, such as the induction of oxidative stress, which can cause the death of neurons.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-02/uoc–uoa022414.php

2) The authors of a 2012 study published in Pharmacological Reports concluded: “Our study demonstrated that subchronic treatment with fluoride and/or acetaminophen in sub-toxic doses induced oxidative and nitrosative stress in the liver and kidney of male and female rats…

“The most important finding of our study is, demonstrated for the first time, synergism of fluoride and acetaminophen in the kidney of male and female rats as compared to groups treated separately with fluoride and acetaminophen expressed as an enhancement of oxidative/nitrosative stress. Our results demonstrate a greater risk of kidney damage during co-exposure to both xenobiotics. Additionally, our experiment shows that acetaminophen significantly decreases urinary fluoride excretion.”

http://www.if-pan.krakow.pl/pjp/pdf/2012/4_902.pdf

3) A 2009 study in Pediatrics looked at the prevalence of over-the-counter and prescription medication use among US children <12 years of age.

"Among OTC products in our survey, acetaminophen alone, ibuprofen alone, and multivitamins were widely used among all age groups, with acetaminophen leading the list for children <2 years of age."

Among prescription medications, multivitamins with fluoride were among the most frequently used products overall.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/2/446.full.pdf

While there are chemical exposures which are known to harm the developing human brain and to cause autism, prenatal ultrasound is probable cause of the rise in autism spectrum diseases over the last two decades.

Prenatal ultrasound is considered safe because it has not (sufficiently) been proved unsafe. Rather than repeat the info here, let me point you to my website which has a summary on the home page with links to over 50 papers relating to the topic of prenatal ultrasound and brain damage. http://www.ultrasound-autism.org

Dr. Pasko Rakic at Yale is nearing completion of a study with primates. His earlier study showed the positioning of neurons in mouse brains could be affected by prenatal ultrasound exposure. http://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full

The major CDC and NIH epidemiological studies are looking at ultrasound, but it was added as a suspect after the data collection was underway and may be of little value.

Aircraft: Contaminated Cabin Air

In 2002 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stated (1):

FAA rulemaking may not have kept pace with public expectation and concern about air quality and does not afford explicit protection from particulate matter and other chemical and biological hazards

On 20-21 April 2005 the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) Air Safety and Cabin Air Quality International Aero Industry Conference was held at Imperial College (London).

In his closing address BALPA General Secretary Jim McAuslan said:

“This conference has been about something that has been under the radar in this industry for a number of years. The problem of oil leaks in aircraft…

Is there a problem?

The answer is quite clear – Yes.

Story after story, study after study, testimony after testimony from across the world and from other industries with similar exposures, show that chemicals exposures of the type experienced by workers in the aviation industry cause health problems.

There is a workplace problem resulting in chronic and acute illness amongst flight crew (both pilots and cabin crew).

Further, we are concerned the passengers may also be suffering from similar symptoms to those exhibited by flight crew.

Further, pregnant passengers are probably most at risk.”

It has become increasingly obvious that there is a fundamental design flaw in jet aircraft design. With the introduction of high by-pass jet engines it was decided that the previously used separate ram air provision of cabin air could be changed to tapping such air from the engine compressor system via medium and high stage bleeds, thereby achieving savings in both cost and weight. The breathing air supply still being delivered to the air-conditioning system unfiltered and only controlled for temperature and pressure. Only in the new Boeing 787 is the breathing air supplied by bleed free methods.

In 2006 Professor Chris Winder reviewed the subject (2) and the British Medical Association published its booklet: The impact of flying on passenger health – A guide for healthcare professionals 2006(3). At Appendix IV: “The regulations lay down specific requirements in some areas, such as minimum cabin air pressure, maximum levels of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and ozone, and minimum ventilation flow rates. There is also a general requirement that the crew and passenger compartment air must be free from harmful or hazardous concentrations of gases or vapours (JAR 25.831).”

and yet there is currently no monitoring or control of CO2, CO and Ozone, to say nothing of ‘harmful or hazardous concentrations of gases or vapours’.

On 1 October 2011 this situation was discussed at the Inhalable Toxic Chemicals on Board Aircraft Conference at Cranfield University and the papers subsequently published in the Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, Vol 11, No 4:

http://www.itcoba.net/

Professor Jeremy Ramsden, who chaired the conference, wrote a very helpful scientific overview of the present state of knowledge concerning neurotoxins in aircraft cabin air:

http://pages.unibas.ch/biosys/27RA11A.pdf

which concluded:

“Anything that promotes neural degeneration is, however, a matter of particular concern because our abilities to cope with the demands placed on us by high technology (as well as its effect of alleviating labour) might well require increasing intelligence, especially considering that coping may call for the development of even higher technology”

In 2012 the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM), in their published study (4) found that in terrestial forms of public transport “zinc dialkyl dithiophosphate additives generally being used in place of organophosphates”

In 2013 Professor Clement Furlong and co-workers demonstrated (5) that the commercial mixture of TCP isomers (Durad 125), which the industry
maintains to be non-toxic or safe, was only slightly less effective than tri-o-cresyl phosphate (ToCP) in generating potent inhibitors of
physically important enzymes. The mixed TCP isomers comprise approximately 3% of the engine oil. Importantly this paper also demonstrated that Durad 125 inhibited in vivo the enzyme acylpeptide hydrolase (APH). The late Dr David Ray, a member of the UK Committee on Toxicity (COT), and co-workers had previously identified acylpeptide hydrolase (APH) as an enzyme in brain that is very sensitive to inhibition by organophosphates and which
is likely involved in cognition (6).

Noteworthy is that passengers are never informed, even when all the crew have been taken to a medical facility, of an acknowledged cabin air incident.

References:

1. Report to the Administrator on the National Research Council Report, “The Airliner Cabin Environment and the Health of Passengers and Crew” – Page 3 NRC Recommendation 1 – Air Quality Regulations

http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/cabin_safety/rec_impl/media/Final%20Report%20to%20AOA%2002%2006%202002.pdf

2. Air monitoring studies for aircraft cabin contamination

http://www.aerotoxic.org/download/docs/reports_and_evidence/Winder%20-%20Air%20Monitoring%20Studies.pdf

3.The impact of flying on passenger health – A guide for healthcare professionals

http://www.flylegen.no/filbase/dokumenter/impact_of_flying_bma.pdf

4. Cabin air – surface residue study (4.3.2.2 Non-aviation Transport Controls)

http://www.iom-world.org/pubs/IOM_TM1106.pdf

5 .P.E. Baker et al., Identifying safer anti-wear triaryl phosphate additives for jet engine lubricants, Chemico-Biological Interactions
(2012)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cbi.2012.10.005

6. Paul G. Richards, Martin K. Johnson, and David E. Ray.,
Identification of Acylpeptide Hydrolase as a Sensitive Site for
Reaction with Organophosphorus Compounds and a Potential
Target for Cognitive Enhancing Drugs, MOLECULAR PHARMACOLOGY Vol. 58, No. 3 The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Mol Pharmacol 58:577–583, 2000

http://molpharm.aspetjournals.org/content/58/3/577.full

Philippe, I essentially agree with your comment that “We don’t know for sure that fluoride exposure at levels common in fluoridated communities causes brain drain”. However, in the context of artificial water fluoridation I think it misses the point. Even if common levels of exposure do not cause any measurable reduction in average IQ, it seems almost inevitable that some individuals will be significantly affected. There are large variations in both individual fluoride exposure and susceptibility, and when hundreds of millions of people are subjected to fluoridation there will be many who have an unusually high exposure and are also unusually susceptible. When this observation is combined with the precautionary principle, the continuation of fluoridation is surely unjustifiable.

To my knowledge you have not yet publicly opposed fluoridation. I understand that you are a scientist, and that there are legitimate reasons for not getting involved in political debates. However, as you know, fluoride is a cumulative toxin which can do permanent damage. Yours is not the only study which calls the safety of fluoridation into question. For example, Waldbott, Feltman, and Moolenburgh separately established the phenomenon of fluoride sensitivity, with major symptoms caused by fluoridated water or equivalent or smaller fluoride doses, beyond reasonable doubt in my opinion. I am fluoride sensitive, a fact which took me a very long time to realise, but for which the evidence eventually became overwhelming. I have a science education, and did not jump to conclusions. The way I see it, every day that fluoridation continues, more damage is done. Given the coercion involved, I believe it is imperative that everyone who understands the issue speaks up against fluoridation.

Dear Dr. Grandjean,

May I applaud your courageous action in reviewing the science with a professional and unbiased approach and letting the evidence speak for itself.

I ranked the 50 USA states on the percentage of each state’s population fluoridated and the reported prevalence of mental retardation. The graph will not post here, but the trend is 50/10,000 population in the least fluoridated states to 160/10,000 in the most fluoridated states. y+1.2966x + 46.502 and R(squared) = 0.1762. Confounding factors I’ve considered such as socioeconomic and tobacco use do not appear to be significant. A tripling of mental retardation is about half a standard deviation shift which is about 8 IQ point loss. This would appear to be consistent with your study. Comparing Europe and the USA again supports the possibility of fluoride’s potential role in lowering IQ.

In today’s dollars, each IQ point is estimated to be about $800 to $1,000 negative economic impact per year per person. With 200 million on fluoridated water, the negative economic impact could well exceed $1Trillion/year. Certainly more than the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you were to do research to further test the hypothesis that fluoride exposure has “brain drain,” could such a study be done in the USA and what would be your estimate of costs? Could a grant request be submitted the NIH?

Thanks for your comments.

Regards,
Bill Osmunson DDS, MPH

Great ! Thank you for this unique work !
So many questions…How could we protect brain’s development, when we know the degree of the global contamination ? How could we do to change the functionning of the decision-making ? And go toward the precautionnary principle ? The current and future generations will have to be in possession of all them capacities to face the world wich comes.