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At the beginning of 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. purported that flouride – added for over 80 years to drinking water across the world to help prevent tooth decay – was contributing to ill health and even neurodevelopment disorders across the population.
As a result, he requested that the CDC stop recommending flouride be added to water supplies, pressuring water companies to remove it entirely.
And in some states, this ban is actually underway.
But are his claims factually accurate? Well, no – and now a recent scientific paper has proven exactly why.
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Published in the journal Science Advances, the paper led by researchers at the University of Minnesota sought to understand the effects of fluoride on a child’s neurodevelopment.
And counter to the misinformation campaign that RFK Jr touts, fluoride does not hamper a child’s cognitive development at all.
In fact, the opposite is true.
Using the High School and Beyond study, the researchers investigated data from over 25,000 people, tracking them from their high school years to middle age.
And by comparing this to fluoridation data, the study actually discovered that those who grew up with flouride in their water seem to actually surpass their flouride-free counterparts in various aspects of intelligence, all the way from high school to their sixties.
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As the study’s author John Robert Warren explained in a statement, the study – which confirms results in smaller studies from other countries – proves that, regardless of what those spreading fake news might claim, flouride is actually good for our kids:
“It is vitally important for the public—and people who influence public policy—to know that there is absolutely no credible scientific evidence to support the claim that putting fluoride in municipal drinking water at recommended levels harms children’s IQ. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.”
Moreover, it’s worth remembering why fluoride is added to our water in the first place. This naturally occurring mineral is fantastic at helping to keep our teeth stronger for longer, as researcher Gina Rumore reminds us:
“This is a great example of understanding the data and scientific research used to draw conclusions. While extremely high levels of fluoride like we see in some parts of the world can be toxic, fluoride in drinking water at recommended levels is not. Fluoridating drinking water is known to have massive oral health benefits, and now it appears that it also leads to better—not worse—cognitive test performance.”
The evidence is clear: remove fluoride from water at your peril.
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