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Reproductive Effects
Fluoride has long been known to undermine fertility in animals and man. (187) In 1951 commercial chinchilla breeder named W.R. Cox reported reproductive anomalies in commercially raised chinchillas fed with a high-fluoride animal feed.(188) When Cox changed to a low-fluoride feed, "there were increases in the number of offspring born; the number of litters, and the numbers born alive. The adult mortality rate decreased from 14.6% in 1951 to 3.3% in 1952. A number of abnormalities associated with fluoride-contaminated feed were passed on through multiple generations."(189)
Cox, a layman, studied the scientific literature, and found more than 1400 studies indicating fluoride's adverse effect on animals, especially soft tissue damage. Cox was surprised to find that the scientists advocating public water fluoridation at the time showed no interest in these studies or their possible implications for human health.(190)
SC Freni participated in a 1991 USPHS review of the toxicity of fluoride. Searching for studies that correlated fluoride exposure with reproductive effects in humans, he discovered that in almost 50 years of fluoridation, no one had ever study fluoride's effect on the human fetus.(191)
Freni's 1994 review of fluoride toxicity the National Center for Toxicological Research showed decreased fertility in most animal species studied. Freni then investigated whether fluoride would also affect human birth rates. He studied counties in which the water had a fluoride content of more than 3 ppm. Most regions he studied showed an association of decreasing total fertility rates (TFR) with increasing fluoride levels. There was no evidence that this outcome resulted from selection bias, inaccurate data, or improper analytical methods.(192) Freni speculated that fluoride might lower protein synthesis in osteoblasts or that it inhibits the adenylyl cyclase system in human spermatozoa.(193)
In a 1994 study of mature rats treated with sodium fluoride, Narayana and Chinoy(194) found that fluoride interferes with androgenesis and damaged the testes by inhibiting the action of testosterone. Another study by the same team studied human spermatozoa treated with 25, 50, and 250 mM of fluoride for 5, 10, and 20 minutes. Silver nitrate staining of fluoride-treated sperm revealed elongated heads, deflagellation, and loss of the acrosome together with coiling of the tail. Sperm glutathione levels also showed a time-dependent decrease with complete depletion after 20 minutes, indicating rapid glutathione oxidation in detoxification of the NaF. The altered lysosomal enzyme activity and glutathione levels together with morphologic anomalies resulted in a significant decline in sperm motility with an effective dose of 250 mM.(195)