Posts falsely claim sodium fluoride is the leading cause of cancer

“What’s the alternative (sic),” reads the caption of an Instagram video published on March 26, 2025.

The post, which has garnered over 19,000 likes, has the words “avoid fluoride at all cost” overlaid on it. A narrator claims sodium fluoride is the leading cause of cancer.

“Pastor Chris shared a video saying sodium fluoride is causing cancer for a lot of people, and we should be careful how we use items containing sodium fluoride,” the narrator says by way of introduction.

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Screenshot showing the false post, taken April 7, 2025

Sodium fluoride is a chemical compound commonly added to toothpaste and, in some countries, drinking water. Its main purpose is to help prevent tooth decay by strengthening tooth enamel (archived here).

At the beginning of the video, an image of Oyakhilome is shown in the top left corner where he is identified as the “Pastor Chris” repeatedly mentioned by the narrator.

Oyakhilome leads a megachurch, Christ Embassy, with headquarters in Nigeria and multiple branches across five continents (archived here).

To find where Oyakhilome made the claim, AFP Fact Check conducted an internet search using the keywords “Oyakhilome+soldium+fluoride”. 

We found a video on the YouTube channel for his Houston branch dated March 2, 2025. 

In a broadcast more than three hours long, Oyakhilome spent most of his “Global Communion Service” warning his worldwide congregation about the purported side effects of sodium fluoride, including cancer.

During his sermon, he played a documentary titled “A lethal killer”, which was produced by Oyakhilome’s church-run LoveWorld TV in 2024. The documentary runs for 31 minutes before he quotes biblical verses to back up all the claims made in the video. 

In 2020, LoveWorld TV was sanctioned in the UK for sharing “unsubstantiated claims” about Covid-19 (archived here).

According to the UK’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom, Oyakhilome’s programmes made unsubstantiated claims that “were not sufficiently put into context” and that “risked undermining viewers’ trust in official health advice, with potentially serious consequences for public health” (archived here). 

The Nigerian authorities also countered some of the pastor’s claims about lockdowns (archived here).

In 2021, Ofcom fined LoveWorld TV £125,000 (N65.6m at the prevailing exchange rate then) for breaching the country’s broadcasting code by disseminating misinformation on Covid-19 (archived here). 

AFP Fact Check has previously debunked Oyakhilome’s Covid-19 related claims here and here.

Several other accounts on Instagram (here and here), X (here and here), and Facebook (here and here) published the promotional video of the sermon pushing the claim about sodium fluoride. 

However, the claims about cancer being caused by sodium fluoride are false.  

No evidence

Arotiba Godwin, a Nigerian professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the University of Lagos, told AFP Fact Check that the claim linking sodium fluoride with cancer is baseless. 

“As of today, there is no authentic scientific investigation that shows that sodium fluoride causes cancer … fluoride increases the strength of the teeth so that they will not decay,” Godwin said. 

However, he advised parents to ensure their children use toothpaste specifically made for kids, as it contains a lower amount of sodium fluoride. Godwin said that excessive intake in children can have harmful effects — but it will not cause cancer.

“The only authentic study I am aware of reveals that we should be careful of using high fluoride toothpaste for children. [But] the children’s toothpaste has a very low fluoride content”.

Claims about the negative impacts of fluoride consumption have circulated for years, including some debunked by AFP Fact Check here and in Swedish here (archived here).

Researchers have continued to examine hypotheses about the potential harms of fluoridated water and have presented studies suggesting that high levels of exposure could lead to health problems (archived here). 

However, the American Dental Association (ADA) maintains community water fluoridation as safe and effective at preventing tooth decay (archived here).

“It’s a matter of how much, and if it’s just a little, it’s not dangerous at all,” Howard Pollick, a professor in the School of Dentistry at the University of California, San Francisco, told AFP Fact Check in a similar debunk in November 2024 (archived here).

According to a 2022 factsheet, the WHO notes that while high fluoride levels can cause dental or skeletal fluorosis, regulated levels used in public water systems are safe and effective in preventing tooth decay (archived here).

“The available evidence does not support the hypothesis that fluoride causes cancer in humans,” the WHO says.

According to the American Cancer Society, some earlier studies, like one from 1990 involving rats, have looked at the possible links between fluoride and a very rare bone cancer called osteosarcoma — but the evidence was unclear and limited to male rats (archived here).

The society concluded that most research has not confirmed an evidential link between fluoride and cancer in humans.

Michael Freissmuth, head of the Center for Physiology and Pharmacology at the Medical University of Vienna, corroborated the cancer society’s stance in a debunk written by AFP Fact Check in German in 2023.

“The only cancer for which a causal link with fluoride is being discussed is osteosarcoma. Here, the evidence is very thin,” he said.

Despite the dearth of evidence advocating against the use of fluoride, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to stop recommending the addition of fluoride to communities in the country (archived here). 

Kennedy Jr. is a longtime proponent of conspiracy theories, notably about vaccines. He has been a subject of AFP Fact Check debunks here, here and here.