Fluoridation - your days are numbered

Most people would be shocked to discover that the fluoride used to fluoridate our water is a

toxic waste by-product from the aluminium and phosphate fertilizer industry.

Sodium silicofluoride and fluorosilicic acid are toxic by-products that contain arsenic, lead, cadmium

and mercury. These compound forms of fluoride do not occur in nature. Most people including dentists do not realise that industrial grade silicofluorides are used to fluoridate and not pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride as you would assume. ‘Sodium fluoride, which is a far simpler toxin than the fluoride compounds used for most water fluoridation, has also been used for rat and cockroach poisons, so there is no question that it is highly toxic’ (Mercola 2010). No toxicology studies have ever been performed on the Silicofluoride used in water fluoridation schemes.

The EPA decided this toxic waste was unsafe to be released into the environment. It would need to be disposed of under strict EPA regulations as a highly toxic hazardous waste. Meaning, it is against the law to release it into the air or dump it in the water and to do so would be considered an ‘act of terrorism’, yet ironically this is exactly where it ends up. To avoid committing an ‘act of terrorism’ industry collects the waste and sells it to the water authorities as a medicine to prevent tooth decay. Now it is a product that can legally be added to drinking water. As Dr William Hirzy from the EPA points out, ‘all of a sudden like magic it is a beneficial public health measure’(FAN n.d.)

Equally as shocking is the fact that Australia and the USA import this toxic waste from countries that have the sense not to poison their own water supply. Sydney Water confirmed in an email to me that they import these toxic by-products from China and other countries as well as using Incitec-Pivot, Australia’s leading supplier. However, you will not find this information on their website.

Fluoride is added to the water as medication and this practice is so fundamentally flawed that it is hard to know where to start. Firstly no physician would give anyone medication without stating a dose and a time period. They would never treat a person without examining them and knowing their medical history and they would never force a patient to take a drug without consent. There is no one size fits all when administering drugs. When Fluoride is added to the water as medicine then it is a drug. The US FDA confirms fluoride is a drug when used to ‘prevent, treat or mitigate a disease’. Therefore we are being drugged for our entire lifetime without giving consent, based on the misguided belief founded on dodgy, outdated science that systemic intake of fluoride prevents tooth decay. So because back in the 50’s a bunch of dentists, that’s right- tooth doctors said fluoride is good for teeth somebody thought it was a good idea to stick a poison in our water supply.

There is no way of knowing how much fluoride an individual is getting. People consume vastly different amounts of water. Athletes, diabetics or people in hot climates for example may consume a great deal more water per day than others. We all receive differing levels of fluoride depending on our lifestyle. Processed food particularly mechanically deboned meat, such as chicken nuggets, contain a high amount of fluoride. Drinks made from fluoridated water, tea, prescription medicine, anaesthesia, dental products, pesticides used on food are other sources of fluoride that are not taken into account when deciding on a one size fits all dose for our drinking water.

Children and babies are particularly susceptible to fluoride toxicity. Kids get a greater dose on a per body weight basis (NRC 2006). More fluoride is incorporated into the skeleton of children and their kidneys are less efficient than adults, so they excrete less and reabsorb more fluoride into the bloodstream. Healthy adults can excrete around 50% of an ingested fluoride dose where as infants can only excrete 15-20%.

Infants who are formula fed will receive massive doses of fluoride. By adding fluoridated water to the formula these exclusively formula fed babies will receive up to 250 times the amount of fluoride that naturally occurs in breastmilk. So among all groups in the population, breastfed babies consume the least amount of fluoride and bottle fed babies using fluoridated water consume the greatest amount. The EWG analysed exclusively formula fed babies and found that on any given day more than 60% of the babies they studied exceeded the safe dose of fluoride (EWG 2006). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now advises mothers not to use fluoridated water to bottle feed because evidence shows it increases the likelihood of developing dental fluorosis but they still promote fluoridation. The CDC touts fluoridation as one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century and yet they admit it causes dental fluorosis an undisputed sign of fluoride toxicity. Go figure.

Dental Fluorosis is a discoloration of the teeth caused by excessive fluoride ingestion during childhood. The enamel on the teeth does not form properly and the teeth get white and brown splotches on them. In 2010, the (CDC) reported that 41% of American adolescents had dental fluorosis. In 2001, Alarcon-Herrera (cited in Fluoride Action Network Website) reported a ‘linear correlation between the severity of dental fluorosis and the frequency of bone fractures in both children and adults in a high fluoride area in Mexico’. Dentists tend to dismiss fluorosis as just a cosmetic issue but if the teeth are showing signs of too much fluoride what’s happening to the bones and brain and other organs we can’t see?

Valdez-Jimenez et al (2011) showed that fluoride is capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and accumulating in the brain of the foetus. They conclude this may cause functional and biochemical changes in the nervous system. This can have a profound effect on the neurological and mental development, impacting cognitive processes such as learning and memory. Developing brains are also more susceptible to the effects of any drug. Harvardresearchers published a study last year which concluded that children who live in areas with high water fluoridation have significantly lower IQ scores than children living in low fluoridation areas (Choi et al, 2012). This study is significant because it was a meta-analysis of 27 published studies over 22 years looking at increased fluoride exposure in drinking water and neurodevelopmental delays.

Another vulnerable group is Australian Aboriginals as they have a much higher rate of kidney disease than Caucasians. People with kidney disease are at risk from drinking fluoridated water because the kidneys accumulate more fluoride than all other soft tissues of the body, except the pineal gland (Luke 2001). Because of their predisposition to developing kidney disease fluoridation may be discriminatory to Aboriginals (Ludlow et al 2007).

The Pineal gland is responsible for producing melatonin an incredibly important hormone which amongst other things controls our circadian rhythms. Luke (1997) reported that fluoride depressed pineal melatonin synthesis and accelerated the onset of puberty in the female test animals.

There have been more than 23 human studies and 100 animal studies linking fluoride with brain damage (Mercola 2013) and yet we are still fluoridating our water here in Australia. 97% of Western European countries do not fluoridate their water. In fact only Australia, USA (70%) and a handful of other countries still fluoridate. According to World Health Organization data, (2012) European’s teeth are just as good, if not better than Americans. In fact it was Colquhorn in 1987 who first drew attention to the fact that dental health was improving worldwide before the introduction of fluoridated water and products, crediting education as being more important than fluoridation in the improvement in dental health of New Zealanders. Colquhorn became Auckland’s Principal Dental Officer and began his career as a fierce advocate for fluoridation. In 1980 he was asked to conduct a world study tour on fluoridation. He was shocked by what he discovered and then devoted the rest of his life trying to end fluoridation.

Read his story here : http://www.slweb.org/colquhoun.html

In 2007 The NHMRC came out with their report on water fluoridation promoting the "safety and effectiveness" of fluoridation. Dr Paul Connett (2008) from the Fluoride Action Network states, “as far as addressing health concerns, a careful reading of this report indicates that at best, it is a work of professional incompetence or, at worst, an example of scientific fraud, in which scientific information is manipulated to support a preordained conclusion.” He goes on to compare it to the 2006 report by the NRC which was a 3 year study by a balanced and objective panel of experts which concluded that the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG) for fluoridation is too high and needs to be reduced. Pro- fluoridationists claim that the MCL in the US is 4ppm and in Australia it is less than 2ppm therefore the NRC report is irrelevant. As Connett (2008) points out “If fluoridation is too high at 4ppm by an unspecified amount……. It cannot be sensible to deliberately add fluoride at 1ppm.” That would imply a safety margin of less than 4 times which is ridiculous by toxicological standards. The EPA requested the study by the NRC but in 7 years the EPA has not changed the MCL despite the findings.

Fluoride is not an essential nutrient it is a poison. It causes harm to the brain, kidneys, thyroid and pineal gland (NRC 2006). Fluoride has been linked to increased incidence of osteosarcoma in boys who drink fluoridated water (Cohn 1992). It causes dental fluorosis. It is associated with increased incidence of arthritis and hip fractures, reduced bone strength and skeletal fluorosis (Arnala et al, 2005).

It is often hard to change a way of thinking when we have been told all our lives how beneficial something is. Fluoridation should not be forced on an entire population. If people believe topical use of fluoride is beneficial for the teeth then they can use fluoridated dental products but for the growing number of people who see the dangers of systemic intake of fluoride and

who do not consent to being medicated, we should have access to safe water. With so much evidence of harm or at the very least with so much doubt surrounding a known toxin it is hard to understand why the fluoridation policy is still enforced in this country.

References

Arnala I, et al. (1985). Effects of fluoride on bone in Finland. Histomorphometry of cadaver

bone from low and high fluoride areas. Acta Orthop Scand. 1985 Apr;56(2):161-6.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4013707

Choi, A. Sun, G. Zhang,Y. Grandjean ,P. Developmental Fluoride Neurotoxicity: A Systematic

Review and Meta-Analysis.Environ Health Perspect 120:1362–1368 (2012).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1104912 (Online 20 July 2012)

Cohn PD. (1992). A Brief Report On The Association Of Drinking Water Fluoridation And The

Incidence of Osteosarcoma Among Young Males. New Jersey Department of Health:

Environmental Health Service: 1- 17.(Online) Available:

http://208.109.172.241/health/cancer/osteosarcoma.html

Colquhoun, J. (1990) Fluoride, No. 3, July 1990, p. 23.

Connett P, (2008) Joining the Dots on Australian Fluoridation Fraud available: online

http://australianfluorideaction.com/lies-fraud/the-fraud/ November 10 2008

Connett P, Beck J, Micklem H, (2010) The Case Against Fluoride, Chelsea Green Publishing,

Vermont.

Environmental Working Group, “EWG Analysis of Government Data Finds Babies Over-Exposed

to Fluoride in Most Major U.S. Cities”, March 22, 2006.

Ludlow, M. Luxton, G. Mathew,T. Effects of fluoridation of community water supplies for people

with chronic kidney disease Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 2007 22(10):2763-2767;

doi:10.1093/ndt/gfm477 ( July 27, 2007)

Luke, J (2001)Fluoride Deposition in the Aged Human Pineal Gland. (Online) Available:

http://www.fluoridealert.org/studies/luke-2001/

Luke, J. (1997) The Effect of Fluoride on the Physiology of the Pineal Gland. (Online) Available:

http://meridianenergies.net/the-effect-of-fluoride-on-the-physiology-of-the-pineal-gland/

National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s

Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p. 3.

Valdez-Jimenez, L. Fregozo, S. Beltran,M. Coronado, G. Perez Vega. (2011) Effects of the

fluoride on the central nervous system. Neurologia 2011 Jun;26(5):297-300.

doi:10.1016/j.nrl.2010.10.008. (Online) Available: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21255877 (Epub 2011 Jan 20.)World Health

Organization (2012) Collaborating Centre for Education, Training, and Research in Oral Health,

Malmö University, Sweden. (Online) Available:http://www.mah.se/CAPP/ June 10 2012

Yiamouyiannis JA, PH.D. Water fluoridation and tooth decay: Results from the 1986-1987

national survey of U.S. schoolchildren. Fluoride Volume23 (Online) Available:

http://iadr.confex.com/iadr/2007orleans/techprogram/abstract_92598.htm CDC march 2007