Fluoridation is a serious breach of ethics

My personal feeling on fluoridation is that it is a serious breach of ethics regarding informed consent to treatment and thus a human rights violation, to add industrial waste toxins to drinking water for the express purpose of affecting health. Most European democracies agree. However in this article, I will stick to scientific evidence and history. – Aliss Terpstra

Excellent websites for information:

• www.fluoridealert.org
• www.rvi.net/~fluoride
• www.SLweb.org
• www.bruha.com/pfpc
• and Chris Bryson’s book: The Fluoride Deception http://www.pollutionwatch.org/pressroom/releases/20030619-e.jsp

Basic Points:

1 part per million (ppm) fluoride ion in water = 1 milligram/liter (mg./L). 1 milligram = 1000 micrograms.

Fluoride, whether at .5, .8 or 1.0 ppm in water, or 6 mg. in a cup of tea, or whether in food or breathed from air pollution in varying concentrations, accumulates in bones, teeth, thyroid, pineal gland, lungs, kidneys and connective tissue. It is measureable in urine, blood, saliva, fingernails, bone samples, and glandular tissues, especially thyroid and pineal gland. Public health does not monitor fluoride accumulation or toxicity in the population, and the Ministry of Environment does not monitor fluoride pollution in air, soil or watershed in Ontario. NO ONE is doing the most basic arithmetic to answer the question “How much fluoride are we getting from all sources, exactly?” What IS now known is that in parts of Toronto where airborne fluorides are at high levels, children born and raised in the area have some level of visible dental fluorosis, proof of excessive exposure and damage from fluorides in early childhood. As Dr. Bertell’s 1993 health survey “Health 2000” also showed, fluoride-related illness and asthma are also high.

Water fluoridation chemicals concentrate in sewage, which is then burned, re-releasing them as airborne fluorides with other toxins and heavy metals whose effects are potentiated by fluoride; or the sewage is sludged or pelletized and spread agriculturally or buried, increasing the soil burden and adding to fluoride pollution of watershed and acquifer. These sewage fluorides are not measured or tracked environmentally. Waste water fluorides are not measured or tracked. Ambient watershed levels are not tracked. However, Lake Ontario now has 150 ppbillion (150 mcg./L) fluoride ion, and it is probable that levels pre-1945, before the advent of water fluoridation in cities of the Great Lakes basin, were significantly lower. Precipitation carries airborne fluorides to earth and worsens the chemical activity of acid rain.

Water fluoridation was presented as a safe, effective and inexpensive way to reduce dental decay in the mass population in the 1940s. However, the data collected failed to support this, from the very beginning, which forced fluoridation proponents to use fraud, trickery, dirty politics and propaganda to keep the thing going. Government, military and private industry colluded to promote water fluoridation and even scientists like Linus Pauling fell for it. Pseudo-scientific calculations established the “one part per million” concentration of fluoride in drinking water as “safe and effective” without any peer review or reproducible research. Toronto currently fluoridates to an average of .8 mg./L (range: .5 – 1.2). Toronto uses hydrofluorosilicic acid, industrial waste from Florida rock phosphate fertilizer processing, which is contaminated with heavy metals and radionuclides at or below the EPA max standard. These contaminants are not measured or tracked although they accumulate in sewage and reverse osmosis filters.

Fluoride is naturally bound up in rock, ore, and fossil fuels and released from volcanic eruptions. Mining, ore processing, smelting, fossil fuel refining and burning, phosphate and aluminum mining and processing, plastics and pharmaceutical manufactureing, and all nuclear processing, release hundreds of tonnes of fluorides annually, but this is poorly tracked. These are cumulative and affect vegetation and wildlife as well as human life for miles around the plume path. Airborne fluoride pollution, mostly from fossil fuel incineration and industry, is responsible for smog’s deadly effects.

Some of the myths:

Ingested fluoride reduces cavities by hardening the enamel.
TRUTH: peer reviewed dental research shows that benefits, if any, are TOPICAL, not from ingestion. Excess ingested fluoride causes fluoroapatite to be deposited in tooth enamel, and causes HYPO mineralization of both enamel and dentin, by damaging ameloblasts (enamel-forming cells) and suppressing thyroid function which is essential for proper mineral placement in the enamel. Fluorosed teeth are MORE prone to cavities and damage. Children in fluoridated cities have similar dental decay problems as children in non-fluoridated cities PLUS increased rates of malocclusion requiring orthodontic intervention. Airborne fluorides are a significant contributing factor to dental and skeletal fluorosis but this factor is ignored by Public Health when adding fluorides to drinking water and in effect, doubling or tripling the exposure that children get. The longest-fluoridated areas of the US such as Kentucky show the highest number of toothless adults and children with severe dental fluorosis.

Fluoride is an essential nutrient.
TRUTH: The NIH, NRC and NAS were forced to admit that fluoride has no role in human nutrition and is not necessary for optimal development and growth. Fluoride is toxic at the molecular level in very low concentrations and causes osteoporosis and spinal stenosis after 50 years at so-called “optimal” concentration in drinking water. Certain groups of people are more at risk than others, but everyone accumulates fluoride from ALL sources of exposure, not just drinking water. No biologically plausible explanation has been forthcoming from fluoridation promoters on just how fluoride, which is a powerful antagonist to essential nutrients such as iron, selenium, iodine, calcium and magnesium, D, E and C, can improve health by depleting those nutrients and occupying Thyroid Stimulating Hormone cell membrane receptor sites, inhibiting mitochondrial enzymes, and reducing cellular production of ATP upon which all bodily processes and life functions depend.

Thousands of studies support water fluoridation.
Oh, this is a good one. TRUTH: The studies don’t exist, period. No study has ever been done using fluorosilicates and its effects on people with impaired kidneys or circulation, premature infants on formula made with tap water, athletes, patients taking fluoridated drugs, or populations cross-exposed to industrial fluorides. No study has ever been done on spinal stenosis and artificially fluoridated drinking water even though many such studies exist for naturally high fluoride areas in other parts of the world. No study has ever been done on lifetime accumulation of artificially added fluoride from conception to middle age.
The data from the few early, short-duration studies are damning – earlier puberty in girls, increased drop out rate from high school, increased thyroid disease and cancer, increased bone cancer, higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease, higher lead levels, higher crime rate, increased Down’s syndrome births, higher rates of osteoporosis and hip fractures in fluoridated seniors. Recent animal studies are also damning – fluoride at “optimal concentration” is neurotoxic to rats.

Water fluoridation is safe and effective.
TRUTH: No safety or toxicity study has ever been done on fluorosilicates for human use. Effectiveness studies show no difference in meta-analysis of areas with and without fluoridation in terms of childhood caries. Other studies show effectiveness for topical use as in toothpaste, using sodium or monophosphate fluorides, not fluorosilicates. Studies starting in the 1940s clearly show that at least 1% of all persons tested are hypersensitive to fluoride in water or dental products. Estimates of population sensitivity today, after 60 years of fluoridation, range from 4 to 20% of the population. There are thousands of child poisonings from fluoridated toothpastes each year and several deaths due to ingestion of dental fluorides at doses considered non toxic. Hundreds of kidney dialysis patients have died over the years due to equipment malfunction that allowed fluoridated water at “optimal concentration” to flow into dialysis machines.

When water is fluoridated, the living things, environment and food supply become contaminated too. To quote Rosalie, the seed is spoiled, and the garden too.

Aliss Terpstra RNCP aliss@nutrimom.ca