Safe drinking water is a fundamental human right, and public tap water should be safe for all. However, the National Research Council’s 2006 report on the health risks of fluoride intake from water has raised serious concerns about the safety of fluoridated tap water for 30% of the population that is more vulnerable. These ethical and scientific concerns prompted the IICPH to question water fluoridation years ago. Now, they are the basis for an ethics complaint against the Centers for Disease Control.
Artificial fluoridation is one reason why IICPH isn’t jumping on the bandwagon to “return to the tap”. Fluoridated tap water is not a better environmental choice; 99% of fluoride added to drinking water is not swallowed but winds up in waste water to pollute the watershed. Of course, we agree with many faithbased initiatives that plastic bottle waste and source water depletion should be reduced. The IICPH joined Great Lakes United this past summer to strengthen all our efforts to protect the world’s largest fossil water resource from further depletion and pollution, including contamination from radioactive waste and fluoride.
The man-made chemicals used to fluoridate public water (silicofluorides) are not pharmaceutical products, but environmentally hazardous industrial waste. Silicofluorides are inherently contaminated with trace amounts of uranium hexafluoride and heavy metals (lead and arsenic) from phosphate fertilizer ore that also yields uranium yellowcake for weapons and fuel bundles. Canadian federal environmental regulations do not allow inorganic fluorides, lead and arsenic to be added to drinking water in any amount as of Dec. 27, 2006. According to the law, dilution is no defence. Ontario’s new Safe Drinking Water Act requires fluoridation chemicals to be third-party verified as safe and effective for human ingestion — but silicofluorides have never been tested or found safe and effective for dental treatment or prevention. Lately, silicofluorides have been sourced from China. Radionuclide content of these Chinese chemicals is unknown.
These two things — the NRC report showing health hazards, and water quality and environmental regulations — should cause Canadian government and public health officials to immediately end water fluoridation. The fact that they have not acted means that the IICPH has more work to do.
Our supporters understand that radiation from drinking water, air and food supply is bad for public health and for all future life. the evidence is scientifically solid. Fluoridation is also a nuclear pollution issue. It is hard to get the connection until it is laid out with the scientific evidence. Fluoride is both required in huge amounts to enrich uranium for weapons and fuel bundles, and released in huge amounts during the process. It is one of the most destructive environmental pollutants, but is poorly monitored and not publicly reported – much like radioactive emissions. Government scientists set “safe” radiation and fluoride exposures for workers and soldiers at the same time that they began to put “beneficial” fluoride waste into the drinking water of selected North American cities to sanitize and legitimize the release of vast quantities of fluoride and radiation from industry and Cold War military manufacturing. We would like to tell you in a gentle way that the deliberate addition of silicofluorides to drinking water under the guise of public health policy to make strong teeth is a deception similar to the picture of nuclear power as safe, clean and green and low level nuclear emissions as harmless. Today, most nuclear engineers appear to have no education in the biological or ecological consequences of low level radiation, just as dental and public health professionals do not seem to learn the military-industrial history and toxicity of fluoridation chemicals.
Water fluoridation policy ignores precautionary principles, is unethical, and is now scientifically evidenced as a risk to our health and to the health of future generations. We seek your support to continue our efforts to stop fluoride pollution of drinking water alongside radiation pollution of our environment.