Fluoride in our Water – The Truth?

Fluoride is the name given to a group of compounds that are composed of the naturally occurring element fluorine and one or more other elements. Both organic and inorganic compounds containing the element fluorine are sometimes called fluorides. Fluorides are present naturally in water and soil. (1)

Fluoride is to be added to the water supply of Southampton, U.K. – the first city in 40 years to adopt the policy. (2)

Recently, MP John Denham, Southampton Itchen, has written to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to ask for clarification of the coalition government’s policy on the potential fluoridation of Southampton’s water supplies.

Mass Medication

In the past, water companies were reluctant to fluoridate for fear of being sued. However, in 2003, new legislation was brought in by the government which gives the 28 strategic health authorities the power to compel water companies, which will be compensated if any legal liabilities occur, to put fluoride in the mains supply and enforce mass medication.(3)

In the early 1940′s, scientists discovered that people who lived where drinking water supplies had naturally occurring fluoride levels of approximately 1 part fluoride per million parts water (ppm), or 1 milligram fluoride per liter of water (mg/L), had fewer dental cavities. (4)

In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, adjusted the fluoride content of its water supply to 1.0 ppm and thus became the first city to implement community water fluoridation. By 1992, more than 60 percent of the U.S. population served by public water systems had access to water fluoridated at approximately 1.0 ppm.

Phosphate Fertilizer Industry

Whilst the fluoride was naturally (organic) occurring in the cited initial study in 1940, the fluoride added to water is not natural (inorganic). The chemical added to our water is a fluorine compound called hexafluorosilicic acid and its salt, sodium hexafluorosilicate that is created as a by-product from the phosphate fertilizer industry as well as in the manufacturing of steel, aluminum, glass, and cement. (5)

Previously, the lack of government regulation allowed gaseous fluoride to move through factory smokestacks and straight into the atmosphere. Now, environmental regulations require giant filtration systems called “scrubbers” atop the stacks to keep these toxic chemicals from escaping into the air. (6)

Fluorosilicic acid is then extracted from these “scrubbers” and condensed to a water-based solution which is packaged unpurified and sold to city governments for the purpose of water fluoridation.

By selling the fluoride byproducts for this purpose, companies avoid the huge cost of disposing of these chemicals in the environment safely, and according to regulation.

Toxicity

In 1933, a toxicology report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) warned of fluoride’s toxicity singling out the aluminum industry as the biggest culprit. The new potential of legal liability due to the exposure of workers and communities to industrial fluoride scared corporations such as  Monsanto, U.S. Steel, Union Carbide, and Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA),  the leading producer of aluminum.

Knowing that disposing of industrial fluoride waste safely was expensive, ALCOA employed biochemist Gerald Cox in 1936, to argue for fluoride’s dental benefits through experimentation on rats. Cox, neither a doctor nor a dentist, concluded that fluoride strengthened and protected teeth against decay and began to tour the country promoting water fluoridation on behalf of his employers.

In 1944, the Journal of the American Dental Association published the following statement:

“We do know that the use of drinking water containing as little as 1.2 to 3.0 parts per million of fluoride will cause such developmental disturbances as osteosclerosis, spondylosis, and osteopetrosis, and we cannot afford to run the risk of producing such serious systemic disturbances…”

Intelligence

These systemic disturbances would also seem to involve levels of intelligence.

A Chinese study looked at two sites in Shanxi Province – Sima Village and Xinghua Village.

In Sima

• 86 percent of the population have clearly evident dental fluorosis, and
• 9 percent have clinically diagnosed skeletal fluorosis.
• the average fluoride content of the drinking water is 4.12 mg/L.

In Xinghua

• the dental fluorosis rate is 14 percent, and
• the bone fluorosis rate is 0 percent.
• the fluoride content of the drinking water is 0.91 mg/L

The occupations, living standards, and social customs of the residents in the two villages are similar.

Only children, whose mothers lived in the survey location while pregnant, were included for testing. A total of 160 children, age 7 to 14, half male and half female, were randomly selected from each village. Official intelligence quotient (IQ) tests lasting 40 minutes were taken by each child in groups of 20. Besides this common parameter, the educational level of the parents of each child was also recorded. (7)

In the high-fluoride village of Sima, the number of children with IQ of 69 or below, was six times that in the healthier low-fluoride village of Xinghua. Moreover, the fact that the IQ scores increased more slowly with age in Sima than in Xinghua, supports the view that exposure to high levels of fluoride in utero exerts a cumulative adverse effect that is not overcome with increasing age in a high-fluoride community. The authors of the study remarked;

results of this study indicate that intake of high-fluoride drinking water from before birth has a significant deleterious influence on children’s IQ in one of two similar villages.

Breast Cancer

Fluoride may be responsible for increased rates of breast cancer by raising levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1). Though useful for a number of metabolic functions, when IGF-1 levels are raised, there is an increased risk of cancer. Premenopausal women with the highest levels of IGF-1 in their blood have shown a sevenfold increase in the risk of breast cancer. (9)

Much of the fluoride added to municipal water supplies across the U.S. is imported from China and is contaminated with heavy metals, according to a warning by Bernard Miltenberger, president of the Pure Water Committee of Western Maryland.

In a letter published in the Cumberland Times-News, Miltenberger notes that he first became aware of the issue in an engineering report for the city of Boulder, Colo. The report noted that the fluoridation chemicals used for the city’s water had been evaluated and were found to contain lead levels of 40 milligrams per bag and arsenic levels of 50 milligrams per bag. The bags were being imported from China under no regulatory monitoring of acid or salt content.

The controversy occurs mainly in English-speaking countries. Water fluoridation is used in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and Australia, and a handful of other countries.

Banned

In the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, Denmark and Sweden banned fluoridation when government panels found insufficient evidence of safety, and the Netherlands banned water fluoridation when “a group of medical practitioners presented evidence” that it caused negative effects in a percentage of the population. (10)

The following developed nations previously fluoridated their water, but stopped the practice. (11)

• Federal Republic of Germany (1952–1971)
• Sweden (1952–1971)
• Netherlands (1953–1976)
• Czechoslovakia (1955–1990)
• German Democratic Republic (1959–1990)
• Soviet Union (1960–1990)
• Finland (1959–1993)
• Japan (1952–1972)

In 1986, the journal Nature had a commentary;

“Large temporal reductions in tooth decay, which cannot be attributed to fluoridation, have been observed in both unfluoridated and fluoridated areas of at least eight developed countries.” (12)

Scotland

This is borne out by recent events in Scotland. Levels of tooth decay among primary one pupils in Scotland are falling, according to new figures.The figures showed that 54 percent of Primary One pupils had no sign of tooth decay. That is the best level since monitoring began in 1987. (13)

I am really encouraged that children’s oral health is improving so rapidly

says Lewis Macdonald, the deputy health minister.

It compared with 51 percent in 2004, and 45 percent in 2003.

The executive said the statistics were proof that tooth brushing schemes and education programs in Scotland’s nurseries and primary schools were working.

He said more than 100,000 children across Scotland take part in a daily tooth brushing scheme at nursery and primary school and that the executive was planning to roll the scheme out to more schools.

This is also supported by a report on 12 Jul 2010, which claimed Glasgow is turning around the city’s poor record on children’s dental health. For the first time in decades figures show the majority of youngsters across the city have no tooth decay. This has been achieved with a £7 million investment in oral hygiene and has helped see almost 60 percent of 11-year-old’s given a clean bill of health during dental check-ups – 2,500 more than in 2005, a 19 percent improvement.(14)

Mandatory tooth brushing sessions in the city’s nurseries and schools and a fluoride varnishing program have been cited as the main reasons for the drop in tooth decay.

Glasgow has historically been cited as having the worst oral health record in Western Europe, with large numbers of young children having their milk teeth removed in hospital at a very early age because they are so badly decayed.

Ray McAndrew, clinical director of community dental services for NHSGGC, said:

Dental decay is 100% preventable, unlike other diseases that we treat.

We are absolutely delighted that, for the first time since we began compiling dental health records, the majority of children have no dental decay.

Dentists blame poor diet, especially sugary drinks in feeding bottles, and said it was not uncommon to see children under the age of two with decay or youngsters arriving at nursery who had never seen a toothbrush before.

Kevin Hill, director of oral health for NHSGGC, said;

“Dental extraction is the number one reason for hospital admissions in children.”

The health board is in favor of adding fluoride to the city’s water supply but have not pursued a campaign to persuade government bodies to adopt the controversial policy since 2006.

Mr Hill says the next priority is an ante-natal program to encourage mums-to-be to take care of their children’s teeth.

• 97% of 549 nurseries offer daily tooth brushing to 34,184 children.
• 94% of primary one and two classes – 17,600 children – are involved in daily tooth brushing.
• More than 1,000 primary one and two children have completed a fluoride varnishing prograe provided by staff since March this year. The overall aim is to apply fluoride varnish twice per year to every primary one and two child in the most deprived areas throughout the health board region.
• Upon completion, more than 5,000 children will have participated in the first round of the program.
• More than 135,600 oral health promotion packs are distributed each year through health visitors, nurseries, schools and healthy initiative events.

“If you start off with good habits, they will stay with you for the rest of your life”.

Do we really need mass medication with fluoride in our water, or is it just a case of mass education?

FLUORIDE TRUTH hits the TV in AUSTRALIA

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