FLUORIDATION UPDATE
Request for Due Diligence

by Jeff Green

For more than fifty years, decision makers charged with the responsibility of protecting the water supply for entire communities have been confronted by advocates of fluoridation with assurances that the public policy of mass medicating citizens with a substance that can not be removed by simple filtration has been fully reviewed and all questions of safety and effectiveness resolved. Once again we hear that poor children are not swallowing enough fluoride that promoters claim would otherwise eliminate tooth decay, completely ignoring that fluoride is already present in higher concentrations than fluoridated water in sodas, fruit juices, cereals, teas, and, because of fluoride-based pesticide residues, on such produce as tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, cabbage and raisins.

In 1991, government documents reported that non-fluoridated communities already receive the original goal of 1 milligram of fluoride a day, with fluoridated communities receiving 3 to 7 milligrams a day, far exceeding the margin of safety, and causing permanent scarring of the enamel of at least one tooth of 66.4 percent of children in fluoridated communities.

What the fluoride promoters will not reveal to their targeted legislators and City Council Members, or even their unsuspecting well-intended supporters:

1. The July 2000 peer-reviewed cover story of the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) clarified for every dentist in America that ingestion of fluoride does not provide any significant reduction in the incidence of tooth decay — that any beneficial dental effect is as a result of topical application directly to the tooth;
2. The August 17, 2001 MMWR (CDC) report, despite its touting of fluoridation, included: “The prevalence of dental caries in a population is not inversely related to the concentration of fluoride in enamel, and a higher concentration of enamel fluoride is not necessarily more efficacious in preventing dental caries.”
3. The American Dental Association and American Academy of Pediatrics have revised their recommendations for controlled-dose fluoride which restricts a doctor from prescribing fluoride to a child of six months to three years of age to the amount found in one cup of fluoridated water—none to an infant—meaning that, as a public policy, fluoridation mass medicates at a higher expected dosage than a doctor in a non-fluoridated community can prescribe;
4. In a Congressional investigation by the House Committee on Science, the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control, National Sanitation Foundation, and the Food and Drug Administration, all replied that they have no scientific studies on the actual fluorine bearing substances used in 90 percent of the nation’s fluoridation programs. The FDA states that fluoride is a regulated drug when used for the treatment or prevention of disease, and that no fluoride substance intended to be ingested for the purpose of reducing tooth decay has ever been approved for safety and effectiveness.
5. On June 29, 2000, at the U.S. Senate Congressional Hearing on Arsenic, Radon, and Fluoride, held by the subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water, J. William Hirzy, Ph.D. testified on behalf of the union (that consists of and represents all of the toxicologists, biologists, chemists, physicians, statisticians, epidemiologists, attorneys, engineers, scientists, and other professionals at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C.), calling for a moratorium on all fluoridation.

In his testimony to Congress, Hirzy cited: “…scientific evidence the union of scientists have in their possession, and court findings in three different states, whose conclusions have never been overturned on the merits, that found with reasonable certainty (i.e. beyond speculation and guess) and by preponderance of the evidence, including the testimony of experts learned in the field…” that fluoride in public water supplies causes or contributes to the cause of cancer, genetic damage, intolerant reactions, chronic toxicity, dental fluorosis, bone pathology and neurological injury in humans, and that fluoride in public water supplies aggravates malnutrition, iodine deficiencies, and other existing illnesses.

1. Under duress from the Inspector General, in June 2001, an Environmental Assessment for Proposed Water Fluoridation was redesigned by Pacific Western Technologies for Fort Detrick, MD, home of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for the entire Army. The revised Assessment evaluated the variable range in total exposure to fluoride from all food sources, combined with the variable range of fluoride concentrations in water, and compared it to the already-established EPA Reference Dose for Fluoride of 0.06 mg/kg body weight/per day. The Environmental Assessment concluded that, in the scenario with exposure to 0.7 parts per million fluoride in the drinking water, combined with calculable other-than-water sources of fluoride, significant percentages of children ages seven to nine will receive a total dosage that exceeds the U.S. EPA's Reference Dose (the point at which known risks increase); and describes the problem for children aged 1 to 3 to be even more acute.
2. Studies published in 1998, 1999, and 2000, illustrate why it is crucial that focus be placed on the actual substances used for fluoridation. At the same levels used to fluoridate our drinking water, sodium fluoride caused excessive kidney damage and lesions in the brain similar to those found in humans with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Aluminum compounds are commonly used as clarifying agents in tap water.
3. A study sampling 280,000 children in Massachusetts, and another sampling of 151,000 children in New York, reported a doubling of the risk of lead levels in children’s blood rising above the danger level of 10 micrograms per deciliter when the hazardous wastes from the phosphate fertilizer industry are used for fluoridation, rather than sodium fluoride or no fluoride at all. The correlation with blood lead levels is especially serious because lead poisoning is associated with higher rates of learning disabilities, hyperactivity, substance abuse, and crime.

Once again citizens will have to rally to remind decision-makers of the precious nature of our drinking water and ask that they perform the due diligence worthy of the modern day Keepers-of- the-Well.

Documentation for all statements can be accessed at: http://www.Keepers-of-the-Well.org and Citizens for Safe Drinking Water 1010 University Avenue # 52, San Diego, CA 92103, (800) 728-3833, mailto:greenjeff@cox.net.

Reprinted with permission of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, http://www.price-pottenger.org, e-mail, mailto:info@price-pottenger.org, phone (619) 462-7600.

This article was originally published in the John R. Lee, M.D. Medical Letter. Although the newsletter is no longer published, many of its articles can be found on this website.