Of late we’ve once again learned that health officials sometimes change their minds
about what is considered healthy and safe. The recent warnings from FDA about
previously-FDA-approved pain medications and over-the-counter diet aids and cough
suppressants demonstrate this.
Have you ever wondered what medications and health practices we accept today will later
be known to have harmed us, rather than helped us? Here is one practice whose reversal
is just around the corner: fluoridating our drinking water to prevent cavities. We’ve
said for fifty-plus years that fluoride is safe, effective, and necessary. But now
information is pouring in from around the world and the U.S. that shows that
fluoridated drinking water may actually be causing many of the diseases we’ve come to
call “diseases of aging.” Included are hip fractures, thyroid disease, and joint pain,
as well as several other disorders that affect persons of all ages.
Consider this: it has now come out that most of the fluoride we’ve been injecting into
our drinking water is silicofluoride, a substance that has never been tested or
approved by any federal agency. And where does it come from? It is a fluoride-
containing air pollutant emission captured by smokestack “scrubber” equipment at
phosphate fertilizer factories. If it is emitted into the air it is a pollutant; if it
is discharged into a lake or river, it is a pollutant; it is regulated by EPA as a water
“contaminant;” but if it is placed in our drinking water and we ingest it into our
bodies, it is somehow called a “nutrient.” Because of the industrial processes and raw
material used as its source, the fluoride also comes contaminated with radioactive
uranium decay compounds, arsenic, lead, and mercury.
People hearing this are shocked. “Why weren’t we told this?” they ask. Well, we were …
but not really. Buried in many water agencies’ water quality reports amongst a dizzying
list of chemical names is a little-observed statement that the source of the
“contaminant” fluoride is “discharge from fertilizer and aluminum factories.”
The pro-fluoride people tell us that the toxic fluoride, arsenic, and radioactive
compounds are diluted in the water, therefore they pose no harm. But what we haven’t
been told is that these compounds are cumulative poisons. The small amounts we ingest
accumulate in our bodies, and can cause bone cancer, thyroid disease, kidney damage,
and joint pain. If your kidneys work well, approximately half of the fluoride you
ingest goes out in your urine, but the remaining half is stored -- cumulatively and
potentially harmfully -- in your body.
How do you feel that your body and the bodies of your loved ones are being used as the
final resting place of the toxic discharges of industry? As a public health
professional with a background in hazardous materials management and assessment, I can
tell you that I am now firmly against fluoridation. And a growing number of other
medical, dental, and public health professionals are also calling for a halt to
fluoridation, including eleven EPA employee unions representing 7,000 EPA scientists,
lab workers, and other employees across the U.S.
There is more disturbing news. It turns out that in 2000, dentists admitted that
fluoride helps prevent cavities primarily topically, while in the mouth -- not by your
body’s systemic absorption of the chemical. So then the logical question is: why
continue drinking a toxic chemical throughout your whole body, over your entire
lifetime, if its main action against cavities occurs when it touches your teeth in the
mouth? The in-mouth topical action voids the whole reason we originally put fluoride in
water in the first place -- we were told it needed to be systemically absorbed. To
continue supporting the drinking of primarily-topically-acting fluoride would be like
your doctor handing you a bottle of liquid sunscreen and telling you, “Drink this to
prevent sunburn.”
You and your family also receive fluoride in foods -- in your cereal, bread, baby food,
canned foods, tea, sodas, pasta, and frozen foods (because they’re made with
fluoridated water), as well as from toothpaste and antibiotics. A number of government
agencies are relooking at the safety of fluoridation, and the fact that we absorb it
cumulatively from so many unmonitored sources is one of the reasons for their doing so.
Large numbers of cities and countries around the world reject water fluoridation, and
many of them that do not have any form of fluoridation have lower cavity rates than our
fluoridated cities. The entire island of Long Island, with more than 40 water districts
serving 3 million people, has stopped water fluoridation. Other cities and water
districts in many states are now relooking at fluoridation’s safety. The dental
industry and public health agencies are fearful and defensive, and one can understand
why. It is projected that the health effects and lawsuit costs from fluoridation will
dwarf those of tobacco.
In late October and early November of 2005, six of seven U.S. communities voting on
fluoridation rejected it. Some voters and city councils have looked closely at the
disturbing links between fluoride and specific diseases, but one of the main reasons
for the opposition to fluoride is that an increasing number of Americans believe that
an individual does not need to be a scientist or doctor to understand the dangers of
fluoridation. They feel that any average citizen knows better than to intentionally add
to drinking water an untested industrial discharge that is a cumulative poison. It
flies in the face of common sense, they say. They do what many who read this article
may want to do: contact their water district and governing officials and tell them,
“Stop the fluoride!”
Daniel G. Stockin, MPH, is a 17-year public health professional. He was manager of
EPA’s Western Regional Lead Training Center and worked with hazardous materials at two
large universities. He is now Senior Operations Officer at The Lillie Center, Inc., a
public health and environmental health services firm based in Brentwood, Tennessee. He
may be reached at 615-370-5788, or by email at: dan@thelilliecenter.com. Top Back Your comment
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