April
2001
Fluoridation
Folly
By Carol S. Kopf
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Hydrofluosilicic acid—you drink it, you bathe
in it, you breath it in when you shower, it plumps out your rice and
pasta and it flushes down your toilet. Captured from smokestacks of
phosphate fertilizer industries, this lead- and arsenic-laced residue
you know as fluoride, is dumped unpurified into New York City’s
water supply to reduce tooth decay in those who drink it. Called fluoridation,
it sounds harmful and senseless; and it is.
In the early 1900s Southwesterners, who drank from and irrigated their
crops with their naturally calcium-fluoridated water supply, bore decay-free
but yellowed teeth. Fluoride, it was found, discolored their teeth,
a malady named dental fluorosis. However, researchers mistakenly assumed
that fluoride also shielded those blemished teeth from decay. Nutrients
such as calcium, now well-known as essential to strong bones and teeth,
were overlooked.
Overzealous but well-meaning dentists, like Dr. John Frisch, set out
to put one part per million (ppm) fluoride in all fluoride-free water
supplies to improve children’s oral health in every part of the
country. They believed that the fluoride, incorporated into children’s
developing teeth, would allow the enamel to resist decay without unwanted
fluorosis. Dentists overlooked the calcium connection and relentlessly
lobbied trusting public officials with scanty scientific support, convincing
them that the most efficient way to dispense fluoride was through the
water supply. And so began fluoridation.
Incidentally, in June 2000, dentists touted a new cavity-fighting tool—calcium,
according to an American Dental Association news release. Yet, tooth
decay is still one of America’s most prevalent health problems,
despite fluoridating over 62 percent of U.S. water supplies and a proliferation
of fluoridated dental products.
Besides, new studies are saying that fluoride’s alleged benefits
occur topically—when fluoride touches the outside of the tooth—not
by swallowing it which disproves the hypothesis that launched fluoridation
in the first place and unnecessarily risks Americans’ health.
The U.S. government doesn’t know how to tell you that. The Centers
for Disease Control “just completed a study...showing that children
are exposed to fluoride from a variety of sources,” and there probably
is excess exposure, reported the Wall Street Journal (12/98). But that
study still hasn’t been released.
A Big Mistake?
Tooth decay rates declined equally in fluoridated and non-fluoridated
communities. However, cavities are still rampant in America’s
poor and minority populations, who often live in fluoridated communities
but who also have the poorest diets and share a disproportionate amount
of most diseases.
Fluoride may be harming these children even more. According to a U.S.
government report, “Existing data indicate that subsets of the
population may be unusually susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride
and its compounds. These populations include the elderly, people with
deficiencies of calcium, magnesium, and/or vitamin C, and people with
cardiovascular and kidney problems.”
“We’ve been reporting the scientific evidence that fluoridation
is worthless and harmful for years,” says lawyer Paul Beeber, President,
New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation. “But it looks
like the CDC may be more concerned with organized dentistry’s image
and/or fluoride manufacturers’ concerns than our children’s
safety,” he says.
Newsletters from the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and the
American Public Health Association (APHA) revealed that there was “considerable
opposition” to the release of the CDC report titled Recommendations
for the Use of Fluoride to Prevent and Control Dental Caries In the
United States. However, member organizations were encouraged to use
the scientific findings in the report as an educational tool, and to
help them understand fluoride’s mode of action and the rise in
dental fluorosis.
A new Canadian government report doesn’t beat around the bush,
“No Canadian studies provide evidence that water fluoridation is
effective in reducing (tooth) decay in contemporary child populations…The
simplest way of reducing the prevalence of fluorosis in child populations
is to cease to fluoridate community water supplies.”
Canada’s leading fluoride authority recently apologized to his
colleagues for promoting fluoridation without researching fluoride’s
toxicity. Hardy Limeback, dentist, biochemist, head of the University
of Toronto’s Preventive Dentistry Department and former president
of the Canadian Association for Dental Research says, “Fluoride’s
benefits are topical but ingested fluoride creates adverse effects.
Fluoride gets into every cell of the body and can especially damage
the bones and teeth,” he says. “Here in Toronto we’ve
been fluoridating for 36 years. Yet Vancouver, which has never fluoridated,
has a cavity rate lower than Toronto’s,” says Limeback.
A British research team also reviewed the literature and reported that
fluoridation is based on poor science, has overstated benefits, puts
children at high risk of developing dental fluorosis and may increase
older women’s chances of wrist fractures, according to the British
Medical Journal (10/2000).
Fluoridation and Related Toxins
The silicofluorides (hydrofluosilicic acid and sodium silicofluoride),
used by 90 percent of communities who fluoridate, including New York
City, have never been tested for safety, either alone or together with
other water treatment products. Published research links fluoridation
chemicals to increased children’s blood lead levels, neurological
impairment, bone damage, thyroid dysfunction, cancer, allergic reactions,
DNA damage, enzyme disruption, hormone imbalances and more.
Children living in fluoridated communities, with populations between
15,000 and 75,000, have more lead in their blood than children from
non-fluoridated communities in New York State, reports Masters, et al,
in Neurotoxicology (12/00). The highest risk is to children exposed
to both silicofluorides and a known risk factor for lead ingestion (e.g.
old housing).
Fluoride itself is contaminated with lead. Its acidity also accelerates
pipe corrosion. Lead poisoning, a problem in New York City, can cause
learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and at very high levels,
seizures, coma and even death. Ironically, high lead levels are also
associated with higher tooth decay rates.
And then there’s arsenic. Opflow, a trade magazine of the American
Water Works Association, warned its readers that “Arsenic is an
issue that water utilities no longer can avoid...90 percent of the
arsenic
that would be contributed by treatment chemicals is attributable to
fluoride addition.”
Fluoride, Fluoride Everywhere
After rancorous debate, fluoridation began in 1965 in New York
City with Mayor Wagner’s approval but with the disapproval of the Water
Commissioner, Arthur C. Ford. According to the NYC water quality statements,
water samples taken from 1997 to 1999 show great inconsistencies—from
no fluoride detected to levels as high as 1.65 ppm. And officials, unbelievably,
tell New Yorkers some of the fluoride they drink comes from “fertilizer
runoff.”
Not only are water supplies fluoridated, so are most foods and beverages
produced in fluoridated cities. Coal burning, used to heat some NYC
schools, emits fluoride into the air as do some electric power plants.
Fluoridated dental products, virtually unavailable when fluoridation
began, include toothpaste, rinses, gels, varnishes, sealants, filling
material, toothpicks, floss, tablets, vitamins, drops, lozenges, bonding
material, foam—all of which, even if not swallowed, gets absorbed
into the blood supply via the thin mucous membranes of the mouth.
Lesser known fluoride sources are tea, ocean fish, mechanically de-boned
meat products (like chicken nuggets and baby foods), ocean and shower
mist, medicines, anesthetics, pesticide residues on produce and grains
and some bottled water that doesn’t list fluoride on ingredients
labels.
Dentists tell parents to keep their children’s daily fluoride tally.
But they can’t tell them where it comes from, how much their children
absorb and how much is enough. Fluoride has no recommended daily allowance
(RDA) because it’s not an essential ‘nutrient.’
What Can you Do?
“Write your local legislators and the Mayor. Tell them you
don’t want to pay for fluoride in your drinking water and then
buy bottled water to avoid it,” says Beeber. “Start gathering
names on petitions, educate your neighbors. Real change happens from
the bottom up. We have to protect the weakest subsets of New York City
who can’t afford to buy bottled water.”
For more information, write to the New York State Coalition Opposed
to Fluoridation, P.O. Box 263, Old Bethpage and see www.orgsites.com/ny/nyscof.
Also, visit www.fluoridealert.org and www.fluoridation.com.
Contact: Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, Jeff Green, Director, greenjeff@home.com,
800-728-3833. For a free fluoride information pack, see www.zerowaste
america.org/fluoride or call Lynn Landes at 215-493-1070.
Carol S. Kopf is a freelance health writer based in Long Island
who has written for Reuters and Newsday. She can be reached at caru@earthlink.net.
