Page 45 - Spring 2019 Journal

fluoridated toothpaste is universally available. Moreover, the fluoride used in toothpaste is pharmaceutical grade whereas the fluoride used to fluoridate water is an industrial grade hazardous waste product from the phosphate fertilizer industry.25
6. Today’s fluoride is worse. The fluoridating chemical used in over 90 percent of the fluoridating communities in the U.S. is a substance called hexafluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6). This substance is removed from the scrubbing systems of the phosphate fertilizer industry as a 23-25 percent solution. It is contaminated with trace amounts of other toxic substances including aluminum, arsenic, lead and radioactive isotopes (the same ore that is mined for fluoride in Florida is also mined for uranium). Ironically, this waste product cannot be dumped into the sea by international law, but health authorities blandly allow it to be put untreated into the public water supply!
7. Fluoride is very toxic and nature has developed protection mechanisms for many living things. For lower creatures like bacteria and fungi, there are genes—switched on by high levels of fluoride—which code for proteins called fluoride exporting proteins (FEX proteins). These proteins are located in the cellular membranes and pump fluoride out of the cell.26 In mammals, the kidney excretes about 50 percent of fluoride ingested each day from healthy individuals, and most of the rest is rapidly sequestered in hard tissues like the bones. Importantly, the human breast appears to act as a fluoride filter for the new born baby. The level in mothers’ milk is remarkably low (0.004 ppm).27 Thus, a bottle-fed baby, when the formula is made up with fluoridated tap water (0.7 to 1.2 ppm), will get approximately two hundred times more fluoride than a breastfed infant (that is, two hundred times more than nature intended).
8. Fluoridation is unscientific. Fluoridation is promoted with PR techniques like endorsements, not with sound science. Most of the endorsements were made shortly after the U.S. Public Health Service endorsed water fluo- ridation in 1950 with virtually no science on the short-term—let alone long-term—health effects. Citizens should be very wary of taking such endorsements at face value unless they are accompanied by an up-to-date review of the literature—and very few are. Incredibly, in over seventy years there has been no randomized control trial (RCT) to demonstrate that swallowing fluoride lowers tooth decay. As far as the U.S. Food and Drug Administra- tion (FDA) is concerned, an RCT is the gold standard for approving new drugs. According to the FDA, fluoride is an unapproved drug28 and the FDA has never approved fluoride tablets for ingestion. Many decision makers and journalists around the world are impressed when they read the notorious statement from the CDC in 1999 that “Fluoridation is one of the top public health achievements of the 20th century.”63 However, what they may not realize is that this statement did not come from the CDC itself (which has about thirty thousand employees, many of whom are highly qualified in many medical fields as well as toxicology) but from the CDC’s small Oral Health Division with only thirty employees, most of whom only have dental qualifications. Moreover, their job is defined as promoting fluoridation. They even admit to not following—or being responsible for—the science pertaining to fluoride’s harmful effects. Journalists and others have been impressed by a public relations exercise by a promotional body, not by a body that maintains a careful overview of any harm the practice may be causing.
9. Health risks are ignored in fluoridated countries. Sadly, because the imposed dental practice of water fluo- ridation is so entrenched in the psyche of the medical, dental and public health establishments in fluoridated countries, neither governments nor the mainstream media are warning the public about the large and growing body of scientific research30 that shows that fluoride exposure poses many health risks.
10. Fluoridation violates the precautionary principle. The scientific evidence that swallowing fluoride lowers tooth decay is weak,31 but the weight of evidence that it causes harm to the developing brain is so one-sided, that to wait for further studies before halting the deliberate addition of fluoride to water is a rash and irresponsible public health position.
11. Fluoridation violates the principles of environmental justice. The addition of fluoride to public water is an en- vironmental injustice to people living in poverty in fluoridated areas who do not have access to alternative water sources and are captive to tap water for all their water needs. Moreover, it is well established that those with poor nutrition are more vulnerable to fluoride’s toxic effects, and poor nutrition is more likely to occur among those with low incomes.
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