Is the force-feeding of fluoride really necessary?
By BRIAN CARLSTROM
Special to the News
Source: Hoodrivernews
August 3
The City Council is considering adding a known poison to our drinking water supply. The argument for adding fluoride is to force kids to ingest it, as they claim that it may help prevent dental cavities. There are some major flaws with this argument:
1. Most fluoride put into municipal water systems is a waste product from the manufacture/processing of iron, steel, aluminum, copper, lead, zinc, uranium, and fertilizer. The companies who end up with the “hot potato” known as fluoride have convinced many people that their trash is another’s treasure. Well, we should be suspicious. It is one of the most toxic waste products around. In the Fifth edition (1984) of Toxicology of Commercial Products, Fluoride is rated “4” (very toxic). For comparison, Lead is rated a “3-4” (moderately toxic). In their effort to convince people of fluoride’s benefits, the aluminum industry paid for a study to determine that it was “good for us.” Before this study, fluoride’s primary uses was for insecticide and rat poison.
2. The FDA has never approved fluoride for human consumption. For more information on this, check out:
http://www.toothwisdom.net/f.absence_of_fda.html
Japan and continental Europe have banned its use for human consumption, citing health concerns and medical ethics.
3. In over 50 years of testing, it has never been conclusively demonstrated that fluoride is effective in preventing tooth decay. The whole fluoride deception is primarily based on two studies conducted in the 1930s: the “Galesburg-Quincy” study and the “21 city” study. Both of these studies were later examined by non-government expert statisticians and found to be statistically flawed, as well as having a significant number of other serious problems, making them worthless (see Fluoride the Aging Factor by Dr. John Yiamouyiannis, p. 119-123. Also: Fluoridation Errors and Omissions in Experimental Trials, by Philip R. N. Sutton, DDSc, LDS, Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Oral Medicine and Surgery, University of Melbourne, in collaboration with Sir Arthur B. P. Amies, Dean of the Dental School, University of Melbourne).
4. It is easy to get too much of it, and too much can cause many serious health problems. Spiking our water system is not the best way to regulate doses of fluoride (even if the stuff was good for you).
5. Most kids drink soft drinks, juices, and milk. Very few drink water. Adding it to the city water seems like a strange way to get a small dose of fluoride into a child. If they add it to our water, we will have to shower in it, wash our clothes in it, and use it wherever we use water. And where will most of this fluoride end up anyway? The fish in our rivers surely don’t need any more toxic chemicals to deal with.
6. Fluoride is highly corrosive, so much so that even when diluted to 1.0 ppm (part per million), it promotes the leaching of lead and other metals from plumbing. Hood River city’s main water lines still have many lead joints (just ask your local excavator). Studies have shown that after fluoridation, lead levels in municipal water increases.
7. Think about the liability that our city councilors are placing on the City of Hood River (and themselves!). The federal Safe Drinking Water Act states: “No national primary drinking water regulation may require the addition of any substance for preventive health care purposes unrelated to contamination of drinking water.”
8. Experiments have already been done on humans. It has been determined that fluoride increases hip fractures by 41 percent among men and 27 percent among women in Brigham City, Utah, where water is intentionally fluoridated to 1.0 ppm.
(http://www.toothwisdom.net/f.evidence_of_harm.html)
9. In 1992, the New Jersey State Department of Health released the results of a study that found six times more bone cancer cases among males under the age of 20 living in communities with fluoridated water. (http://www.toothwisdom.net/f.evidence_of_harm.html)
10. Fluoride dispensing equipment can malfunction and result in poisoning as happened in Hoopers Bay, Alaska in 1992 (one person died, 296 poisoned).
It is clear that this factory waste product is hazardous to humans. If that wasn’t reason enough, monetarily it makes no sense to implement it into our water system. Do we really want to spend this extra money? Does the city have it to spend?
Helping kids with their teeth and their health is a noble and important issue that the city council seems to be interested in. Here are some suggestions we can all do:
1. Try to get kids to stop drinking soda pop and eating excessive amounts of candy. Adults can lead the way by not buying this stuff for their families.
2. Encourage adults to stop giving candy to kids at every possible occasion. Not a day goes by that adults don’t try to push some candy into my children’s mouths: filling up with gas, going to the bank, after dinner at restaurants, at classes, and holidays and special occasions.
3. We need to ban pop machines and coffee carts from our schools. The first time I visited our high school, I was flabbergasted to see 30-foot row of pop and candy machines just as you enter the building at Hood River Valley High School. The schools receive money from these “sugar-pushing” companies, but at whose expense? Our kids will pay with their health.
It is no wonder that kids these days have so many cavities (and other health problems!). There is no question that children’s health is an important issue, but forcing fluoride into our water system is not a good solution. It seems that before this is put to a vote in November, there should be more time for the public to comment. For more reading on the fluoride issue, please check out these Web sites on the Internet:
http://www.fluoridealert.org, http://www.fluoridation.com
Or check out this new book: “The Fluoride Deception,” by investigative reporter Christopher Bryson.
*****
Brian Carlstrom lives in Hood River.
