Why It’s Not Safe (USA)
Water Fluoridation: Why It’s Not Safe
Of late we’ve once again learned that health officials sometimes change their minds about what is considered healthy and safe. The recent recalls and 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 in children. 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, 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’s an air pollutant emission captured inside smokestacks 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? Well, we were … but not really. Buried in most 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 cumulatively build up in our bodies, and can cause 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 -- in your body.
How do you feel that your body is 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 not in favor of fluoridation. And a growing number of other medical, dental, and public health professionals are now also calling for a halt to fluoridation, including eleven EPA employee unions representing 7,000 EPA 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? This voids the whole reason we originally put fluoride in water in the first place.
You also receive fluoride in your 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. Four federal agencies are relooking at the safety of fluoridation now, and the fact that we absorb it cumulatively from so many unmonitored sources is one of the reasons for the new investigations.
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. Now, the Tennessee city of Franklin is relooking at fluoridation’s safety. The dental industry is 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.
Fluoridation is voluntary in Tennessee. Your water district can simply vote to not fluoridate. I urge you to contact your water district and tell them, “Stop the fluoride!”
Daniel G. Stockin, MPH
(Daniel G. Stockin 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. He may be reached at 615-370-5788, or by email at: dan@thelilliecenter.com.)
Of late we’ve once again learned that health officials sometimes change their minds about what is considered healthy and safe. The recent recalls and 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 in children. 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, 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’s an air pollutant emission captured inside smokestacks 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? Well, we were … but not really. Buried in most 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 cumulatively build up in our bodies, and can cause 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 -- in your body.
How do you feel that your body is 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 not in favor of fluoridation. And a growing number of other medical, dental, and public health professionals are now also calling for a halt to fluoridation, including eleven EPA employee unions representing 7,000 EPA 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? This voids the whole reason we originally put fluoride in water in the first place.
You also receive fluoride in your 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. Four federal agencies are relooking at the safety of fluoridation now, and the fact that we absorb it cumulatively from so many unmonitored sources is one of the reasons for the new investigations.
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. Now, the Tennessee city of Franklin is relooking at fluoridation’s safety. The dental industry is 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.
Fluoridation is voluntary in Tennessee. Your water district can simply vote to not fluoridate. I urge you to contact your water district and tell them, “Stop the fluoride!”
Daniel G. Stockin, MPH
(Daniel G. Stockin 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. He may be reached at 615-370-5788, or by email at: dan@thelilliecenter.com.)
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