USA - The effects of fluoride on fish totally ignored
The effects of fluoride on fish totally ignored during policy debate
"And be it remembered that these noted problems had been long since given up by scientific bodies as insolvable mysteries and above man's ability to comprehend"
- Justification in a bill in the Indiana
Published: Monday, July 2, 2007
By Paul Engelking
How long would our species last if the air we breathed deprived us of your senses? Made us mull around aimlessly instead of acting with purpose? Stymied our reproduction?
Controlled studies have demonstrated that levels of fluoride exceeding 0.2 parts per million (by weight) in the fresh water they swim in produce those effects in salmon. (See D.M. Damkaer and D.B. Dey, "Evidence for Fluoride Effects on Salmon Passage at John Day Dam, Columbia River, 1982-1986," North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 1989.)
Levels of fluoride, well below those levels deemed acutely toxic to humans drinking it, are acutely lethal to salmonidea. (See J.M. Neuhold and W.F. Sigler, "Effects of Sodium Fluoride on Carp and Rainbow Trout," Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 1960.)
Now, change the scene from salmon climbing fish ladders at the research station on Big Beef Creek in Washington state and trout swimming in aquaria in Utah labs, to well-heeled lobbyists prowling Gucci gulch outside the committee rooms of the Oregon Legislature.
House Bill 3099 would have mandated fluoridation of public water supplies in Oregon municipalities with populations of 10,000 or more. Of the thousands of pounds of fluoride that would have been placed into water daily if this bill had passed, only one billionth would have ended up in human teeth. The rest would go down the drain and into Oregon rivers, lakes and streams.
Wouldn't curiosity, if not a sense of responsibility, be motive enough to try to figure out what all this fluoride would do in the environment?
How much of the bill's language considered the environmental effects of the thousands of pounds of fluoride that would pass through sewers, right through waste treatment plants, and into Oregon streams and rivers daily? None.
Would environmental effects be ever a part of the decision to fluoridate of a municipal water supply or not? No. The bill actually would have prevented anyone, any state or local agency, from taking into consideration any environmental effects on any species other than humans in making the determination to add fluoride or not!
In the 1890s, the Indiana Legislature had a bill to mandate the value of pi - the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle - as the rational fraction sixteen-fifths, or 3.2, rather than 3.14159. ... (Even a schoolchild's approximation of twenty-two sevenths is better than this!) Approved by the House unanimously, the bill had a second reading on the floor of the Senate with the full endorsement of the Temperance Committee before a visiting mathematician finally brought the body to its senses.
I am not totally against fluoride, or fluorine. I testified against a bill in the 1980s that would have outlawed the use of the chemical elements in a whole column of the periodic table! ("This is the halogen police; drop the stannous fluoride and come out with your hands up!") In that case, I was adamantly pro fluorine. I even put fluoride on my own teeth. And, I note that there were two bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, that would have protected children's teeth with fluoride without the potential of adversely affecting salmon and trout. I am not arguing fluoridation; I am just pro fish!
What is that phrase: "Fish or cut bait"? Just because members of a citizen Legislature might throw up their collective hands over the task of figuring out what is or is not good for the environment should not preclude others from trying.
The evidence is there. You just have to look.
Paul Engelking of Lowell is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon.
They don't agree in Yemen
"And be it remembered that these noted problems had been long since given up by scientific bodies as insolvable mysteries and above man's ability to comprehend"
- Justification in a bill in the Indiana
Published: Monday, July 2, 2007
By Paul Engelking
How long would our species last if the air we breathed deprived us of your senses? Made us mull around aimlessly instead of acting with purpose? Stymied our reproduction?
Controlled studies have demonstrated that levels of fluoride exceeding 0.2 parts per million (by weight) in the fresh water they swim in produce those effects in salmon. (See D.M. Damkaer and D.B. Dey, "Evidence for Fluoride Effects on Salmon Passage at John Day Dam, Columbia River, 1982-1986," North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 1989.)
Levels of fluoride, well below those levels deemed acutely toxic to humans drinking it, are acutely lethal to salmonidea. (See J.M. Neuhold and W.F. Sigler, "Effects of Sodium Fluoride on Carp and Rainbow Trout," Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 1960.)
Now, change the scene from salmon climbing fish ladders at the research station on Big Beef Creek in Washington state and trout swimming in aquaria in Utah labs, to well-heeled lobbyists prowling Gucci gulch outside the committee rooms of the Oregon Legislature.
House Bill 3099 would have mandated fluoridation of public water supplies in Oregon municipalities with populations of 10,000 or more. Of the thousands of pounds of fluoride that would have been placed into water daily if this bill had passed, only one billionth would have ended up in human teeth. The rest would go down the drain and into Oregon rivers, lakes and streams.
Wouldn't curiosity, if not a sense of responsibility, be motive enough to try to figure out what all this fluoride would do in the environment?
How much of the bill's language considered the environmental effects of the thousands of pounds of fluoride that would pass through sewers, right through waste treatment plants, and into Oregon streams and rivers daily? None.
Would environmental effects be ever a part of the decision to fluoridate of a municipal water supply or not? No. The bill actually would have prevented anyone, any state or local agency, from taking into consideration any environmental effects on any species other than humans in making the determination to add fluoride or not!
In the 1890s, the Indiana Legislature had a bill to mandate the value of pi - the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle - as the rational fraction sixteen-fifths, or 3.2, rather than 3.14159. ... (Even a schoolchild's approximation of twenty-two sevenths is better than this!) Approved by the House unanimously, the bill had a second reading on the floor of the Senate with the full endorsement of the Temperance Committee before a visiting mathematician finally brought the body to its senses.
I am not totally against fluoride, or fluorine. I testified against a bill in the 1980s that would have outlawed the use of the chemical elements in a whole column of the periodic table! ("This is the halogen police; drop the stannous fluoride and come out with your hands up!") In that case, I was adamantly pro fluorine. I even put fluoride on my own teeth. And, I note that there were two bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, that would have protected children's teeth with fluoride without the potential of adversely affecting salmon and trout. I am not arguing fluoridation; I am just pro fish!
What is that phrase: "Fish or cut bait"? Just because members of a citizen Legislature might throw up their collective hands over the task of figuring out what is or is not good for the environment should not preclude others from trying.
The evidence is there. You just have to look.
Paul Engelking of Lowell is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon.
They don't agree in Yemen
posted by Bill at
10:06 AM
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