USA - About water: It’s the fluoride

In response to a recent letter to the editor, in which Elizabeth Rea cites an article in The Week magazine that claims that tap water is just as safe or safer than bottled water:
It’s the fluoride. Here’s my take on it: Fluoride is a byproduct of the fertilizer industry, and is extremely toxic in large quantities — just behind uranium and mercury. In fact, if they couldn’t dump it into our drinking water, they would have to pay millions of dollars to dump it in toxic waste sites.
Many studies were done in the USA by the fertilizer industry claiming that fluoride was safe in small quantities, and also claiming that it was effective in killing the bacteria that cause tooth decay. Many other studies were done in the USA and Europe that have proven that fluoride is very toxic in the quantities commonly found in municipal water systems. These studies also found that, although fluoride does kill the bacteria that cause tooth decay, many other substances do just as good a job with far less toxicity.
In August, more than 600 medical professionals signed a petition that calls for an end to water fluoridation. Fluoridation is all but nonexistent in Europe. I don’t know — I didn’t do the scientific research — but with as much controversy as there is surrounding fluoride, I will continue filtering my Albany tap water, occasionally buying bottled water, and using non-fluoridated toothpaste.

My source of information is http://fluoridealert.org. There are also hundreds of websites that call for an end to water fluoridation. Do your own research. There’s an incredible volume of information on this on the web.

David Moore, Albany