You can feel safe with fluoride, especially now that "Commies" are out of the picture.

Sunday, September 23, 2007
Bodily fluids fine with fluoride
You can feel safe with fluoride, especially now that "Commies" are out of the picture.
GORDON DILLOW
GLDillow@aol.com
I was shocked to learn that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is going to start putting fluoride in our water. No, I'm not shocked that they're going to add the fluoride. What's shocking to me is that they didn't start doing it long ago.
As reported in the Register last week, the MWD, which supplies about half of Orange County's water, plans to start adding fluoride to the water this fall to help strengthen people's teeth and fight tooth decay – especially in kids. Actually the water already contains tiny amounts of natural fluoride, but the MWD plan will spike it up a tiny bit more, to the optimum level of just under 1 part per million.

Once again, that's under one part per million – which means that for every part of your tap water that is fluoride, there are about 999,999 parts that aren't. If you're among the Orange County residents who will get the fluoridated water (some will and some won't) you won't see it or taste it, any more than you can see or taste the other substances – arsenic, aluminum, manganese, you name it – that are also found in almost infinitesimally small quantities in tap water.

As I said, I'm surprised that it took the water guys so long to get around to this. After all, fluoridation of municipal water supplies to improve dental health has been around for six decades. In fact, about two thirds of the people in the U.S. already drink fluoridated water; for many Americans, it's as common as using artificially "iodized" salt to prevent iodine-deficiency afflictions such as goiters.

And it's not as if there's a lot of debate over the benefits of fluoridation among the medical/scientific establishment. The American Dental Association, the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – it's hard to find any group of guys in white smocks with multiple diplomas on the wall who don't think fluoridation is one of the best things since latex gloves.
There is, however, one relatively small group on whom fluoride in the water does have an obvious deleterious effect. Fluoride seems to drive conspiracy theorists a little bit nuts. Of course, that's nothing new. Back in the 1950s fluoridation was denounced by some as a Communist plot to – as a character in the 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove" put it – "sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids…. A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual…. That's the way your hard-core Commie works."

But now that the Commies are pretty much relegated to the ash heap of history, the conspiracy theorists have turned to other, equally sinister culprits. Some say fluoridation is a plot by the U.S. government to exercise a form of "mind control." Others believe that Big Business interests see fluoridation as a way to dispose of an industrial waste product by conveniently dumping it into the water supply.

In fact, the story about the fluoridation plan on the Register Web site elicited just such comments. "There are … vast reports of Nazis experimenting with fluoride for population and mind control," one reader wrote. "They are going to poison us," another reader declared – although it's hard to imagine just how the Metropolitan Water District would benefit from poisoning its customers, unless it was to thin out the thirsty herd in preparation for an expected drought.
"I've heard them all," says Dr. David Nelson, a fluoridation consultant for the California Department of Public Health – who, by the way, promised me that he is neither a Communist nor a member of any secret subversive society. "It has morphed from a Communist plot to a government conspiracy to something that causes all these terrible diseases. It's all balderdash. We've been doing this for 60 years… and it's the right thing to do."

Meanwhile, dentists in the trenches – or rather, in the mouths – generally swear by the idea."It's extremely beneficial," says Dr. Paul Reggiardo, a pediatric dentist in Huntington Beach – which, incidentally, has been fluoridating its water for decades. Dr. Reggiardo, who also assured me that he's not a Communist or a subversive – in my experience, few dentists are – added that, "The vast body of (scientific) evidence is overwhelming as to the benefits" of fluoridation, as well as to the absence of negative effects.
Now, don't get me wrong here. Too much fluoride, like too much of anything, can be bad for you. I can also understand why some people are cautious about things being added to their water – and if they want to change the policy and the law, they're welcome to peacefully rise up and do it.But in the meantime, beware of wild conspiracy theories and half-baked Internet claims. Sixty years of experience tells us that a tiny splash of fluoride in the water can help us, not hurt us.
And our precious bodily fluids will be just fine.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7953 or GLDillow@aol.com