Australia - Fluoridation-the Whole Truth
Fluoridation-the Whole Truth
The following is an open letter written by Ailisa Boyden to a Community Service Director in Australia, after noting that he was trying to persuade 5 councillors in a local Shire to change their minds after they voted, ‘No’ to fluoridation of local water supplies.
I have been privy to a "fluoridation" email you sent to Eurobodalla Shire Councillors on May 22, 2008 and am sure that you act with the best motives when you encourage a change of position on fluoridation for the five dissenting councillors; however, their stance should be lauded in view of the fact that the benefits of fluoridation are exaggerated and its harmful effects are underestimated (more below).
a daily dose of a scheduled poison that is more toxic than lead and only slightly less poisonous than arsenic
First, let me tell you that I grew up believing in the benefits of fluoride. After many years of giving fluoride tablets to my children, taking them myself when pregnant and lactating and having annual fluoride dental treatments, I researched the subject myself and am now appalled to think I gave to my children a daily dose of a scheduled poison that is more toxic than lead and only slightly less poisonous than arsenic. A substance that is an acknowledged "equivocal carcinogen", which is likely to be responsible now for my more than 25 years of hypothyroidism (fluoride is a known endocrine disruptor that for years was prescribed in Europe for people with over-active thyroid glands to lower their thyroid function - this was prescribed to be taken either orally, or dermally via soaking in water with added fluoride). Fluoride is now widespread - as is hypothyroidism. In fact, thyroid medication is now one of the most prescribed medications in the heavily-fluoridated US.
Further, I recall being told that a local endocrinologist in my non-fluoridated area said words to the effect that 1 in 11 of the people "on the street" probably have thyroid problems. Please note: fluoride is now widespread even in non-fluoridated areas (e.g. dentifrices; food chain {pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, fertilizers}, drinks; tea; fish; medications; anaesthetics, etc.).
It is of serious concern that fluoride is going to be more widespread now the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) has approved the use of Profume (Sulfuryl Fluoride) as a gas fumigant on various foodstuffs. This approval includes fluoride residue allowances - with seemingly no monitoring for compliance - up to and including 30 parts per million (30 mg/kg) on all nuts (ground and tree). This is 30 times what is considered safe to be added to public water supplies. In other words, any nuts you eat in the future could have high residues of a psychotropic drug (fluoride) on or in them. Prozac is a psychotropic drug whose other name is Fluoexetine ("Fluo" for fluoride).
With free trade, much imported food is making its way onto Australian supermarket shelves. The US EPA approved the use of Sulfuryl Fluoride on hundreds of footstuffs in the US. This includes 130 parts per million fluoride residue on "Wheat, post harvest, milled" which is an ingredient in staple foods such as bread and pasta. APVMA has also approved the use of Profume on animal food with no maximum fluoride residue level set.
With respect, I consider it an elitist attitude to consider that 100% of Moruya Rotarians voted for fluoride "perhaps because Rotarians have had the benefit of higher education and a life experience education in business and in the professions"; especially when the more than 1,700 professionals who have now signed the "Professionals statement calling for an end to water fluoridation" are ignored when they cite pressing concerns about the need to end fluoridation. Education and experience is of no use when the education and experience is not in the right field. Please click on the following links and take careful note of the signatories and their qualifications:
http://www.fluoridealert.org/statement.august.2007.intl.signers.html (Australian signatories included)
http://www.fluoridealert.org/statement.august.2007.us.a-m.html (US signatories A-M)
http://www.fluoridealert.org/statement.august.2007.us.n-z.html (US signatories N-Z).
You wrote: 'The dental profession no longer advocates the use of Fluoride in tablet form because of the risk of overdosing".
Response: "Were it not for the dental profession's former recommendations for fluoride tablets, my children and I would not have been dosed, unnecessarily, with fluoride poison, with adverse effects": the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now acknowledges that benefits from fluoride are primarily from "topical" application (applied to the teeth) and not from ingesting it.
The dental profession has been on a slow learning curve with fluoride for decades and it keeps changing the goal posts
The dental profession has been on a slow learning curve with fluoride for decades and it keeps changing the goal posts: first fluoride was claimed to confer perfect teeth on children only, soon followed recommendation for its intake throughout pregnancy. Later, recommendations for pregnant women to take it were withdrawn in the US in 1966. In the "ADA Policy Statement 2001" (revised then adopted 2004) it is noted: "2.4.5 Fluoride supplements (drops, tablets) should not be taken during a pregnancy." Why then, does ADA still advocate the supplementation of water with fluoride if it is contraindicated during pregnancy?
You wrote: "Brushing 3 times a day with Fluoride Tooth Paste is only partly effective..."
Response: If brushing 3 times daily with fluoride toothpaste that contains 500 times (Colgates Bubble Gum) and 1,000 times (some adult toothpastes) the amount of fluoride added to public water supplies is only partly effective, how do you imagine water with 1 part per million added to it is going to make a difference?
You wrote: "Why would anyone today consider a public water supply without added Chlorine?"
Response: For health reasons. Chlorine is a known carcinogen. For health reasons, the Douglas Shire Council in Far North Queensland does not use chlorine to sanitize its public water supply. Besides, chlorine is used to treat water; fluoride is used to treat people without their consent and without fully informing consumers of potential adverse effects.
Every analysis I have seen for sodium fluoride contains arsenic, lead and other deleterious heavy metals
You wrote: "The arguments against Fluoride in town water supplies are in my humble opinion are (sic) based on emotion and contrived misinformation..."
Response: Would you consider it to be "misinformation" and "emotion" when Dr William Marcus PhD DABT laid his high-profile US EPA job on the line to make it known that the scientific findings of rare cancers (liver and bone) in rodents from pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride had been downgraded to "equivocal carcinogen" from "clear evidence of carcinogenicity"? (See attached affidavits for details.) Please note: only industrial-grade (not pharmaceutical-grade) sodium fluoride is used in public water supplies. Every analysis I have seen for sodium fluoride (obtained under Freedom of Information) contains arsenic, lead and other deleterious heavy metals (sometimes even including mercury and aluminium) - as do other fluoridating agents (all industrial-grade).
You wrote: "... please think of those in our community less fortunate than ourselves and of the coming generations. Fluoride in town water supplies @ 1 ppm has proven health benefits."
Response: How about considering those for whom ingesting fluoride is contraindicated: people such as pregnant women, formula-fed infants; diabetics; the poorly nourished; outdoor workers and others who consume large quantities of water; those with impaired kidney function, the fluoride sensitive/reactive - and even people like some I know of who live in non-fluoridated communities and already have toxic levels of fluoride in their blood streams?
You wrote: "... It is indeed a sad situation when educated highly trained professional peoples published reports that have passed through the rigors of peer review are disregarded by some in our community, especially by some of our community leaders."
Response: Promoters of fluoridation disregard the most significant research of the scientific studies on fluoride ever undertaken (i.e. NRC 2006). They also disregard the wealth of adverse findings to be found at www.SLweb.org/bibliographies.html. Here they could access annotated bibliographies of peer-reviewed and published scientific studies sourced from mainstream medical, dental and scientific journals. More than half show the harmfulness of fluoride.
Both promoters and opponents of fluoridation can select sections from dental studies to support the for- and the against-cases for fluoridation: such are the vagaries of dental studies. Besides, if there is no control for key variables (particularly income level) a researcher can get any result they want when comparing communities.
The largest dental survey ever undertaken in the US (Brunelle & Carlos 1990; see http://www.fluoridealert.org/brunelle-carlos.htm) surveyed 39,000 children (5-17 years of age) in 84 communities (half of whom had lived all their lives in fluoridated areas and half of whom had lived all their lives in non-fluoridated areas) and reported a difference of 18% mean Decayed Missing and Filled Surfaces (DMFS). A careful appraisal of this study's findings reveals only 0.6 of one tooth surface difference between the fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities: i.e.
2.79 DMFS for fluoridated communities
3.39 DMFS for non-fluoridated communities
2.79 DMFS subtracted from 3.39 DMFS = 0.6 DMFS, which is less than one tooth surface difference out of 128 tooth surfaces in a child's mouth.
The difference in DMFS between 3.39 and 2.79 = 18%.
An Australian study by Spencer et al (1996) found only 0.12 to 0.3 tooth surfaces saved by fluoride out of 128 tooth surfaces.
Armfield & Spencer reported NO significant difference in the decay rates of permanent teeth of children drinking fluoridated compared to non-fluoridated bottled or rain water (Armfield JM & Spencer AJ {2994} Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, 32 (4):283).
The Queensland Dental Health survey 2002 reported Decayed Missing Filled Teeth (DMFT) for fluoridated Townsville's 12-year-old children as 1.38. Compare this with the following non-fluoridated Q'ld areas and note that it is not fluoride that is making the difference: i.e. Rockhampton 0.76; Mackay 0.93; Gold Cost 1.02; Brisbane North 1.28; Sunshine Cost .44; Mount Isa 1.58; Toowoomba 1.92; Logan/Beaudesert 1.95.
The Townsville Bulletin reported that leading dental researcher/paediatric dentist Kerrod Hallett examined 16 children at Townsville's fluoridated Vincent State School "on the first day of his last visit" and found "only one of those (16) had a healthy mouth" ("State pulls pin on school dentist chair - Kicked in the teeth", 16/02/08). If fluoridation is so good, the reverse should have been the case (i.e. 1 in 16 had an unhealthy mouth).
World Comparison (WHO 2007) reported DMFT's for fluoridated USA, Ireland and Australia as 1.28, 1.1 and 0.95 respectively and other non-fluoridated countries thus: Switzerland 0.9; Denmark 1.1; Belgium 1.1; Italy 1.1 and Finland 1.2.
Teotia & Teotia conducted the largest dental study in the world at the time in India: over 30 years, they examined 400,000 children and found that tooth decay increased with fluoride concentrations in the water and decreased with calcium concentration.
see http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/teeth/caries/diesendorf.html "The Mystery of Declining Tooth Decay" by Mark Diesendorf (Nature, July 10,1986, Vol. 322; pages 125-129). The article begins thus:
"Large temporal reductions in tooth decay, which cannot be attributed to fluoridation, have been observed in both unfluoridated and fluoridated areas of at least eight developed countries over the past thirty years. It is now time for a scientific re-examination of the alleged enormous benefits of fluoridation..." (The main body of the research for the above article was performed while Mark Diesendorf was a principle research scientist in the CSIRO Division of Mathematics and Statistics, Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, where he was involved with the Human Sciences Program of the Australian National University.)
In an article titled "Alarm as under-5's suffer rotten teeth" (11/02/08) News.com.au reported on some NSW dental data for under 5-years-olds that was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. When reading the following quotes, please bear in mind that NSW was 90% fluoridated in 2005 and South West Sydney is a fluoridated area:
"Documents show 55,144 dental services – including 12,943 fillings – were performed on children under the age of five in 2006-07, data released under the Freedom of Information Act."
"Of the 5130 tooth extractions, the highest number in the age group were in the South West Sydney Area Health Service where 1590 teeth were removed."
Any benefit from fluoridation is questionable and the harmfulness of fluoride at low levels is substantiated (NRC 2006).
Specific case studies reporting harm from fluoridated water are reported in a book published just this year titled, "Fluoride Poisoning - Is fluoride in your drinking water and from other sources making you sick?" This book was authored by Bruce Spittle, MB ChB with distinction, DPM who is the recipient of many medical prizes and awards. Dr Spittle is also the managing editor of "Fluoride", which is the official journal of the International Society for Fluoride Research. He oversees the publication of many fluoride research articles.
Your concern for the addition of fluoride to water supplies for the benefit of others is commendable but I say, unapologetically, misguided. I urge you to research the subject for yourself and not to rely for your information solely on those who promote the practice.
Yours truly
Ailsa Boyden
Spokesperson
Australian Fluoridation Information Network
The following is an open letter written by Ailisa Boyden to a Community Service Director in Australia, after noting that he was trying to persuade 5 councillors in a local Shire to change their minds after they voted, ‘No’ to fluoridation of local water supplies.
I have been privy to a "fluoridation" email you sent to Eurobodalla Shire Councillors on May 22, 2008 and am sure that you act with the best motives when you encourage a change of position on fluoridation for the five dissenting councillors; however, their stance should be lauded in view of the fact that the benefits of fluoridation are exaggerated and its harmful effects are underestimated (more below).
a daily dose of a scheduled poison that is more toxic than lead and only slightly less poisonous than arsenic
First, let me tell you that I grew up believing in the benefits of fluoride. After many years of giving fluoride tablets to my children, taking them myself when pregnant and lactating and having annual fluoride dental treatments, I researched the subject myself and am now appalled to think I gave to my children a daily dose of a scheduled poison that is more toxic than lead and only slightly less poisonous than arsenic. A substance that is an acknowledged "equivocal carcinogen", which is likely to be responsible now for my more than 25 years of hypothyroidism (fluoride is a known endocrine disruptor that for years was prescribed in Europe for people with over-active thyroid glands to lower their thyroid function - this was prescribed to be taken either orally, or dermally via soaking in water with added fluoride). Fluoride is now widespread - as is hypothyroidism. In fact, thyroid medication is now one of the most prescribed medications in the heavily-fluoridated US.
Further, I recall being told that a local endocrinologist in my non-fluoridated area said words to the effect that 1 in 11 of the people "on the street" probably have thyroid problems. Please note: fluoride is now widespread even in non-fluoridated areas (e.g. dentifrices; food chain {pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, fertilizers}, drinks; tea; fish; medications; anaesthetics, etc.).
It is of serious concern that fluoride is going to be more widespread now the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) has approved the use of Profume (Sulfuryl Fluoride) as a gas fumigant on various foodstuffs. This approval includes fluoride residue allowances - with seemingly no monitoring for compliance - up to and including 30 parts per million (30 mg/kg) on all nuts (ground and tree). This is 30 times what is considered safe to be added to public water supplies. In other words, any nuts you eat in the future could have high residues of a psychotropic drug (fluoride) on or in them. Prozac is a psychotropic drug whose other name is Fluoexetine ("Fluo" for fluoride).
With free trade, much imported food is making its way onto Australian supermarket shelves. The US EPA approved the use of Sulfuryl Fluoride on hundreds of footstuffs in the US. This includes 130 parts per million fluoride residue on "Wheat, post harvest, milled" which is an ingredient in staple foods such as bread and pasta. APVMA has also approved the use of Profume on animal food with no maximum fluoride residue level set.
With respect, I consider it an elitist attitude to consider that 100% of Moruya Rotarians voted for fluoride "perhaps because Rotarians have had the benefit of higher education and a life experience education in business and in the professions"; especially when the more than 1,700 professionals who have now signed the "Professionals statement calling for an end to water fluoridation" are ignored when they cite pressing concerns about the need to end fluoridation. Education and experience is of no use when the education and experience is not in the right field. Please click on the following links and take careful note of the signatories and their qualifications:
http://www.fluoridealert.org/statement.august.2007.intl.signers.html (Australian signatories included)
http://www.fluoridealert.org/statement.august.2007.us.a-m.html (US signatories A-M)
http://www.fluoridealert.org/statement.august.2007.us.n-z.html (US signatories N-Z).
You wrote: 'The dental profession no longer advocates the use of Fluoride in tablet form because of the risk of overdosing".
Response: "Were it not for the dental profession's former recommendations for fluoride tablets, my children and I would not have been dosed, unnecessarily, with fluoride poison, with adverse effects": the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now acknowledges that benefits from fluoride are primarily from "topical" application (applied to the teeth) and not from ingesting it.
The dental profession has been on a slow learning curve with fluoride for decades and it keeps changing the goal posts
The dental profession has been on a slow learning curve with fluoride for decades and it keeps changing the goal posts: first fluoride was claimed to confer perfect teeth on children only, soon followed recommendation for its intake throughout pregnancy. Later, recommendations for pregnant women to take it were withdrawn in the US in 1966. In the "ADA Policy Statement 2001" (revised then adopted 2004) it is noted: "2.4.5 Fluoride supplements (drops, tablets) should not be taken during a pregnancy." Why then, does ADA still advocate the supplementation of water with fluoride if it is contraindicated during pregnancy?
You wrote: "Brushing 3 times a day with Fluoride Tooth Paste is only partly effective..."
Response: If brushing 3 times daily with fluoride toothpaste that contains 500 times (Colgates Bubble Gum) and 1,000 times (some adult toothpastes) the amount of fluoride added to public water supplies is only partly effective, how do you imagine water with 1 part per million added to it is going to make a difference?
You wrote: "Why would anyone today consider a public water supply without added Chlorine?"
Response: For health reasons. Chlorine is a known carcinogen. For health reasons, the Douglas Shire Council in Far North Queensland does not use chlorine to sanitize its public water supply. Besides, chlorine is used to treat water; fluoride is used to treat people without their consent and without fully informing consumers of potential adverse effects.
Every analysis I have seen for sodium fluoride contains arsenic, lead and other deleterious heavy metals
You wrote: "The arguments against Fluoride in town water supplies are in my humble opinion are (sic) based on emotion and contrived misinformation..."
Response: Would you consider it to be "misinformation" and "emotion" when Dr William Marcus PhD DABT laid his high-profile US EPA job on the line to make it known that the scientific findings of rare cancers (liver and bone) in rodents from pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride had been downgraded to "equivocal carcinogen" from "clear evidence of carcinogenicity"? (See attached affidavits for details.) Please note: only industrial-grade (not pharmaceutical-grade) sodium fluoride is used in public water supplies. Every analysis I have seen for sodium fluoride (obtained under Freedom of Information) contains arsenic, lead and other deleterious heavy metals (sometimes even including mercury and aluminium) - as do other fluoridating agents (all industrial-grade).
You wrote: "... please think of those in our community less fortunate than ourselves and of the coming generations. Fluoride in town water supplies @ 1 ppm has proven health benefits."
Response: How about considering those for whom ingesting fluoride is contraindicated: people such as pregnant women, formula-fed infants; diabetics; the poorly nourished; outdoor workers and others who consume large quantities of water; those with impaired kidney function, the fluoride sensitive/reactive - and even people like some I know of who live in non-fluoridated communities and already have toxic levels of fluoride in their blood streams?
You wrote: "... It is indeed a sad situation when educated highly trained professional peoples published reports that have passed through the rigors of peer review are disregarded by some in our community, especially by some of our community leaders."
Response: Promoters of fluoridation disregard the most significant research of the scientific studies on fluoride ever undertaken (i.e. NRC 2006). They also disregard the wealth of adverse findings to be found at www.SLweb.org/bibliographies.html. Here they could access annotated bibliographies of peer-reviewed and published scientific studies sourced from mainstream medical, dental and scientific journals. More than half show the harmfulness of fluoride.
Both promoters and opponents of fluoridation can select sections from dental studies to support the for- and the against-cases for fluoridation: such are the vagaries of dental studies. Besides, if there is no control for key variables (particularly income level) a researcher can get any result they want when comparing communities.
The largest dental survey ever undertaken in the US (Brunelle & Carlos 1990; see http://www.fluoridealert.org/brunelle-carlos.htm) surveyed 39,000 children (5-17 years of age) in 84 communities (half of whom had lived all their lives in fluoridated areas and half of whom had lived all their lives in non-fluoridated areas) and reported a difference of 18% mean Decayed Missing and Filled Surfaces (DMFS). A careful appraisal of this study's findings reveals only 0.6 of one tooth surface difference between the fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities: i.e.
2.79 DMFS for fluoridated communities
3.39 DMFS for non-fluoridated communities
2.79 DMFS subtracted from 3.39 DMFS = 0.6 DMFS, which is less than one tooth surface difference out of 128 tooth surfaces in a child's mouth.
The difference in DMFS between 3.39 and 2.79 = 18%.
An Australian study by Spencer et al (1996) found only 0.12 to 0.3 tooth surfaces saved by fluoride out of 128 tooth surfaces.
Armfield & Spencer reported NO significant difference in the decay rates of permanent teeth of children drinking fluoridated compared to non-fluoridated bottled or rain water (Armfield JM & Spencer AJ {2994} Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, 32 (4):283).
The Queensland Dental Health survey 2002 reported Decayed Missing Filled Teeth (DMFT) for fluoridated Townsville's 12-year-old children as 1.38. Compare this with the following non-fluoridated Q'ld areas and note that it is not fluoride that is making the difference: i.e. Rockhampton 0.76; Mackay 0.93; Gold Cost 1.02; Brisbane North 1.28; Sunshine Cost .44; Mount Isa 1.58; Toowoomba 1.92; Logan/Beaudesert 1.95.
The Townsville Bulletin reported that leading dental researcher/paediatric dentist Kerrod Hallett examined 16 children at Townsville's fluoridated Vincent State School "on the first day of his last visit" and found "only one of those (16) had a healthy mouth" ("State pulls pin on school dentist chair - Kicked in the teeth", 16/02/08). If fluoridation is so good, the reverse should have been the case (i.e. 1 in 16 had an unhealthy mouth).
World Comparison (WHO 2007) reported DMFT's for fluoridated USA, Ireland and Australia as 1.28, 1.1 and 0.95 respectively and other non-fluoridated countries thus: Switzerland 0.9; Denmark 1.1; Belgium 1.1; Italy 1.1 and Finland 1.2.
Teotia & Teotia conducted the largest dental study in the world at the time in India: over 30 years, they examined 400,000 children and found that tooth decay increased with fluoride concentrations in the water and decreased with calcium concentration.
see http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/teeth/caries/diesendorf.html "The Mystery of Declining Tooth Decay" by Mark Diesendorf (Nature, July 10,1986, Vol. 322; pages 125-129). The article begins thus:
"Large temporal reductions in tooth decay, which cannot be attributed to fluoridation, have been observed in both unfluoridated and fluoridated areas of at least eight developed countries over the past thirty years. It is now time for a scientific re-examination of the alleged enormous benefits of fluoridation..." (The main body of the research for the above article was performed while Mark Diesendorf was a principle research scientist in the CSIRO Division of Mathematics and Statistics, Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, where he was involved with the Human Sciences Program of the Australian National University.)
In an article titled "Alarm as under-5's suffer rotten teeth" (11/02/08) News.com.au reported on some NSW dental data for under 5-years-olds that was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. When reading the following quotes, please bear in mind that NSW was 90% fluoridated in 2005 and South West Sydney is a fluoridated area:
"Documents show 55,144 dental services – including 12,943 fillings – were performed on children under the age of five in 2006-07, data released under the Freedom of Information Act."
"Of the 5130 tooth extractions, the highest number in the age group were in the South West Sydney Area Health Service where 1590 teeth were removed."
Any benefit from fluoridation is questionable and the harmfulness of fluoride at low levels is substantiated (NRC 2006).
Specific case studies reporting harm from fluoridated water are reported in a book published just this year titled, "Fluoride Poisoning - Is fluoride in your drinking water and from other sources making you sick?" This book was authored by Bruce Spittle, MB ChB with distinction, DPM who is the recipient of many medical prizes and awards. Dr Spittle is also the managing editor of "Fluoride", which is the official journal of the International Society for Fluoride Research. He oversees the publication of many fluoride research articles.
Your concern for the addition of fluoride to water supplies for the benefit of others is commendable but I say, unapologetically, misguided. I urge you to research the subject for yourself and not to rely for your information solely on those who promote the practice.
Yours truly
Ailsa Boyden
Spokesperson
Australian Fluoridation Information Network
posted by Bill at
9:41 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home