USA - Letter: Pushing back on fluoride

To the editor:

In the May 16 Gloucester Daily Times is a letter from Richard Gardner, MD, chastising Karen Spencer and her letter of May 10 (”Congressman should address fluoride issue”). While I respect the fact that he is a doctor, he has been woefully misled by the American Dental Association -- a powerful and influential lobby -- and the chemical industry.

To begin with, fewer than half the 351 cities and towns in the state fluoridate their drinking water, including Worcester (the second-largest city in Mass.) and Amesbury, which voted three years ago to stop fluoridating their drinking water. The countries of Europe do not fluoridate their drinking water and have the same rate of tooth decay as the United States. Dr. Gardner admits fluoride is a neurotoxin, failing to mention that even the U.S. government has recognized this, by lowering the concentration of fluoride they permit to be put in our drinking water two years ago. And the fluoride that’s put in our drinking water? In both Gloucester and Rockport, the water treatment plants dump 50 pound bags (labelled “Toxic,” Product of China, and with a skull and crossbones symbol on each bag to emphasize this) of Chinese industrial waste (sodium fluoride: a byproduct of the Chinese fertilizer industry) into the water you drink.

In the United States it is against federal law to “mass medicate” the public through drinking water supplies. Yet there is a loophole in this law. The government looks the other way on the issue of fluoride. Even Dr. Gardner will admit that if he drinks one glass of tap water per day, and I drink 10, I’m getting 10 times the dose of fluoride he is ingesting. Any reputable dentist will tell you that the most effective fluoride treatment for teeth is a “topical” application to the teeth, as in brushing your teeth with a fluoride toothpaste. And speaking of dentists...

In April of 2015 when the Cape Ann Fluoride Network was working to get removal of fluoride from drinking water supplies in both Gloucester and Rockport by getting the issue on the ballot in both communities, the Massachusetts Dental Association sent the retired president of the organization to personally attempt to persuade the one dentist in Gloucester who refused to “toe the party line” and sign a statement claiming fluoride is safe and good for you. This one dentist has accepted the fact that 14 Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and medicine have publicly stated that administering fluoride through drinking water supplies is both unsafe and unnecessary, with the individual use of fluoride toothpaste.

During this same period, the Rockport Board of Health held a “panel discussion” on the subject at the Carnegie Library in Rockport, with 100 percent of the panelists “pro fluoride.” Questions from the audience were only accepted if they were written in advance, and few were accepted. A woman asked, “If I’m breast feeding my baby and drinking fluoridated water, can the fluoride (a known toxin for infants that even Dr. Gardner will admit to) be transferred to my baby?” The lead panelist (a doctor from Boston, an “expert” on the subject of fluoride) admitted he didn’t know the answer.

The central issue in this whole (fluoride) debate was demonstrated by an elderly woman at the entrance to the library when we (members of the C.A.F.N.) were asking people as they entered the library for the discussion if they would like some literature on the opposing viewpoint. When I asked a particular elderly woman this very question, she responded rather indignantly, “I don’t care what you’re saying, I’m not listening! You got that?” That retort followed several weeks of harassment against myself and a woman volunteer at the Rockport transfer station by a particular member of the Rockport Board of Health, himself a doctor, who was personally outraged that we were offering information to educate the public on why Chinese industrial waste was not a good thing to be dumping in our drinking water.

Finally, Dr. Gardner, may I remind you that we once put lead in our gasoline and our house paints, and have learned over the years that this was not a good thing. Fourteen Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and medicine have publicly stated (written) that putting fluoride in our drinking water is neither safe nor a good idea, in spite of what the chemical industry or the ADA would have you believe. So thank you, Karen, for your letter. I’m putting my trust in education, rather than dogma.

Alan MacMillan

Rockport