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UK Against Fluoridation

Friday, October 12, 2018

Canada - We all just want to be healthy, happy, writes Parry Sound's Andrea McIntyre


Upon becoming aware of the letter signed by the doctors of Parry Sound, I began a quick search on the internet for the World Health Organization's (WHO) current take on water fluoridation.
In 2006, they put out a strong cautionary news article about the adverse effects of water fluoridation. But then I came upon this article published in the 2014 February issue of The Scientific World Journal: Water Fluoridation: A Critical Review of the Physiological Effects of Ingested Fluoride as a Public Health Intervention.
From the abstract I quote "As part of efforts to reduce hazardous fluoride ingestion, the practice of artificial water fluoridation should be reconsidered globally, while industrial safety measures need to be tightened in order to reduce unethical discharge of fluoride compounds into the environment. Public health approaches for global dental caries reduction that do not involve systemic ingestion of fluoride are urgently needed."
They discuss natural fluoride compounds versus the current chemical compounds used to combat dental caries, as well as the science used to study the effects of fluoridation when it started in the 1950s.
I quote again: "The United States' lead in instituting artificial water fluoridation led to its acceptance by the World Health Organization as an effective oral health intervention. At least 30 nations instituted artificial water fluoridation policies. However, a number of countries including Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland stopped fluoridating their water supplies due to concerns about safety and effectiveness[ , .2]. Currently, only about five per cent of the world's population-350 million people--(including 200 million Americans) consume artificially fluoridated water globally. Over the past two decades many communities in Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand have stopped fluoridating their water supplies and in Israel the minister for health announced in April 2013 the end of mandatory water fluoridation. However, public health authorities continue to try and develop new community water fluoridation schemes.
"The fluoridation debate highlights the dynamics of science and power. To date, the dominant narrative has been that water fluoridation is safe and effective, with advocates claiming strong scientific support and the endorsement of the practice by major dental and public health bodies as evidence of its effectiveness. This is despite key questions about the efficacy and effectiveness of ingested fluoride, concerns about safety, and questions about ethics and legality, producing a debate that is a potent mixture of scientific, professional, corporate, and ethical arguments. This paper provides a reasoned assessment on the magnitude of the main positive impact of fluoride ingestion on human health (i.e., prevention of dental caries) compared with the established and potential adverse impacts. In particular, it raises questions about what an acceptable safety margin should be for ingested fluoride and questions why normal rules of safety normally applied to assessments of harm and benefit are not applied to water fluoridation."
"We examine the key arguments and evidence relating to three areas of current debate- efficacy and effectiveness, adverse impacts on health, and ethics. The paper concludes that given the questionable evidence of benefit and increasing evidence of harm the policy of water fluoridation for the prevention of dental caries should be abandoned in favour of more effective interventions combining community-wide and targeted oral health interventions."
I would suggest that those who are vehemently pro-fluoridation read the paper in its entirety. Science is not static. We used to put lead in paint, mercury in fillings, asbestos in insulation and use arsenic to preserve wood. The science is updated.
The benefits are less than the potential harm. Is this the future we want to create for our children? Or ourselves? Do we want to flood 98 per cent of the water with toxic waste added straight into the environment? Do we want to replace the calcium in our bodies with fluoride?

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