water

[Tenyu]

Date Published: 22/09/2000
Author: George Glasser

Preprare yourself for the tragic fable of the chemist, the water board, the dentist and his life.


Once, there was a dentist. His name was Lester. For many years, like all the other dentists he knew, Lester believed that fluoride in the drinking water was good for everyone. Like all the other dentists, Lester had learnt in dental school that fluoride reduces tooth decay. And, like all the other dentists, Lester believed that fluoride was fluoride.

Then, one day, he met a chemist and began discussing drinking water fluoridation.

The chemist asked what kind of fluoride was being used to fluoridate the drinking water. Lester replied: ‘We are simply adjusting the fluoride level in the water by adding one part per million of, well, just fluoride.’

‘There is no such thing as “just fluoride”,’ said the chemist.

Lester scratched his head. ‘But they told me that it was only fluoride they are adding to the water.’

The chemist laughed heartily. ‘Fluorine is the most reactive, electronegative element and it’s never found alone in nature,’ he said. ‘There are many kinds of fluorides: for instance, calcium fluoride is found naturally in water. Then there are other fluorides such as lead fluoride, aluminium fluoride, etc. If you add fluoride to the water it has to be a compound. You can’t just add fluoride to the water, so which one is it?’

Lester felt silly. He didn’t know.

The next day Lester went to the library to check the chemistry books and learnt that calcium fluoride is, indeed, found naturally in the water. He also discovered that calcium fluoride is almost insoluble and could not be easily absorbed by the body. And his friend the chemist was quite right - there were innumerable fluoride compounds.

Now intrigued, Lester looked up some scientific studies about water fluoridation. He read that in laboratory tests, workers use a very pure grade of sodium fluoride and purified water to do their research. He discovered that sodium fluoride is taken up by the body much more readily than calcium fluoride. His friend was right. The dentist wondered how anyone could say that calcium fluoride is the same as sodium fluoride.

The next day, Lester called his water department to ask if they were adding sodium fluoride or calcium fluoride to his drinking water. The WD manager said that they were adding a product called silicofluorides to the water. The WD manager said they bought a very low grade product because it would be too expensive to use a good grade and, anyway, the public health people would not pay for a good quality calcium fluoride, because, they said, fluoride is fluoride, no matter where it comes from. By now, Lester was completely bewildered.

‘Where do you buy these silicofluorides from?’ he asked. The WD manager said that the silicofluorides – known as hexafluorsilicic acid – are the toxic waste product from phosphate fertilizer pollution scrubbers. The dentist was aghast. ‘You have to be crazy putting that stuff in the water!’

The water department manager agreed because, he said, the hexafluorsilicic acid also contains other toxic substances such as arsenic, beryllium, mercury, lead and many more. He said he didn’t drink the city water because many of the contaminants in the fluoridation agent cause health problems. ‘For instance,’ he said, ‘arsenic causes prostate, bladder, kidney, skin and lung cancers and there is no safe level for arsenic.’

Lester was appalled. He asked the manager why he did not stop fluoridating the water with this pollution scrubber liquor. ‘And why would anyone add any amount of a known carcinogen to the water?’

Shrugging, the manager replied, ‘I’m just doing my job. The public health people have their agenda, and I have a family to feed.’

After a sleepless night, Lester contemplated the fluoridation dilemma as he soaped himself in the shower. ‘They say they are simply adjusting the level of natural fluoride in the water – which is calcium fluoride – but they are using a pure grade of sodium fluoride and very pure water for the rat experiments in the laboratory. But they are adding toxic pollution scrubber liquor to my drinking water!’ It didn’t make sense.
He called a man at the dental association and told him what he had learnt. The man said, coldly: ‘If you value your licence to practise, don’t ever mention this subject again!’

Lester was shocked.

He had worked hard and was very proud of his practice and his two classic cars. He couldn’t bear to lose them. He thought about his wife and family and how they would miss their luxury home with its four bathrooms and a jacuzzi, the private schools and foreign vacations. After a while he made a decision. ‘We won’t drink the tap water. We’ll buy bottled water.’ But he was not a happy man as he walked into the reception room and greeted his first patient of the day.

Several months later he visited his friend the doctor for his annual check-up and was stunned to learn that he had prostate cancer. He recalled the words of the water department manager. ‘Arsenic causes prostate cancer.’

Lester was shattered. He couldn’t understand it. Yet there was a reason. Despite taking care to drink only bottled water, Lester didn’t know that much more of the pollution-laced tap water is absorbed through the skin from bathing and washing clothes.

Poor Lester.

Although 64–91 per cent of exposure to waterborne contaminants is known to occur via dermal absorption, no studies have ever been done to determine the toxicity of pollution scrubber liquor – the fluoride used in water fluoridation schemes.

[sezy]

yes, i've also heard theories that flouride inhibits brain connecters and is used for dumbing down the population. conspiracy theory or truth, makes ya wonder.

Yes, fluoride can affect the brain. Fluoride is the primary agent in many pharmaceuticals specifically intended to affect brain activity: Prozac (fluoxetene) to inhibit the reuptake of Seratonin, the brain chemical necessary for synapse; Phen-Fen (fenfluramine) the diet drug taken off the market because of heart valve damage (only the fluoride-containing half of Phen-Fen was outlawed); Rohypnol (commonly called "roofies"), recently in the news as the date rape drug; fluoride is the only toxic element in Sarin, the nerve gas (rated 1,500 times more toxic than cyanide) used in the Japanese subway by terrorists and referenced in the Gulf War illnesses; and virtually every general anesthetic contains fluoride.

Medical contraindications for fluoroquinolones include, "They should not be used during pregnancy or breast-feeding because of severe effect on bone growth of the fetus or infant."

The trade-organizations-turned-sales-agents do not describe these uses of fluoride because it accentuates the fact that fluoride is used extensively for purposes other than resisting tooth decay, and that there are a wide array of risks-none of which supports their proposition that fluoride is a "benign element that has no adverse health effects."

Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, former head of toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston for 11 years, and now a critic of fluoridation, conducted animal studies in the early 1990s. She found that fluoride is a powerful central nervous system toxin and that the human brain could be adversely affected even at low doses. Dr. Mullenix states: "Criticisms of our study by dentists say that our results in rats are not relevant to humans because the doses we used were too high (75-125 ppm NaF in drinking water). These criticisms are without merit because our doses in rats produce a level of fluoride in the plasma equivalent to that found in humans drinking 5-10 ppm fluoride in water, or humans receiving some treatments for osteoporosis. — The fluoride levels in the drinking water of our rats were not high, they were taken from the well known animal model developed for the study of dental fluorosis, a model used repeatedly by dental researchers for several years. — In summary, there are no advantages to water fluoridation today. The risks far exceed the hoped for benefit." (See 28-1: letter by Phyllis J. Mullenix, Ph.D., to Dr. Irwin Kash, June 17, 1999).

Research from China has shown a correlation between exposure to fluoride and diminished IQ in children. (See 28-2: "Effect of a High Fluoride Water Supply on Children's Intelligence," from Fluoride, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 190-192). But when Dr. Mullenix applied for a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue her central nervous system research, she was turned down. An NIH panel flatly told her that "fluoride does not have central nervous system effects."

[sezy]

read more here

[ December 31, 2003, 03:24 AM: Message edited by: sezy ]

[Tenyu]

Date Published: 25/06/03
Author: Zac Goldsmith

Two weeks ago it emerged that Mr Blair is backing secret moves to force water companies to fluoridate drinking water, whether they like it or not. In other words, he is proposing to mass medicate the people of this country, not, as we might imagine, to prevent some terrible, crushing health risk like Small Pox, but to improve the quality of our teeth.


Two weeks ago it emerged that Mr Blair is backing secret moves to force water companies to fluoridate drinking water, whether they like it or not. In other words, he is proposing to mass medicate the people of this country, not, as we might imagine, to prevent some terrible, crushing health risk like Small Pox, but to improve the quality of our teeth.

Tooth decay is a nuisance, but it’s hardly the stuff of nightmares. Fluoride on the other hand may well be, and worse, according to countless studies around the world, it doesn’t even work. In the United States, where 65% of people are routinely subjected to the chemical, the worst tooth decay occurs in poor neighbourhoods of the largest cities, the vast majority of which have been fluoridated for decades. And when fluoridation was stopped in parts of Finland, East Germany, Cuba and Canada, tooth decay actually decreased.

But even if it did work, drinking fluoride to prevent cavities is like swallowing bandages to cure a broken arm. The US Centre for Disease Control only recently confirmed that fluoride is useful only when applied directly, for example to teeth. So the government has opted as a solution to tooth decay, not a campaign against the undisputed culprits like fast food or sugar, but mass medication with a useless medicine.

But fluoride is not just a useless medicine. It is highly toxic— so toxic in fact that in 1984, the makers of Colgate, Procter and Gamble, admitted that a small tube of their toothpaste "theoretically at least contains enough fluoride to kill a small child." Given the fact that a third of American children living in fluoridated areas have white specks, or in more serious cases, dark stripes across their teeth, a sure sign of fluoride over-dose, the implications are alarming.

Last year, the director of the University of Toronto’s Preventative Dentistry department, Dr Hardy Limeback, announced that he had profoundly corrected his pro-fluoride position having reviewed available literature. It must have taken him some time.

Fluoride has been linked to cot death, eczema and Alzheimer’s. It has been shown, at low doses, to cause genetic damage. It has even been blamed by Doctors from the National Cancer Institute and the National Health Federation, for 35,000 cancer deaths every year.

And because fluoride disintegrates collagen, an essential structural component in skin, muscle, ligaments and bone, big question marks are being raised over its possible contribution to arthritis, a problem that has increased by 63% since 1997, and which now affects a staggering seventy million Americans.

Other reports are appearing with increasing regularity that link the accumulation of fluoride in bones to an increase in hip fractures among the elderly. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported recently that "with increasing dose of fluoride in the drinking water the hip fracture ratio increases," a view echoed by the Lancet, the Annals of Epidemiology and many other science journals.

Still further studies have linked fluoride use to hyperthyroidism (underactive thyroid glands), one of the most widespread medical problems in the US, effecting more than 20 million people and leading to fatigue, weight gain, depression and heart disease. That is scarcely surprising given that Fluoride used to be prescribed by European doctors to depress the activities of the Thyroid.

But what is surprising is that fluoride was ever considered for mass medication. It has always been the source of contention. Indeed the first ever lawsuits against the US government’s Nuclear bomb programme, the so-called Manhattan Project, concerned fluoride, not radiation. What is more, the first health tests for fluoride, conducted by a Dr Dean, were designed to establish how much industry could afford to release into the environment without damaging human health.

So how did it happen? In the summer of 1943, a group of New Jersey farmers reported that something was ‘burning up’ their peach trees, maiming their horses and cattle and killing their chickens. The source of their ills was a nearby DuPont factory that was producing millions of pounds of fluoride for use in the Manhattan Project. Immediately following the war, the farmers filed suit against DuPont, and without realising it, triggered alarm bells throughout the government. At the time, the Manhattan Project’s chief of fluoride toxicology studies, Professor Harold C Hodge asked his superiors if there "would be any use in making attempts to counteract the local fear of fluoride through lectures on fluoride toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of fluoride in tooth health?" As we now know, that is what happened, with the effect that fluoride was magically transformed from a killer to a panacea.

Some years later, Dr Phyllis Mullenix, formerly the head of toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, conducted animal studies that showed fluoride was a powerful central nervous system toxin, even at low doses. Her results were published, and believing them to be original, she was startled when the US National Institute of Health rejected her conclusions out of hand and terminated her grant. In fact her research was not original. Similar studies had been carried out by dentists involved in the Manhattan project, and the results had demonstrated a ‘marked central nervous system effect’ from fluoride. A version of the study was published in 1948, but it was according to the investigative journalists who uncovered the original, ‘censored to the point of tragicomedy’. While the published version reported that the factory workers studied exhibited fewer cavities, the original reported that most of them no longer exhibited any teeth at all.

Since then, the most widely known study into the benefits of water fluoridation was conducted in New Zealand between 1954 and1970, and continues to be used by fluoridation advocates. But the study failed to meet the most basic criteria for scientific objectivity, not least because the decline in tooth decay that the community in question experienced was also experienced by other non-fluoridated communities in the region. The then mayor of Auckland, Sir Dove Myer Robinson described the so-called Hastings Experiment as a ‘swindle’.

Tragically the people the British government apparently wants to help most are the very same who will be worst hit by fluoride contamination. Studies by the American Dental Association in 1957, and again by the Canadian National Research Council in 1977 have shown that "people with inadequate dietary intakes are likely to be more ‘at risk’ as a consequence of long term low-dose fluoride ingestion."

The British government’s health and environment ministers, Hazel Blears and Elliot Morley, recently issued a letter in which they suggested with breathtaking arrogance that "those who remain adamantly opposed would be able to use water filters that remove fluoride or buy bottled drinking water." But why should we have to? If people want to subject their children to a highly suspect industrial poison, they are free to do so, on their own terms. That is the position of virtually every country in Europe.