Fluoride: Friend or Foe?

Fluoride is good for you. . .it prevents tooth decay, right? Tooth decay trends tracked by the World Health Organization from 1970 to the present show that the incidence of decayed, missing, or filled teeth has been steadily in decline with each passing year in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Iceland, and Greece. Better oral hygiene and improved dentistry are the most likely reasons for this
upswing in dental health. But it certainly can't be attributed to the fluoride. Because out of all of those countries, only one adds fluoride to the public water supply: the United States.

Let’s take a closer look at this halogen, which is closely related to the highly toxic element chlorine used as an antibiotic in many community water supplies. We know that chlorine, for example, with the same outer electron configuration and therefore very similar chemistry to fluorine, causes over 10,000 cases of cancer each year due to its addition to our water supplies. This includes 9% of bladder cancer and 18% of rectal cancer based on meta-analysis of ten major studies between 1978 and 1987. 25% of bladder cancer among non-smokers is linked to chlorine and its byproducts, called trihalomethanes, which are produced when it reacts with organic matter. Chlorine has also been linked to heart attacks, diabetes, kidney stones, gout, and possibly multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy.

Fluoride has similar characteristics, but is so strongly binding, that there is no medical way to chelate it out of the body, leaving homeopathic treatment as the only solution at this time. A number of studies have linked fluoride to as many as 10,000 cancer deaths each year, with a high incidence of bone cancer among men exposed to fluoride. In animal trials, fluoride has been shown to enhance the brain's absorption of aluminum, a toxin shown to contribute to Alzheimer's disease. Several osteoporosis studies have associated hip fractures with fluoride intake.

According to the Handbook of Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products, fluoride is more toxic than lead and only slightly less toxic than arsenic. And it accumulates in the body. A byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry, over 140,000 tons are put into our water every year, not to mention what is added to toothpaste and vitamins. Fluoride gels used for fluoride treatment in dental offices contain potentially lethal doses of fluoride if swallowed. Even a tube of toothpaste, with up to 1.5 grams of fluoride, can be a lethal dose to a young child. Unfortunately, the ADA will only give its seal of approval to those products that do contain fluoride, and any reversal of this position would serve to trigger an increase in lawsuits on the issue. Suits have already been filed in America as well as Canada, England and Australia. A family in New York was awarded $750,000 for the death of their 3-year-old child who accidentally swallowed fluoride gel during a dental treatment. An antidote for acute fluoride poisoning is to drink milk, which changes the form of the fluoride to a safer form, calcium fluoride. This knowledge could have saved the child’s life. Symptoms of fluoride allergy or toxicity include restlessness, insomnia, nausea, swollen lips, calcification of tendons, cataracts and even triggering Down’s Syndrome (Trisomy 21) due to interference with chromosomal function. Increased sensitivity can be due to kidney stress, autoimmune processes, immunodeficiency, diabetes and heart problems.

High Risk/No Benefits

Fluoride, first of all, does not reduce or prevent tooth decay. All of the recent large studies agree on this point. A study of 60,000 children in New Zealand showed that fluoridation had no significant effect on decay in permanent teeth. The largest study in this country was performed by the United States Public Health Service on 39,000 children, and found virtually the same rate of decayed, missing and filled permanent teeth in both fluoridated and non fluoridated areas all around the country. Going a step further, the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association found in 1987, “school districts recently reporting the highest caries-free rates in the province were totally unfluoridated.” The Pasteur Institute in France and the Nobel Institute in Sweden both agree that fluoride offers little or no prevention of dental caries, and that potential health risks outweigh any benefit.

Fluoride drops and tablets are not even approved by the FDA as safe or effective. Nor has the FDA ever labelled fluoride a proven cavity fighter. The EPA classifies fluoride as a contaminant. In fact, fluoride weakens and destroys bone tissue by a disease process called fluorosis. Dental fluorosis is actually visible as mottled white or brown spots on the teeth where the fluoride has prevented the enamel of the adult teeth from crystallizing. This represents one of the first obvious signs of fluoride toxicity, ranging from subtle chalky blotches to severe rusty-looking stains with pitting and associated brittleness of the teeth. Dental fluorosis is found in up to 84% of children in fluoridated areas around the country. Children age 12 and under are the most at risk. This problem has been known since 1931, when it came out as headline news.

By 1939, the American Water Works Association recommended that drinking water should not exceed 0.1 ppm. Then, the US PHS found that as fluorosis increased with higher levels of fluoride in the water, the rate of tooth decay seemed to drop by 50%. What they didn’t know, and still don’t understand, is that this was due to a shift in the biophysical terrain from Phase 2 (bacterial, such as tooth decay) to Phase 1 (degenerative, such as fluorosis and cancer). Tests were set up in four towns to increase their water’s fluoride content to 1 ppm, and preliminary results of the 10 year trial period showed a 60% reduction in cavities, as the people’s terrain started shifting to Phase 1. On June 1, 1950, just half way through the study, the US PHS decided to go ahead and endorse the “safety and effectiveness of artificial fluoridation.”

Even if we were only exposed to fluoride from 1 ppm added to our water, 10% of us would still get fluorosis. Since we have not consented to this, it is legally considered compulsory medication. Unfortunately, 50% of Americans are exposed to this level in our water, plus we are exposed to fluoride from other sources as well, including processed foods, drinks, baby formulas, fluoride supplements, dental treatments, dental hygiene products, fruits and vegetables grown with phosphate fertilizers, and even fluoride-based insecticides and fungicides. At 2 ppm in the water alone, 50% of the population develops fluorosis, and 95% get it at just 3 ppm. Non-organic grape juice has been measured with over 7.7 ppm of fluoride residue from insecticides and fungicides. Just 3 ounces a day of this juice by itself would provide the full dosage conventionally recommended by the proponents of fluoridation for a child under the age of 6. Health Effects of Ingested Fluoride states “In areas where the water is optimally fluoridated (1 ppm), it is inappropriate to prescribe the use of fluoride supplements.” Nevertheless, many pediatricians and dentists still do so, adding more fluoride to the so-called ‘optimal’ dosage of this toxin. The rate of dental fluorosis continues to rise. According to Professor Myers of the University of Rochester, “Dental fluorosis (mottled enamel) can be regarded as perhaps the best example of a completely preventable disease of the teeth.”

Fluorosis is visible in the teeth, but affects other bone tissue as well. In fact, the rate of hip fractures increases by 86% in men and women who live in areas with fluoridated water over 0.11 parts per million. Four studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association have shown increased hip fractures from fluoride. The New England Journal of Medicine has also reported research, done at the Mayo Clinic, showing that fluoride treatment for osteoporosis increased bone fractures and bone fragility.

Fluoride acts as an antibiotic, killing bacteria by poisoning their enzymes. This is detrimental to our friendly intestinal flora. Even more significantly, fluoride blocks vital enzymes in the mitochondria as well, interfering with cellular energy production. European studies have shown that fluoride shifts the body into Phase 1 (Low Energy) terrain, setting it up for cancer and degenerative disease. Fluoride has been linked to kidney and bladder disease, bone malformation, arthritis, skin disease, aortic calcification, thyroid dysfunction including hypothyroidism, obesity, birth defects, cancer and immunodeficiency.

Fluoride and your Brain

The union which represents all the workers at the EPA has stated “our members review of the body of evidence over the last eleven years including animal and human epidemiological studies, indicate a causal link between fluoride/fluoridation and cancer, genetic damage, neurological impairment and bone pathology. Of particular concern are recent epidemiological studies linking fluoride exposures to lower I.Q. in children.

A recent study published in Brain Research showed that sodium fluoride at levels equivalent to water fluoridated at 1 ppm caused brain damage similar to that found in Alzheimer’s and other dimentia patients. Aluminum accumulation in brain tissue was found to be increased 200 times by the presence of fluoride!

Cancer

Fluoride not only weakens bone tissue, making it brittle, but also increases bone cancer according to findings of the Safe Water Foundation, the New Jersey Department of Health and the National Cancer Institute. Fluoride causes other cancers, too, increasing the cancer rate a full 5% when it is added to the community water supply. This means about 10,000 Americans die each year from cancer caused by fluoride added to our water supply, according to the research of Dr. Dean Burk, the former Chief Chemist at the National Cancer Institute. This is just as bad as the statistic for its closest relative, chlorine. Even half the level of fluoride added to our water supplies has been shown to significantly increase genetic damage, according to a study by Procter and Gamble. A 1988 study by Argonne National Laboratory demonstrated “the ability of fluoride to transform normal cells into cancer cells.” Research at Batelle Research Institute linked fluoride to liver cancer, oral tumors and bone cancer in animal experiments. Even The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences stated in 1993 that “In cultured human and rodent cells, the weight of the evidence leads to the conclusion that fluoride exposure results in increased chromosome aberrations.”

Playing: Politics with our Health

Dr. William Marcus, a Senior Scientist at the Office of Drinking Water was fired in 1990 when he called for an independent review board to investigate fluoride. He eventually won in a law suit against the Environmental Protection Agency, and he is not alone in questionning the conventional ‘wisdom’ of fluoridation.

Dr. Richard G. Foulkes, author of a 1973 Canadian government report recommending mandatory fluoridation has now compiled a 2,000 page report reversing his recommendation and supporting his new position with research-based evidence. He claims to have been “conned” into his original position of support for fluoridation by misleading information fed to him by a powerful fluoridation lobby. The references he was originally given excluded studies that showed fluorides ineffectiveness at preventing tooth decay, as well as those showing the health consequences of fluoridation.

Zev Remba, the Washington Bureau Editor for the Academy of General Dentistry’s monthly publication, AGD Impact, concurrs, citing fluoridation promoters’ “unwillingness to release any information that would cast fluorides in a negative light.”

Edward Groth III wrote his 1973 Ph.D. thesis at Stanford on fluoridation and found that almost all literature reviews published on the topic were geared to promote fluoridation rather than to objectively examine the evidence.

Many studies never get published because they go against the prevailing ‘conventional wisdom’ that fluoride is good. For example, Dr. Harold Warner, professor emeritus of biomedical engineering at Emory University Medical School, together with Sohan L. Manocha tried to publish a study in JAMA in 1974 showing enzyme changes in monkeys drinking fluoridated water. Reviewers rejected the manuscript with comments like “I would recommend that this paper not be accepted for publication at this time” because “this is a sensitive subject and any publication in this area is subject to interpretation by anti fluoridation groups.” After their study was rejected for publication, the authors were told by their department head not to submit it for publication in any other U.S. journal because of a warning received from the NIDR. They eventually had to publish in a foreign journal.

Dr. H. Trendley Dean, known as the “father of fluoridation” has been forced to admit more than once in court that his statistics favoring fluoridation were not valid. He also admitted that critiques of the research were omitted, as were several studies which found no reduction in tooth decay with fluoridation.

In 1980, Brian Dementi, who was toxicologist at the Virginia Department of Health, wrote a comprehensive report on “Fluoride and Drinking Water” which examined the possible health risks. The report, the only one the department has ever produced on the topic of fluoride, has since been deleted from the department’s library.

John A. Colquhoun, former chief dental officer at the Department of Health in Aukland, New Zealand found that there was no benefit from fluoridation in that country in 1982, but the Department refused to give permission for him to publish the findings.

Robert J. Carton, environmental scientist at EPA, states that the EPA’s 1985 scientific assessment of fluoride’s health risks “omits 90% of the literature on mutagenicity, most of which suggests fluoride is a mutagen.”

A number of dentists who have testified on the risks of fluoridation have been reprimanded by their state dental officers. In addition, both the ADA and the PHS have attacked either the work or the character of investigators who uncover problems with fluoride in their research. For example, as far back as 1956, the ADA published false allegations about the work of the late George L. Waldbott, founder and chief of allergy clinics in four hospitals. These same allegations were still being quoted 3 decades later.

The Public Health Service, responsible for most of the funding for fluoridation research, has been publicly committed to the promotion of fluoridation since June of 1950. Any research suggesting harm from fluoride would be politically damaging to the agency and its budget. This could present a conflict of interest.

In 1991, the National Federation of Federal Employees who staff the EPA charged both EPA and the Surgeon General’s office with falsifying information on the risks of fluoride. They renounced the use of fluoride as an unsafe practice.

In 1992, The EPA tried to fire a high ranking toxicologist for talking about the link between fluoride and cancer and the downgrading “in almost all instances” of research data definitely linking fluoride to tumors in the National Toxicology Program.

Fluoridation: status around the world

The United States have the third highest rate of fluoridation of any nation, and the highest rate of hip fractures in the world. After more than 40 years of fluoridation, there is no evidence that Americans have less tooth decay than those in nations who reject fluoridation completely, including Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Iran, Finland, France, Italy, Spain, India, Greece, Indonesia and Japan. In fact, the only other major countries using large amounts of fluoridation are Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland.

Why don’t all countries fluoridate their water? In continental Western Europe, less than 1% of the population drinks fluoridated water. The Netherlands tried fluoridation for 10 years and then stopped. West Germany tried it in a few towns and then gave it up, too, for both legal and health reasons. France’s Chief Council of Public Health rejected fluoridation in 1980 due to concerns that it could harm human health. Denmark’s minister for the environment recommended against fluoridation because no long term studies looked at human health effects other than teeth. Finland rejected fluoridation after testing it for more than 20 years, when they found women with high fluoride content in their bones. Fluoride replaces calcium in bone tissue.

As the word gets out about fluoride, watch for labels to reduce the size of the box promoting “Fluoride” on the label, or even hide it in the middle of the list of ingredients with no additional notice of its presence. This way, they can still maintain their ADA approval. Also, they are not permitted to reduce the dosages to lower levels without getting FDA approval as a new drug, so this is unlikely. It is best to just avoid fluoride, or use it in non-toxic homeopathic form, such as Calcarea fluorica. As Paracelsus said in the 16th century of the Christian era, “All substances are poisons; there is none that is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy.”

Improve your diet and nutrition to prevent cavities, and rebuild dental and bone health with microcrystalline hydroxyapatite. Also, drink and cook with filtered water. Starfire’s countertop water filter removes over 99% of the fluoride from tap water when it is new, and still removes 91% when it has filtered over 28,000 gallons, making it the most cost-effective way to remove fluoride (as well as chlorine and other toxins).

(for 34 footnotes, see print version)

Why is the CDC Covering Up a Fifty Year Old Mistake?

Roger D. Masters (Research Professor, Dartmouth College)

Controversy over "fluoridating" public water supplies has been on the agenda for half a century. Although the specific chemicals in use raise genuine scientific questions, most proponents (from the Surgeon General to the American Dental Association) and critics talk about "fluoridation" without discussing the difference between sodium fluoride, familiar in toothpaste, and fluosilicic acid or sodium silicofluoride (jointly called "silicofluorides"), which are the main chemicals used for water fluoridation in the U.S. Does the difference matter? If so, why does a long-delayed CDC report on fluoride treatments carefully list the chemicals in fluoridated gels and mouthwash, but refuse to mention the chemicals used in our water supplies?

Water fluoridation was begun in the mid 1940's as a ten year experiment to see if drinking-water with sodium fluoride would reduce tooth decay. All tests of safety were conducted on sodium fluoride. In 1950, however, the Public Health Service authorized the substitution of silicofluorides, even though they had never been tested for effects on health and behavior. Today, over 90% of fluoridated water (delivered to over 140 million Americans) is treated with one of the silicofluorides.

The switch to silicofluorides about 50 years ago may have been an enormous mistake. Three years of intensive research, supported by the Earhart Foundation, has indicated that

1. Silicofluorides have never been tested for health and safety, and the EPA admits it now has no information on the effects of "chronic exposure" to water treated with them.
2. Silicofluorides do not dissociate completely after injection in public water supplies and their biochemical effects are not benign.
3. Extensive data analysis (based on three large samples of over 400,000 children) reveals that where silicofluorides are in use, children absorb significantly higher levels of lead from environmental sources (such as old housing).
4. Additional studies show that where silicofluorides are in use, there are higher rates of behavioral problems that have been linked to lead toxicity (including hyperactivity and other learning disabilities, substance abuse, and violent crime). These findings are based on a "cumulative loading" model of environmental risk factors.

The CDC and EPA have constantly refused to support objective scientific testing and have apparently engaged in a cover-up of data suggesting toxicity and harmful effects due to silicofluorides. The pattern evident in prior reports and funding decisions is especially noteworthy in the long-delayed CDC report on "Recommendations for Using Fluroide to Prevent and Control Dental Caries in the United States" (MMWR, Aug. 17, 2001, 50 [RR14] 1-42). This document is silent on the different health and behavioral effects of silicofluoride treated water compared to that treated with sodium fluoride. Although the report identifies the specific chemicals used to add fluoride to mouth rinse (sodium fluoride), dietary fluoride supplements (sodium fluoride), gel and foam (acidulated phosphate fluoride, sodium fluoride, or stannous fluoride) or fluoride varnish (sodium fluoride or difluorsilane), there is no mention of the specific chemicals used to fluoridate public water supplies or toothpaste (the two principal sources of fluoride for caries control).

Given the foregoing information, informed observers suspect that the CDC intentionally omitted information to "cover up" the fact that silicofluorides, although used in over 90th of water fluoridation in the U.S., have never been subjected to the tests conducted on sodium fluoride or other health products and medicines. Some CDC personnel know the research questioning silicofluorides, and in one case attended a presentation of research on their dangers.

It is time to discuss openly a toxin that could well contribute to higher rates of hyperactivity (ADHD) and crime in many American communities. Why should we allow bureaucrats to block discussion of the differences between either fluosilicic acid or sodium silicofluoride (toxic byproducts of manufacturing phosphate fertilizer as well as nuclear fuel and warheads) and sodium fluoride? Since silicofluorides have never been tested, shouldn't there be a moratorium on their use until their safety has been proven? If you live in Manhattan, you can choose non-fluoridated toothpaste but not non-fluoridated water. It's time for Congressional hearings on an issue that could help our children at virtually no cost (except for lost revenue to some chemical corporations and embarrassment to the CDC, EPA, and American Dental Association).

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