Crossposted with www.thegreengrok.com.
More than 80,000 chemicals are produced and used in the United States. This is one of their stories.
With nearly 200 million Americans drinking fluoridated tap water these days, is it time to ask ourselves, do we really need the fluoridation?
I grew up in the 1950s when municipalities across the nation began fluoridating their drinking water to promote dental health. My parents thought it was a good idea and so, so did I. But I remember hearing friends say their parents were against it, some even claiming that fluoridation was a communist plot to undermine capitalism by poisoning our water supply.
 The difficult case of fluoride. Time magazine lists it in its "Top 10 Common Household Toxins" and yet, starting with Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1945, many U.S. municipalities have added it to drinking water. |
(This communist myth was carried to extremes in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in which a mad general, Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, cites the fluoridation of water as a primary motive for a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.)
While back then such a communist plot seemed pretty scary, now it just seems far-fetched. But today there are people, thoughtful people, who, despite decades of living with fluoridated tap water, oppose it. What's the fear now and is it grounded in reality? I decided to find out.
We add fluoride [pdf], a reduced form of the naturally occurring fluorine, to water (which contains some amount of fluoride naturally) to prevent tooth decay. And while to you or me a cavity may seem little more than a hassle -- the sting of Novocain, the rrreenee-reenee of the dentist's drill, a drooping lip for a few hours -- it's a big deal from a general and public health point of view. Consider the following:
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| BPAF » |
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So, if your job is protecting public health, fluoridating drinking water might seem like a very good idea. But it's only a good idea if it works. Does it?
To find out, I first Googled the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Surgeon General. Results?
But after heaping accolades on fluoridation in one paragraph, the Surgeon General waffles later on: "There are no randomized, double-blind, controlled trials of water fluoridation because its community-wide nature does not permit randomization of people to study and control groups. ... Conducting a study in which individuals are randomized to receive or not receive fluoridated water is unnecessary and is not feasible." Not feasible? Maybe. But unnecessary? I don't think so.
In 2000 the Centres for Review and Dissemination at the University of York in England similarly equivocated in a review of fluoridation research. While reporting [pdf] "a beneficial effect of water fluoridation," the researchers also note the data "could be biased" because of the potential for "confounding factors," and went on to state that: "Given the level of interest surrounding the issue of public water fluoridation, it is surprising to find that little high quality research has been undertaken."
So, apparently the studies touting the benefits of fluoridation are not all that iron-clad. And then there are the studies that seem to show that fluoridation is plain out ineffective.
Several studies from Europe and elsewhere (see here [pdf], here and here) show that developed countries now have similar levels of cavities whether they fluoridated their water or not -- a change from the 1970s and '80s when countries that did not fluoridate their water had more tooth decay on average than those that did.
Today, according to these studies, the incidence of tooth decay is universally low regardless of fluoridation.
 People along Ethiopia's Ridge Valley are plagued with fluorosis because the groundwater they drink is heavily laced with geologic fluoride. Pictures taken in May 2010 by my Nicholas School colleague, Avner Vengosh, who studies the sources of groundwater contamination in the region. |
The problem is fluorosis, dental and skeletal. Mild forms of dental fluorosis lead to faint discoloring or mottling of the tooth surface, a condition easily covered up by a dentist.
More severe fluorosis is characterized by dark stains and pitted teeth, in which the tooth's protective enamel is severely compromised. (See more pictures of fluorosis here.)
Skeletal fluorosis can be a lot more serious. In its mild form, skeletal fluorosis brings painful stiff joints; but in severe cases, individuals can experience crippling calcification and/or fusing of the vertebrae.
U.S. municipalities add between 0.7 to 1.2 parts per million (ppm) of fluoride to our drinking water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's standard for safe drinking water is 4 ppm, well above the 1.2 ppm maximum from fluoridation. So all's well, right? Not quite:
Fluoridation, controversial in the '50s, is still controversial today. Maybe fluoridation fights cavities, maybe not. Maybe it's safe, maybe not. But there's one more wrinkle.
When the U.S. policy to fluoridate our drinking water was first developed, scientists and dentists believed that only ingested fluoride benefited teeth. We now know that that's not true. Topical application (e.g., from brushing teeth with toothpaste) is also effective at reducing cavities, by about 24 percent on average, though it's not without its own risks. In the decades since 1955 when Crest with stannous fluoride first hit the market, it's become hard to find a toothpaste without fluoride. Do we need fluoridation if we've got fluoride toothpaste?
All this makes me wonder, could fluoridating drinking water now be as anachronistic as fears of a communist plot?
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Dr. Joseph Mercola: The Health Hazards of Water Fluoridation (VIDEO)
a) that in 2005, 4 years following the release of the CDC's sentinel recommendations, a considerable proportion of dental professionals in Indiana still did not understand fluoride's predominant mode of action."
Not only were the dentists behind in their knowledge of fluoride research, but the survey also found they didn't even know basic information about fluoride, such as how much fluoride is in toothpaste or high-fluoride gels.
b) As noted by the authors: "Another important finding was the inability of respondents to correctly identify the concentration of commonly used fluoride products." This raises the question: If, after 60 years of water fluoridation, most dentists still don't know how fluoride actually works, or how much fluoride is in the products they prescribe, what else do they not know? Do they know how fluoride affects other tissues in the body besides the teeth?
REFERENCE: 7) Yoder KM, et al. (2007). Knowledge and use of fluoride among Indiana dental professionals. Journal of Public Health Dentistry 67(3):140-7.
Fluoride avoidance reduced anemia in pregnant women, decreased pre-term births and enhanced babies birth-weight, concludes leading fluoride expert, AK Susheela and colleagues,( Current Science May 2010). http://www.fluorideandfluorosis.com/Anemia/Current%20Science%20Reprint.pdf
Susheela’s team explains: anemia in pregnancy, which can lead to maternal and infant mortality, continues to plague many countries despite nutritional counseling and maternal iron and folic acid supplementation.
Fluoride chemicals are added to 70% of public water supplies and virtually 100% of the food and beverage supply.
Anemic pregnant women living in India, whose urine contained 1 mg/L fluoride or more, were separated into two groups. The experimental group avoided
fluoride in water, food and other sources and ate a nutritious diet per instruction. The control group received no instructions. Both groups supplemented with iron and folic acid.
Results reveal that anemia was reduced and pre-term and low-birth-weight babies were considerably fewer in the fluoride-avoidance group as compared to the control. Two stillbirths occurred in the control group, none in the experimental group.
Susheela et al. writes, "Maternal and child under-nutrition and anemia
is not necessarily due to insufficient food intake but because of
the derangement of nutrient absorption due to damage caused to GI
mucosa by ingestion of undesired chemical
substances, viz. fluoride through food, water and other sources."
SUNY researchers found more premature births in fluoridated than non-fluoridated NY communities, (2009 APHA meeting).
Community water fluoridation has been well researched. Ongoing studies help determine how much people get from sources other than drinking water, the climate (people drink more in hot climates), and then adjust the amount of fluoride.
Skeletal fluorosis doesn't exist in this country. It does in parts of India where the natural levels are high, i.e. well over 4ppm. The USA has some cases of mild fluorisis, a cosmetic condition only which I wish I had, because it is an indication of strong teeth. Community water fluoridation takes out or adds fluoride to achieve a beneficial amount.
Note that fluoride is a naturally occurring *nutrient* that is necessary for health teeth and for proper formation of the small bones in the inner ear. (Proof that fluoride is a nutrient is the fact that without sufficient fluoride, deafness can occur and fluoride is the cure.) Humans evolved with fluoride in their water. It remineralizes the enamel of teeth with frequent exposure.
As for the problems of cavities, add this: fillings get old, need to be replace, can lead to caps and tooth loss, and difficulties eating in the elderly. This is escalating misery and expense. Avoiding a cavity every three years is a big deal, and that's what fluoride can do.
Mr. Chameides needs to do his homework on that Harvard cancer study.
People -- Ask your dentist if you are in doubt about fluoride.
The Centers for Disease Control says: “Fluoride works primarily after teeth have erupted…The concentration of fluoride in ductal saliva, as it is secreted from salivary glands, is low --- approximately 0.016 parts per million (ppm) in areas where drinking water is fluoridated and 0.006 ppm in nonfluoridated areas.
“This concentration of fluoride is not likely to affect cariogenic activity”
“The prevalence of dental caries in a population is not inversely related to the concentration of fluoride in enamel, and a higher concentration of enamel fluoride is not necessarily more efficacious in preventing dental caries.”
They are like the tobacco company executives when questioned on cigarettes safety years ago. Lets not forget doctors and dentist were used to sell us cigarettes just a few decades ago.
Lets "follow the money." If you had a toxic waste that somehow gets confused with a similar sounding chemical, what would you do? Sure, your "product" would need to be disposed of at the highest rated HASMAT facility. But by a fluke of salesmanship they get cities to buy it. What would you do? Industrial waste (sodium fluoride) is 85 times more toxic than natural occurring calcium fluoride. Both of them contain fluoride, but they are totally different compounds.
Can we talk now?
-v
Curious Becky
www.curiousbecky.com
Dental examinations of 4800 South Australian
ten- to fifteen-year-olds' permanent teeth reveal
similar cavity rates whether they drink fluoridated water or not,
reports Armfield and Spencer in the August 2004 "Community Dentistry
and Oral Epidemiology"
Best,
M.R. DDS
Seemingly sound teeth "explode" when poked with a metal explorer. These cavities were too small to detect on x-ray and invisible to the naked eye until the electronic diagnodent (and other similar devices) was invented which now allows dentists to "see" these hidden cavities.
Besides 80% of tooth decay occurs in about 25% of the population, which are mostly low income people. This group with the most decay don't' get to see dentists very much as 80% of dentists refuse Medicaid patients and 130 million Americans don't have dental insurance and use hospital emergency rooms when their rotting teeth are too painful to live with.
So most dentists only see wealthier healthier people who can afford to eat healthy foods and to see dentists regularly, so any small cavity can be filled before a ER doc has to pull it due to lack of dental care which is what poor people with the most decay have to do. So anecdotal evidence from dentists really doesn't prove anything. Sorry M.R. DDS
when Teflon (that's Florine containing plastic)
was used for jaw bone prosthesis,
all the adjacent bone,
started to rot away,
by Florine displacing calcium in the bone.
They had to cut away most of the persons jaw bone to stop the effect, since it just keeps going.
If someone came up with a list of the top 10,000 environmental issues facing humanity, the fluoride menace would not make the cut. In addition to being stupid, it is trivial.
It takes a certain type of mindset to seize upon something so peripheral while ignoring much more important issues. I see this often in the environmental movement. At a time when our environment is threatened by global warming, habitat destruction, overfishing, and the spread of non-native species, it is bizarre that so many people focus so much attention on such obscure and irrelevant topics.
I like this metaphor:
This is like a guy who is standing in a septic tank, up to his neck in sewage, and fretting about being overdue for a shave.
This kind of thinking is a real burden to those of us who actually care about actual environmental issues that actually matter.
This is the easiest environmental problem in the world because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to decontaminate most US waters supplies from fluoride pollution. All it takes is to turn off the spigot and the problem is gone. The real problem is people like yourself who THINK you know all about fluoride, probably from commercials, but really don't.
Fluoride is neither a nutrient nor essential for healthy teeth. Why is it that fluoride, and not required vitamins or minerals, is added to water supplies? Let's see fluoride is a multi billion dollar international product making corporations such as P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate, etc, very rich. Vitamins and minerals can't be owned and there's no money into fooling people that they need it which is done with fluoride.
18 Alabama water companies recently stopped fluoridation because the common sense water personnel have the authority to do so. Legislative bodies are coerced by organized dentistry to keep their fluoridation programs floating or risk the wrath of a very rich and influential health care lobbying group e.g. American Dental Association, which has grown rich because of corporations who profit from tooth decay & fluoride.
He has provoked a reaction from a commenter who does an astonishing job of proving his point.
By all means, read the comments. They amount to a manifesto of junk science.
Bravo!
So are you a dentist or just a concerned parent that lets his kids go to sleep sucking on the juice bottle?
No evidence.......15 scientists explaining why fluoridation is a risky and inappropriate medical practice. These scientists include one Nobel Prize winner, three members of a National Research Council committee that published a groundbreaking report on fluoride's toxicity in 2006, and two former EPA scientists. see
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7547385139152764985&hl=en#
v
Wicked funny!
I wonder how many people will understand what you've said. I get the sad feeling that a shrinking number of people are capable of getting your comment.
Thanks anyway.
It seemed at that point, the amount of fluoride could become way too high if I used unfiltered tap water to dilute juices, soups, etc. Glad to see that further study shows topical applications work for others too. My kids might have just possibly had such great teeth it wouldn't have mattered either way.
Anybody remember these movie lines from 1964?:
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes. (he begins to chuckle nervously)
Ripper: Are you beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes. (more laughter)
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation. Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Uh? Yes, I-I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Yes.
Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No, no I don't know what it is, no.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?
I have a doctor, he did not prescribe fluoride for myself or my family. Did yours? And if so, at what dosage? Are you couch potato that drinks very little. OR are you an active person working outdoors, probably drinking 10x that. Who is controlling the dose??
So you don’t trust internet documentation?
1. The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson
http://www.amazon.com/Fluoride-Deception-Christopher-Bryson/dp/1583227008
2. The Devil's Poison: How Fluoride is Killing You! by Dean Murphy, DDS
http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Poison-How-fluoride-killing/dp/1425144845
3. Fluoride: Drinking Ourselves to Death by Barry Groves
http://www.amazon.com/Fluoride-Drinking-Ourselves-Barry-Groves/dp/0717132749
4. The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There by Dr. Paul Connett PhD
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1603582878/optimalwellnessc
-v
Faved.
I'd fan you again if I could.
-- SUNY researchers found more premature births in fluoridated than non-fluoridated upstate NY communities, according to a presentation made at the American Public Health Association’s meeting, November 2009
-- NYS Department of Health dentist published national statistics in the July 2009 Journal of the American Dental Association which show similar cavity rates regardless of water fluoride content, However, dental fluorosis rates increased along with water fluoride levels. See analysis “Fluoridation No Benefit; Definite Harm,” by Kathleen M. Thiessen, Ph.D., SENES Oak Ridge, Inc., Center for Risk Analysis here: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/Clinch_2009_No_Benefit_Definite_Harm.pdf
-- The National Kidney Foundation dropped its fluoridation support replacing it with this caution: “Individuals with CKD [Chronic Kidney Disease] should be notified of the potential risk of fluoride exposure.”
-- Researchers reported in the Oct 2007 British Medical Journal that fluoridation never was proven safe or effective and may be unethical.
-- “A qualitative review of ...studies found a consistent and strong association between the exposure to fluoride and low IQ,” concluded Tang el al., in "Fluoride and Children’s Intelligence: A Meta-analysis” in Biological Trace Element Research
-- Scientific American editors wrote in January 2008, "Some recent studies suggest that over-consumption of fluoride can raise the risks of disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland"
Remember that "the dose makes the poison". Too little fluoride: bad teeth. Way too much: fluorosis. In the middle: all is well.
Besides, nobody drinks tap water any more, so the matter is becoming moot.
not so moot after all.... It seems one thing that fluoride proponents don't realize is, since so many of our processed foods and drinks are made with fluoridated water, we are now overexposed to it. For example; a bowl of Wheaties, a glass of milk, and a Coke or orange juice contains twice the amount of fluoride as the "optimal" daily dose of fluoridated water.
Recent studies in peer-reviewed medical literature indicate that fluoridated water can have detrimental side effects. Health risks associated with low-to-moderate doses of fluoride include: dental fluorosis; bone fracture; bone cancer; joint pain; skin rash, reduced thyroid activity; and IQ deficits. http://www.fluoridealert.org/fluoride-facts.htm
-v
-- Research published in Biological Trace Element Research (April 2009). indicates that blood fluoride levels were significantly higher in patients with osteosarcoma than in control groups. Osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer, occurs mostly in children and young adults
-- All infant formula, whether concentrated or not, contain fluoride at levels that can discolor teeth - even organic, according to research published in the October 2009 Journal of the American Dental Association.
-- Fluoride avoidance reduced anemia in pregnant women, decreased pre-term births and enhanced babies birth-weight, concludes leading fluoride expert, AK Susheela and colleagues, in a study published in Current Science (May 2010). http://www.fluorideandfluorosis.com/Anemia/Current%20Science%20Reprint.pdf
-- The American Dental Association and the Centers for Disease Control now advise that infant formula NOT be mixd with fluoridated water.
-- tooth decay crises are occurring in all fluoridated cities, states and countries. See http://www.FluorideNews.blogspot.com