Why was I so bent about the tap water? Fluoride!
Now I am no anti-fluoride conspirator and I am not stating that we should never ingest fluoride, nor that it does not contribute to a healthy, beautiful smile, but it really is time to look at all the evidence supporting the damaging aspects of prolonged overexposure to fluoride and make the decision that we really need to take it out of the drinking water - leave it in the toothpaste where it belongs.
What is Fluoride?
Per the (EPA) Environmental Protection Agency, fluoride compounds are salts that form when the element fluorine combines with minerals in soil or rocks. That means that fluoride is a naturally occurring element, which naturally ends up in our water sources, usually minimally, yet it varies by geographic location.
These lovely, natural fluoride crystals belong to Deborah Blum, who wrote a very good article on those who advocate the removal of fluoridation from drinking water based on misguided concepts like fluoride occurring only as an unnatural industrial byproduct.
Why Add Fluoride To Drinking Water?
Fluoride is added to drinking water in an effort to reduce tooth decay by (re)mineralizing the teeth. Demineralization occurs with eating and healthy teeth require a good balance of re- and demineralization to avoid tooth decay - or avoid allowing tooth demineralization to exceed tooth mineralization.
In this regard, fluoride is a very beneficial element of dental health and it was thought that administering the chemical to the population via water supplies would be a simple way to ensure good dental health for everybody, especially the main target audience of children growing their adult teeth. Adult teeth forming in children absorb a lot more of the fluoride into the tooth, actually making tooth decay more difficult to achieve, yet also the reason why children are more susceptible to dental fluoridation.
Not only did it become basically standard to add fluoride to drinking water to improve the nation's dental health, we started putting it into toothpastes to apply the minerals directly to the teeth - which was actually a good idea.
The Proven (And More Commonly Accepted) Adverse Health Effects of Prolonged Exposure To Fluoridation
There is no debating the toxicity of fluoride, it is listed as a poison and is used as insecticide (granted at levels you will never experience in drinking water or toothpaste). The effects of consistent overexposure to fluoride are a myriad of chronic health problems, and not only does the average American (I would assume) have no clue how much fluoride they are consuming, they have no idea how easy it is to over consume fluoride.
Like tea? Read this snippet from the Irish Examiner:
The United States National Academies stated in their comprehensive report, Fluoride in Drinking Water (2006), that in countries such as the UK, where tea consumption is common, that the daily fluoride intake for many consumers would be greater than 9mg per day, which is more than twice the recommended dietary intake of 4mg per day.
The consumption of tea is higher in Ireland than the UK and unfortunately we make our tea with artificially fluoridated water. This means that many individuals are exposed to a daily fluoride intake of greater than 10mg per day. This level of exposure will result in increased prevalence of chronic disease. Today in Ireland, according to HSE reports, one in 3 adults suffers from a chronic disease.
Granted over here, you could probably replace tea (Southerners, they mean hot tea) with coffee and/or sweet tea.
According to the (EPA) Environmental Protection Agency webpage:
Exposure to excessive consumption of fluoride over a lifetime may lead to increased likelihood of bone fractures in adults, and may result in effects on bone leading to pain and tenderness. Children aged 8 years and younger exposed to excessive amounts of fluoride have an increased chance of developing pits in the tooth enamel, along with a range of cosmetic effects to teeth.
Children are also more likely to develop dental fluorosis, or develop white markings or streaking on the teeth, which is a form of skeletal fluorosis that develops from overexposure to fluoride.
The general symptoms of overexposure to fluoride include:
- Abdominal pain
- Abnormal taste (salty or soapy taste)
- Convulsions
- Diarrhea
- Drooling
- Headache
- Heart attack
- Irregular heartbeat
- Nausea
- Shallow breathing
- Slow heartbeart
- Tremors
- Vomiting
- Weakness
The Neurological Effects Of Fluoridation Exposure - Feil Smuartor Yeait?
The neurological effects of fluoride exposure can cause a decrease in intelligence, as concluded in this study by Environmental Health Perspectives, the abstract follows:
Background: Although fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in animal models and acute fluoride poisoning causes neurotoxicity in adults, very little is known of its effects on children’s neurodevelopment.
Objective: We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies to investigate the effects of increased fluoride exposure and delayed neurobehavioral development.
Methods: We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, Water Resources Abstracts, and TOXNET databases through 2011 for eligible studies. We also searched the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database, because many studies on fluoride neurotoxicity have been published in Chinese journals only. In total, we identified 27 eligible epidemiological studies with high and reference exposures, end points of IQ scores, or related cognitive function measures with means and variances for the two exposure groups. Using random-effects models, we estimated the standardized mean difference between exposed and reference groups across all studies. We conducted sensitivity analyses restricted to studies using the same outcome assessment and having drinking-water fluoride as the only exposure. We performed the Cochran test for heterogeneity between studies, Begg’s funnel plot, and Egger test to assess publication bias, and conducted meta-regressions to explore sources of variation in mean differences among the studies.
Results: The standardized weighted mean difference in IQ score between exposed and reference populations was –0.45 (95% confidence interval: –0.56, –0.35) using a random-effects model. Thus, children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses also indicated inverse associations, although the substantial heterogeneity did not appear to decrease.
Conclusions: The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment. Future research should include detailed individual-level information on prenatal exposure, neurobehavioral performance, and covariates for adjustment.
FluorideAlert.org claims to have cited over 100 studies that prove that intelligence reduction is just one of many unpleasant side effects, and they have tons on reference leading to all sorts of health problems directly attributed to chronic over fluoridation.
Just reading the abstract of this study, you can see how easy is would be for conspiracy theories to spawn from this, as there are those who claim public fluoridation is more of a means of population control than the desire to promote good dentition.
Fluoride & Cancer
Dr. Dean Burk, the famous director of the Cytochemistry division of the National Cancer Institute for more than 30 years, contributed much to the field of cancer research. During his retirement, he was interviewed on Dutch television to discuss the proposal to fluoridate drinking water in the Netherlands, in which he reveals shocking, straight-forward evidence linking fluoride and increased development of cancer based on his research of cancer patients in various areas of the United States in areas that did and did not contain fluoride in the drinking water.
Dr. Burk to Dutch Parliament: [Water Fluoridation] Amounts to Public Murder on a Grand Scale
Dr. Burk is one of the most noted biochemists in the history of biochemistry - he was very much under the impression that we should not have fluoride in our drinking water.
Watch 6 Minute Interview With Dr. Dean Burk, Former Head of the National Cancer Institute's Cytochemistry Sector
Dr. Burk's interview above is a very brief (yet very insightful) observation of the link between cancer and fluoride exposure, but he is not the only doctor that his contributed to the global forum of drinking water fluoridation.
In this video, Dr. John Yiamouyiannis, biochemist and founder of the Safe Water Foundation, goes into a little more detail about what is actually happening when fluoride is in the body and why it leads to accelerated growth of cancerous tumors.
If Fluoride Is For Dental Health, Overexposure Creates A Myriad Of Health Problems, Why Not Leave It In The Toothpaste & Take It Out Of The Drinking Water?
Fluoride is not recommended for young children. Overexposure to fluoride is bad for anyone. Overexposure is not necessarily fluoride poisoning, but ingesting too much at one time will cause fluoride poisoning and requires prompt medical attention. Extended use of fluoride creates various health problems, even accelerates cancer growth, especially when overexposure is occurring consistently for a prolonged period.
So, really, why would we not take the fluoride of out the drinking water and leave it in the toothpaste if there is no ulterior motives for public fluoridation? We would get all the benefits of good dental health, administered as needed (age specific) and without the worry of overexposure.
It is such a common sense approach that could possibly save millions in health care in as little as a couple of years (the couple of years projection based on the amount of time it took Dr. Burk to see a verifiable acceleration of cancer in populations that started to fluoridate drinking water in the United States).
Sooo, Why Is Fluoride In The Drinking Water, Again?
Why are we not doing anything about the problem of overexposure to fluoride in our communities? (Did you notice how old those videos are? According to Dr. Yiamoyuiannis, there was a verifiable link to overexposure of fluoride and cancer as early as 1965 - that was like 50 years ago.)
This is certainly a problem and it needs to be corrected at local levels through conversations at work, church, school, and most certainly town halls. We have got to get the people who are sourcing our water to stop fluoridating it.
We have got to get the fluoride out of the drinking water - not because fluoride is bad, but because too much fluoride is bad. Tylenol is good for headaches - if you take enough of it, you will die.
