Thank you for your article querying the safety and efficacy of a 1940s idea of what to put in our bodies. On the back of your toothpaste tube, it says Call the Poison Center if you accidentally swallow more than a pea-sized amount. Why do dental and public health journals warn against reconstituting infant formula with fluoridated water? One teaspoon of straight sodium fluoride is enough to kill an adult.
Some of the earliest opponents of fluoridation were biochemists and at least 14 Nobel Prize winners. The union representing the scientists at the EPA headquarters in Washington D.C. went on record as opposing water fluoridation in 1999. Dr. William Hirzy, their senior vice president, testified before the U.S. Senate: “In summary, we hold that fluoridation is an unreasonable risk. That is, the toxicity of fluoride is so great and the purported benefits associated with it are so small-if there are any at all-that requiring every man, woman and child in America to ingest it borders on criminal behavior on the part of governments.”
Most of Western Europe and all of the Scandinavian countries have ruled against fluoridation -as far back as the early 1970s. Up until then, European doctors used fluoride as a thyroid-suppressing medication for patients with hyperthyroidism. The drug Synthroid, used to treat underactive thyroid, is now one of the top five prescribed drugs in the U.S. One wonders if there is a corollary-test buried somewhere in The Lancet or the American Journal of Medicine.
Skeletal fluorosis-a fluoride-induced bone and joint disease that impacts millions of people in India, China, and Africa-mimics the symptoms of arthritis. UNICEF estimates this disease is endemic in at least 25 countries across the globe. Is there an “arthritis” problem in the U.S. that could be masking something more insidious and, ultimately, curable?
Pharmaceutical grade chemicals are used to test rats in the USA, but fluoridated water is achieved via waste products from the wet scrubbing systems of the superphosphate fertilizer industry. These residues, 90 percent of which are sodium fluorosilicate and fluorosilicic acid, are classified hazardous. The L.A. Dept. of Water and Power, which is going to dump this stuff in your pipes by the end of summer, has an online list of toxins that might be circulating in your water and, right there along with arsenic and lead, is fluoride (ladpw.org/wsm/2003/Malibu%20(District%2029).PDF).
The EPA, which quite often has a controller hired directly out of a president’s living room, was reviewed last year on their safety standards. You can look up the findings online. “Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards (www.nap.edu/catalog/11571.html?onpi_newsdoc03222006). They include the fact that Dr. Hirzy requested Congress establish an independent review to examine the results of the only government-sanctioned animal study to investigate if fluoride causes cancer.
Beate Nilsen