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Safety of Fluoride in the water

Respected Medical Professionals and Scientists are warning that water fluoridation has dangerous long-term consequences to health. Sodium Fluoride, which is added to your drinking water, officially to prevent tooth decay in under twelve-year-olds, is a highly toxic and difficult to dispose of waste product of aluminium manufacture and was once wider known of as rat poison. Fluorine is also a major constituent of your most effective major tranquilliser drugs. The first person to initiate its use in water was Adolf Hitler during the war in order to keep the inmates of the concentration camps sedated and subservient to authority. Fluorine was ideal for the job as it induces apathy and, by damaging an area of the brain, effectively takes away the will to resist authority. As one scientist with nearly 20 years experience in researching fluorine states, Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. It has not ever received "FDA Approval" (U.S. Food and Drug Administration). It is listed as an "unapproved new drug" by the FDA, and as a "contaminant" by the EPA. Although calcium fluoride can occur naturally, the type of fluoride (sodium) added to municipal water is a hazardous waste product of the aluminum industry, phosphate fertilizer industry, and other industries. Given that there are not any convincing scientific studies to prove that fluoride prevents tooth decay (indeed a recent study at the University of Arizona revealed that, " the more fluoride a child drank, the more cavities appeared in the teeth"), why then are so many regions of the UK's water supply artificially treated with fluoride, with plans to increase the amount of artificial fluoridation by the water authorities nation-wide? Approximately half of the United States' drinking water supply is fluoridated in an attempt to reduce dental cavities in children. Is this state of affairs justified? Is it safe? Most Americans are unaware of the dangers of ingesting fluoride. Most dentists, physicians and scientists are unaware of the dangers of fluoride and water fluoridation. According to a 1988 CE article in the prestigious Chemical and Engineering News; scientific voices of opposition to fluoridation have been suppressed, since 1950 CE when the U.S. Public Health Service first endorsed fluoridation. Power tactics including threats, ridicule and frank censorship aimed at scientists and clinicians knowledgeable about fluoridation have prevented the truth about fluoride to be disseminated to the science world as well as to the public. Whenever a public agency is charged with objectively evaluating the safety of a procedure while at the same time endorsing and recommending it, a serious conflict of interest is set up. This is exactly the position of the U.S. Public Health Service for the past 44 years. In 1971 CE, after 11 years of testing, Sweden's Nobel Medical Institute recommended against fluoridation, and the process was banned. The Netherlands outlawed the practise in 1976 CE, after 23 years of tests. France decided against it after consulting with its Pasteur Institute and West Germany, now Germany, rejected the practice for the reason that the recommended dosage of 1 ppm was too close to the dose at which long-term damage to the human body is to be expected. All of Western Europe, except one or two test towns in Spain, has abandoned fluoride as a public health plan. It is not put in the water anywhere. They all established test cities and found that the benefits did not occur and the toxicity was evident." Facts About Flouride So, what are some of the facts about fluoride? According to the handbook, Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products, fluoride is more poisonous than lead and just slightly less poisonous than arsenic. It is a cumulative poison that accumulates in bone over the years. According to the Physicians Desk Reference, "in hypersensitive individuals, fluorides occasionally cause skin eruptions such as atopic dermatitis, eczema, or urticaria. Gastric distress, headache, and weakness have also been reported. These hypersensitive reactions usually disappear promptly after discontinuation of the fluoride." From 1990 to 1992 CE, the Journal of the American Medical Association published three separate articles linking increased hip fracture rates to fluoride in the water. In the 22 March 1990 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Mayo Clinic researchers reported that fluoride treatment of osteoporosis increased hip fracture rate and bone fragility. In May 1992 CE, 260 people were poisoned, and one man died, in Hooper Bay, Alaska, after drinking water contaminated with 150 ppm of fluoride. The accident was attributed to poor equipment and an unqualified operator. Was this a fluke? It is not perceived of as being so. Over the years, the CDC has recorded several incidents of excessive fluoride permeating the water supply and sickening or killing people. Americans do not usually hear about these occurrences in news reports, though interested citizens have learned the truth from data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. A study by Procter and Gamble showed that as little as half the amount of fluoride used to fluoridate public water supplies resulted in a sizable and significant increase in genetic damage. Epidemiologic research in the mid-1970's by the late Dr. Dean Burk, head of the cytochemistry division of the National Cancer Institute, indicated that 10,000 or more fluoridation-linked cancer deaths occur yearly in the United States. In 1989 CE, the ability of fluoride to transform normal cells into cancer cells was confirmed by Argonne National Laboratories. Results released in 1989 CE of studies carried out at the prestigious Batelle Research Institute showed that fluoride was linked to a rare form of liver cancer in mice, oral tumors and cancers in rats, and bone cancer in male rats. Since 1991 CE, the New Jersey Department of Health found that the incidence of osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, was far higher in young men exposed to fluoridated water as compared to those who were not. Dr Dean Burk, who has spent more than fifty years in cancer research, mainly at the National Cancer Institute states: "More people have died in the last thirty years from cancer connected with fluoridation than all the military deaths in the entire history of the United States." "One tenth of all cancer deaths in this country," Dr. Burk states, are capable of being shown to be linked to foundation of public drinking water." That is 40,000 extra cancer deaths a year. It's ten times the number who die from asbestos induced cancer and exceeds deaths from breast cancer. Yet, 40% of the people in the U.S. continue to drink fluoridated water. In addition to the well documented toxic effects of fluoride, fluoride even at dosages of 1 part per million, found in artificially fluoridated water, can inhibit enzyme systems, damage the immune system, contribute to calcification of soft tissues, worsen arthritis and, of course, cause dental fluorosis in children. These are unsightly white, yellow or brown spots that are found in teeth exposed to fluoride during childhood. In 1993 CE, the Subcommittee on Health Effects of Ingested Fluoride of the National Research Council admitted that 8% to 51% and sometimes up to 80% of the children living in fluoridated areas have dental fluorosis. Malnourished people, particularly children, usually targeted for fluoridation, are at greater risks to experience fluoride's harmful effects. Worldwide there is very little fluoridation! In fact, many countries that previously adopted fluoridation have stopped. A few examples: Germany no Fluoridation, discontinued in 1971CE for health and legal reasons after eighteen years of experiments. In Spain, fluoridation is forbidden by law. France, fluoridation has not ever been considered as essential to beneficial health. In Sweden fluoridation is forbidden by law, it was discontinued in 1969 CE after a ten-year experimental program. The World Health Organisation (WHO) was asked by the Swedish government to produce evidence to support its earlier claim that fluoridation was safe. No evidence was produced Parliament declared fluoridation illegal in November of 1971 CE. Surprisingly, the most recent studies do not even show that water fluoridation is effective in reducing tooth decay. In the largest U.S. study of fluoridation and tooth decay, United States Public Health Service dental records of over 39,000 school children, ages 5 to 17, from 84 areas around the United States showed that the number of decayed, missing, and filled teeth per child was virtually the same in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas. Dr. John Colquhoun, former Chief Dental Officer of the Department of Health for Auckland, New Zealand, investigated tooth decay statistics from about 60,000 12 to 13 year old children and showed that fluoridation had no significant effect on tooth decay rate. Given all of this scientific information, what is behind this push for universal fluoridation? Prior to 1945 CE, fluoride was properly regarded as an environmental pollutant. It was responsible for many lawsuits against industries, such as the aluminium industry and the phosphate fertilizer industry, whose waste products contain large quantities of fluoride. This fluoride destroyed crops and animals, leading to the lawsuits. The limited public view was that fluoride was an environmental pollutant that required to be reduced or eliminated from the environment. As a result of clever public relations campaigns, fluoride was transformed from an environmental pollutant to an essential nutrient necessary for producing healthy teeth. The science was poor, though the P.R. campaign was great. Being against fluoride was like being against motherhood or apple pie. Industries not only made millions from selling this environmental pollutant to water companies and toothpaste companies, though more importantly, it saved billions of dollars that would be required to clean up this environmental pollutant. Court testimony from a Illinois trial on fluoridation reveals although attempts have been made, the United states Center for Disease Control, and the British Ministry of Health admit that no laboratory experiment has ever shown that 1 ppm fluoride of the drinking water Is effective in reducing tooth decay. Furthermore, they admit that there are no epldemlologicai studies or humans showing fluoridation reduces tooth decay that would meet the minimum requirement of scientific objectivity." So, what are you capable of doing to protect yourself from fluoride? First, avoid fluoridated water. Much of the metropolitan area, including New York City water is artificially fluoridated. Boiling water removes chlorine, though concentrates fluoride. Water filters do not remove fluoride, unless there is a reverse osmosis component. Children ought to avoid fluoridated vitamins and fluoride treatments at the dentist. Everyone ought to avoid fluoridated toothpaste. The concentration of fluoride in water is 1 ppm, in toothpaste 1,000 ppm and in fluoride dental rinses 10,000 ppm. Work on your legislators to get fluoride out of the water supplies. Over the past 50 years, there has been a large decline in cavities in the United States of America. Fluoridation proponents favour to claim that this reduction in cavities is a result of water fluoridation. For instance, in 1999 CE, when the CDC nominated fluoridation as one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century CE, it published a graph, which showed the reduction of cavities in the U.S.A. coupled with the increase in water systems that have been fluoridated. The CDC referred to the graph with the statement: "as a result [of water fluoridation], dental caries declined precipitously during the second half of the 20th century." Despite their near unanimous rejection of water fluoridation, the countries of western Europe have experienced the same decline in tooth decay as the heavily fluoridated US - and today enjoy, on average, the same rate of tooth decay. This fact raises many questions concerning the US Center for Disease Control's suggestion that the decline of tooth decay in the US is chiefly a result of water fluoridation. It is perceived that if the CDC's interest were really in providing an intelligent discussion on the issue of water fluoridation, they would have acknowledged that un-fluoridated countries (e.g. Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden) have experienced the same or greater declines in cavities as compared to the U.S.A. To not acknowledge this, though instead ignore it and claim that the decline of cavities in the U.S.A. is a direct result of water fluoridation, is both myopic and grossly misleading. It is certainly not seemingly the type of service one would expect from a science-based agency operating at the public's expense. Fluoride is a human carcinogen. Fluoride has repeatedly been shown to be a carcinogen in cell cultures, animals and humans. In 1956 CE Dr. John Chaffey, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, noted cortical defects in the bone x-rays of 13.5% of the children living in fluoridated Newburgh, compared to only 7.5% in the neighbouring nonfluoridated Kingston. He also noted the lesions were strikingly similar to osteosarcoma. Studies have now confirmed a dramatic increase in osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in young males exposed to fluoride during growth of the bones and a 5% increase in all types of cancers in fluoridated communities. A patent by the pharmaceutical company Sepracor discloses that concentrations of fluorides from fluoridated toothpastes and mouthwashes activate G proteins in the oral cavity, thereby promoting gingivitis and periodontitis, as well as oral cancer. Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, Past President of the American Medical Association states: "I am appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. Fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effects on a long-range basis. Any attempt to use water this way is deplorable." The fact that there has not ever been a scientific study, using tap water, which proves the safety of fluoride. The fact that there has been a steady stream of research studies which show that fluoride in drinking water is not safe for everyone, and that federal health and Human Services warns that subsets of the population are at substantial risk from fluoride. The fact that it is not fitting to use the public water supply as a delivery system for mass medication; chlorine treats water; fluoride treats people. The fact that a product which is not capable of being diluted enough to be legally dumped into the ocean is purported to be safe when diluted at 1 ppm and added to the drinking water. The fact that when total intake of fluoride from all sources is taken into consideration, including commercially processed foods and beverages, fluoridated water results in the overdosing of many people. The fact that proponents of fluoride use decades-old documentation in addressing both the effectiveness and safety of fluoride.