Fluoride - Poison in the Water?

Healing Our World: Weekly Comment
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

Fluoride - Poison in the Water?

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/apr99/1999L-04-05g.html

Would you intentionally ingest a material that is used as a pesticide and has been suspected of causing cancer, hip fractures, intellectual impairment, fertility problems, deformed fish and dental deformities? Well, two-thirds of the population of the United States, and soon the entire population of the city of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities, take this material into their bodies every day if they use tap water in any way.

Listed as one of the top 25 censored stories of 1998, the use of fluoride in our drinking water may have originated over 50 years ago as a way to cover-up the dangers of fluoride first discovered during the project to create the first atomic bomb.

While going over hundreds of declassified documents about the U.S. atomic bomb development program, the Manhattan Project, reporters Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson found that fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production. Millions of tons were subsequently used during the Cold War period to manufacture the high-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Fluoride was the top chemical hazard of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, not only for workers, but for those living in nearby communities as well.

The documents show that the first U.S. lawsuits levied against the atomic weapons program were over fluoride poisoning, not radiation damage. The documents reveal that the U.S. government secretly ordered atomic bomb scientists to create "evidence useful in litigation" against defense contractors who were being accused of injuring citizens with fluoride.

In order to gather information, the government experimented with the residents of Newburgh, New York between 1945 and 1955. In a highly classified operation, the government secretly gathered blood and tissue samples from people of that town with the help of the New York Department of Health. Some of the results were published, but the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) censored the report for reasons of "national security" by removing the evidence of the adverse health effects from fluoride.

The evidence is compelling that the entire U.S. - and now international - program of water fluoridation began as a massive effort to coverup one of the most toxic materials to come out of the nuclear weapons program. If fluoride was presented to the country as beneficial, then no one could sue the government for being harmed by it.

Have you seen children and young adults among your family and friends with those whitish spots or flecks on their teeth or, in more extreme cases, dark streaks that look like decay? This is the effect of dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of overexposure to fluoride. In some communities, the incidence of dental fluorosis is 30 to 60 percent or more.

In the last 50 years, fluoride has shown up in toothpastes, in byproducts from the chemical industry and even in tablets for children, increasing our exposure to the chemical greatly. Unprecedented levels of fluoride are accumulating in our bodies, particularly the bodies of children. Fluoride accumulates in the bones and has been linked to an increase in the occurrence of stress fractures in young people in the United States.

The U.S. government's efforts to keep fluoride toxicity secret has had effects to this day. Very few studies have been done investigating the harmful effects of fluoride. Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, former head of toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston and now a critic of fluoridation, conducted animal studies in the early 1990s. She found that fluoride is a powerful central nervous system toxin and that the human brain could be adversely affected even at low doses.

In fact today, research from China has shown a correlation between exposure to low doses of fluoride and diminished IQ in children. But when Dr. Mullenix applied for a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue her central nervous system research, she was turned town. An NIH panel flatly told her that "fluoride does not have central nervous system effects."

Yet a declassified atomic bomb program memo dated April 29, 1944 states clearly that "clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central nervous system effect..." The memo goes on to ask for a series of animal tests to be done on central nervous system effects and says, "this is important not only to protect a given individual, but also to prevent a confused workman from injuring others by improperly performing his duties."

The first air pollution disaster in the United States involved fluoride. You won't find it in most history books. On October 31, 1948, an inversion layer caused the fumes from the U.S. Steel plant in Donora, Pennsylvania to sink to the ground, killing 20 people and sickening 2/3 of the town's 14,000 inhabitants. If the weather pattern had lasted another day, thousands would have been killed.

An official report at the time of the disaster said that no single chemical was the cause, but Philip Stadtler, the nation's leading fluoride expert at the time, said the fluoride levels in the blood of dead and dying people that night were 12 to 25 times above normal. The official report not only helped U.S. Steel avoid compensating the people, but it saved other fluoride-producing industries from worry. Today, steel and aluminum manufactures release huge amounts of fluoride into the atmosphere.

So is our nation's water fluoridation program the product of an effort to keep secret the toxic effects of fluoride? Unbelievably, this seems to be the case.

Many studies also show that the incidence of cavities in children in fluoridated communities is virtually the same as non-fluoridated communities, yet the mythology of fluoride continues.

The Resources section below will help you choose what you can do. But once again, the larger issue is about the assumptions we make in our society and where we have been taught to place our trust. Evidence is mounting that all assumptions must be challenged. We must ask "why" every step of the way and then find ways to say "no!"

"In point of fact, fluorine causes more human cancer death, and causes it faster, than any other chemical." -- Dean Burk, chief chemist emeritus at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

RESOURCES

1. An excellent summary of the key points against fluoride is at http://www.nofluoride.com/summary.htm

2. Visit the following websites for details about the controversy of fluoride:

Fluoride and the A-bomb program: http://www.icom.net/~nexus/fluoridebomb.html Disaster at Donora: http://www.cadvision.com/Home_Pages/accounts/babiuk/donora.htm

an excellent site at http://www.cadvision.com/fluoride/index.htm the findings of a study done by a Massachusetts town considering fluoridation: http://www.cadvision.com/Home_Pages/accounts/babiuk/natick.htm risks and benefits: http://www.cadvision.com/fluoride/calgaryh.htm Fluoride Information Index at http://www.rvi.net/~fluoride/ a very thorough article: http://www.icnr.com/FluoridePres/FluoridationOverdose.html

3. Read about all the sources of fluoride we encounter in a day in this referenced fictional piece at http://www.rvi.net/~fluoride/brou.htm

4. What you can do to decrease your own personal exposure and that of your family:

Find out if your community's water supply is fluoridated. If so, use bottled water for drinking and cooking. Boiling will not remove fluoride - it will only concentrate it. Don't give it to your pets either. Don't use it for baby formula. You should probably do this anyway whether or not fluoride is present. Use non-fluoride toothpastes. There are many on the market. Try a health food store rather than the supermarket. DO NOT swallow your toothpaste if you are using a brand with fluoride.

5. If you are experiencing tooth sensitivities and you have found the fluoride gels your dentist has prescribed helpful, you can still get relief in a number of other ways. Visit the following sites for help:

http://www.saveyoursmile.com/healtharticles/sensitiveteeth.html http://www.betterwebbuilders.com/sensitiveteeth.html Visit the Preventative Dental Health Association at http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/PDHA/health.htm

6. Find out how to organize your community from http://www.nofluoride.com/

7. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Demand federal intervention to stop fluoridation. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html or you can search by state at http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html. You can also find your representatives at http://congress.nw.dc.us/innovate/index.html

8. Learn about the issues. A great alternative bookstore is Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon at http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/associate?assoc_id=212 where you will find a wonderful alternative to the massive chain bookstores taking over the market.

Visit the Healing Our World Archive and check out the many resource links in past articles.

{Jackie Giuliano, a writer and a Professor of Environmental Studies, can be found in Venice, California, planning to use bottled water to boil pasta when fluoridation starts in L.A. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his web site at www.healingourworld.com}