Stop Fluoride

Erin Brockovich

After a great deal of research and personal thought, I am opposed to the continued policy and practice of drinking water fluoridation; I believe this harmful practice must be ended immediately. Public drinking water is a basic human right; and its systematic use as a dispensary of a substance for medical purposes is deplorable.

Shocking revelations are surfacing in the growing scandal; real harm from fluoride affects people of all races and ages, but one of the especially shocking aspects of the scandal is how dental and government officials responded when The Lillie Center for Energy & Health Studies publicized the science showing disproportionate fluoride harm to the African American community. Minority community and civil rights leaders have been speaking out, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece Alveda King. Ms. King recently posted on my Facebook page that I should keep shining the light on Fluoridegate. Ms. King also called for public hearings, and I agree: it's time for meaningful public hearings. There are numerous documents and aspects to this scandal that investigative bodies and investigative journalists will want to examine.

Now is the time for professional and consumer advocacy groups that have blindly lent their name to support drinking water fluoridation to rescind that permission. How many of them actually conducted their own reviews before allowing their name to be used? And now is the time to ask the hard questions about the nature of the relationship between trade groups, our surgeon generals, and other government officials concerning drinking water fluoridation.

As a mother and grandmother, I am concerned about families in fluoridated communities using fluoridated drinking water from their tap to mix infant milk formula. I am concerned that the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences has designated kidney patients, children, diabetics and seniors as "susceptible subpopulations" that are especially vulnerable to harm from ingested fluorides. How can we in good conscience give susceptible persons an uncontrolled amount of fluorides in water? I also strongly support Drinking water utility professionals, many I know many deplore and feel guilty about the idea of dispensing medication through drinking water and working with the dangerous fluoridation chemicals.

Drinking water fluoridation takes away people's freedom to choose what they take into their bodies. Low income families may not have the financial means to avoid over dosing with their drinking water.

I call for four avenues of action:

1. An immediate repeal of all laws that require or enable fluoridation.
2. Holding of Fluoridegate hearings at both national and state levels.
3. For professional associations and advocacy groups to rescind allowing their names to be used to support drinking water fluoridation.
4. For key research to immediately begin on how to safely remove fluorides that have accumulated in people's bones and pineal glands.

My career has been about making people aware of harmful exposures and the deception that often accompanies those exposures. Drinking water fluoridation is harmful, we've been deceived to believe it is safe, and with new found knowledge we must all act now to stop it.

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Fluoride & Health

TABLE of CONTENTS
Arthritis	Gastrointestinal Effects
Bone Fracture	Hypersensitivity
Brain Effects	Kidney Disease
Cancer	Male Fertility
Cardiovascular Disease	Pineal Gland
Diabetes	Skeletal Fluorosis
Endocrine Disruption	Thyroid Disease
Acute Toxicity

introductory comments

Fluoride is a highly toxic substance. Consider, for example, the poison warning that the FDA now requires on all fluoride toothpastes sold in the U.S. or the tens of millions of people throughout China and India who now suffer serious crippling bone diseases from drinking water with elevated levels of fluoride.
In terms of acute toxicity (i.e., the dose that can cause immediate toxic consequences), fluoride is more toxic than lead, but slightly less toxic than arsenic. This is why fluoride has long been used in rodenticides and pesticides to kill pests like rats and insects. It is also why accidents involving over-ingestion of fluoridated dental products–including fluoride gels, fluoride supplements, and fluoridated water–can cause serious poisoning incidents, including death.

The debate today, however, is not about fluoride’s acute toxicity, but its chronic toxicity (i.e., the dose of fluoride that if regularly consumed over an extended period of time can cause adverse effects).

Although fluoride advocates have claimed for years that the safety of fluoride in dentistry is exhaustively documented and “beyond debate,” the Chairman of the National Research Council’s (NRC) comprehensive fluoride review, Dr. John Doull, recently stated that: “when we looked at the studies that have been done, we found that many of these questions are unsettled and we have much less information than we should, considering how long this [fluoridation] has been going on. I think that’s why fluoridation is still being challenged so many years after it began.”

In this section of the website, we provide overviews of the scientific and medical research that implicates fluoride exposure as a cause or contributor to various chronic health ailments. In 2001, the union of scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Headquarters Office in Washington D.C. stated: “we hold that water fluoridation is an unreasonable risk.” The research in this section helps to demonstrate why EPA’s own scientists reached this conclusion, and why a growing number of health professionals do so as well.

The primary concerns with fluoride’s impact on human health can be summarized as follows:

• Current safety standards only protect against the most obvious forms of harm: Current safety standards for fluoride are based on the premise that severe dental fluorosis and crippling skeletal fluorosis are the first adverse effects that fluoride can have on the body. These effects represent the crudest, most obvious harm caused by fluoride. In the words of American University chemistry professor, Dr. William Hirzy, it would be a “biological miracle” if fluoride did not cause other harm prior to producing these end-stage forms of toxicity. Research already shows, in fact, that fluoride can cause arthritic symptoms and bone fracture well before the onset of crippling fluorosis, and can affect many other tissues besides bone and teeth, including the brain and thyroid gland.
• The current “safe” daily dose for fluoride fails to withstand scrutiny: The Institute of Medicine (IOM) states that anyone over 8 years of age — irrespective of their health condition — can safely ingest 10 milligrams of fluoride each day for their entire life without developing symptomatic bone damage. Ten milligrams, however, is the same dose that the IOM concedes can cause clinical signs of skeletal fluorosis within just 10 to 20 years of exposure. People with clinical signs of fluorosis can suffer significant symptoms, including chronic joint pain and overt osteoarthritis. The IOM’s safety standard instills little confidence in the medical understanding that currently underlies fluoride policies in the U.S.
• Some people are particularly susceptible to fluoride toxicity: It is well known that individual susceptibility to fluoride varies greatly across the population, and yet, the National Research Council has recently found that breathtakingly large gaps still exist in the safety literature on the effects these populations may be experiencing as a result of current fluoride exposures. The bewildering degree of uncertainties identified by the NRC stands in stark contrast to the IOM’s conclusion that 10 mg/day is so definitively safe that no “uncertainty factor” needs to be applied to protect vulnerable members of the population.
• The margin between the toxic and therapeutic dose is very narrow: The NRC concluded that the allegedly “safe” upper limit of fluoride in water (4 mg/l) is toxic to human health. While the NRC did not determine the safe level, their conclusion means that the safe level is less than 4 times the level added to water (0.7-1.2 mg/l) in community fluoridation programs. This is far too slim a margin to protect vulnerable members of the population, including those who consume high amounts of water.

See also:

• FAN’s Health Database
• Fluoride & Dental Fluorosis
• Fluoride & Tooth Decay
• Fluoride & Environmental Justice
• Sources of Fluoride Exposure