“New Research Suggests [Fluoridating Water] Is Dramatically Misguided”

Posted on January 1, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/new-research-suggests-fluoridating-water-dramatically-misguided.html

To Protect Its Nuclear Weapons Program, Government Hired Top Propagandist to Create the Myth that Fluoride Is “Safe and Effective”

Preface: One of our pet peeves is when erroneous groupthink persists even in the face of contradictory evidence.

As shown below, water fluoridation is based on very shaky science.  And yet – despite the science – the big dental associations in the U.S. and other countries continue to push it as safe and effective.

The Guardian reported last week:

Health experts are calling for a moratorium on water fluoridation, claiming that the benefits of such schemes, as opposed to those of topical fluoride (directly applied to the teeth), are unproved.

***

Stephen Peckham, director and professor of health policy at Kent University’s centre for health service studies, said: “Water fluoridation was implemented before statistics had been compiled on its safety or effectiveness. It was the only cannon shot they had in their armoury. It gets rolled out, becomes – in England – policy and then you look for evidence to support it.

“The fat debate [whereby fat used to be the big enemy in food before that was revised] is an example of evidence getting built up to support a theory. It’s a dental health policy that’s got up a head of steam and people have been reluctant to see it criticised.

“You can’t really confidently say that water fluoridation is either safe or effective.

Newsweek reported last June:

You might think, then, that fluoridated water’s efficacy as a cavity preventer would be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But new research suggests that assumption is dramatically misguided; while using fluoridated toothpaste has been proven to be good for oral health, consuming fluoridated water may have no positive impact.

The Cochrane Collaboration, a group of doctors and researchers known for their comprehensive reviews—which are widely regarded as the gold standard of scientific rigor in assessing effectiveness of public health policies—recently set out to find out if fluoridation reduces cavities. They reviewed every study done on fluoridation that they could find, and then winnowed down the collection to only the most comprehensive, well-designed and reliable papers. Then they analyzed these studies’ results, and published their conclusion in a review earlier this month.

The review identified only three studies since 1975—of sufficient quality to be included—that addressed the effectiveness of fluoridation on tooth decay in the population at large. These papers determined that fluoridation does not reduce cavities to a statistically significant degree in permanent teeth, says study co-author Anne-Marie Glenny, a health science researcher at Manchester University in the United Kingdom. The authors found only seven other studies worthy of inclusion dating prior to 1975.

The authors also found only two studies since 1975 that looked at the effectiveness of reducing cavities in baby teeth, and found fluoridation to have no statistically significant impact here, either.

The scientists also found “insufficient evidence” that fluoridation reduces tooth decay in adults (children excluded).

“From the review, we’re unable to determine whether water fluoridation has an impact on caries levels in adults,” Glenny says. (“Tooth decay,” “cavities” and “caries” all mean the same thing: breakdown of enamel by mouth-dwelling microbes.)

“Frankly, this is pretty shocking,” says Thomas Zoeller, a scientist at UMass-Amherst uninvolved in the work. “This study does not support the use of fluoride in drinking water.” Trevor Sheldon concurred. Sheldon is the dean of the Hull York Medical School in the United Kingdom who led the advisory board that conducteda systematic review of water fluoridation in 2000, that came to similar conclusions as the Cochrane review. The lack of good evidence of effectiveness has shocked him. “I had assumed because of everything I’d heard that water fluoridation reduces cavities but I was completely amazed by the lack of evidence,” he says. “My prior view was completely reversed.”

“There’s really hardly any evidence” the practice works, Sheldon adds. “And if anything there may be some evidence the other way.” One 2001 study covered in the Cochrane review of two neighboring British Columbia communities found that when fluoridation was stopped in one city, cavity prevalence actually went down slightly amongst schoolchildren, while cavity rates in the fluoridated community remained stable.

Overall the review suggests that stopping fluoridation would be unlikely to increase the risk of tooth decay, says Kathleen Thiessen, a senior scientist at the Oak Ridge Center for Risk Analysis, which does human health risk assessments of environmental contaminants.

“The sad story is that very little has been done in recent years to ensure that fluoridation is still needed [or] to ensure that adverse effects do not happen,” says Dr. Philippe Grandjean, an environmental health researcher and physician at Harvard University.

The scientists also couldn’t find enough evidence to support the oft-repeated notion that fluoridation reduces dental health disparities among different socioeconomic groups, which the CDC and others use as a rationale for fluoridating water.

“The fact that there is insufficient information to determine whether fluoridation reduces social inequalities in dental health is troublesome given that this is often cited as a reason for fluoridating water,” say Christine Till and Ashley Malin, researchers at Toronto’s York University.

Studies that attest to the effectiveness of fluoridation were generally done before the widespread usage of fluoride-containing dental products like rinses and toothpastes in the 1970s and later, according to the recent Cochrane study. So while it may have once made sense to add fluoride to water, it no longer appears to be necessary or useful, Thiessen says.

It has also become clear in the last 15 years that fluoride primarily acts topically, according to the CDC. It reacts with the surface of the tooth enamel, making it more resistant to acids excreted by bacteria. Thus, there’s no good reason to swallow fluoride and subject every tissue of your body to it, Thiessen says.

Another 2009 review by the Cochrane group clearly shows that fluoride toothpaste prevents cavities, serving as a useful counterpoint to fluoridation’s uncertain benefits.

***

“I couldn’t believe the low quality of the research” on fluoridation, Sheldon says.

***

Cavity rates have declined by similar amounts in countries with and without fluoridation.

***

Sheldon says that if fluoridation were to be submitted anew for approval today, “nobody would even think about it” due to the shoddy evidence of effectiveness and obvious downside of fluorosis.

***

The CDC and others “are somehow suspending disbelief,” Sheldon says. They are “all in the mindset that this is a really good thing, and just not accepting that they might be wrong.” Sheldon and others suggest pro-fluoridation beliefs are entrenched and will not easily change, despite the poor data quality and lack of evidence from the past 40 years.

Indeed, an overwhelming number of scientific studies conclude that cavity levels are falling worldwide … even in countries which don’t fluoridate water.

World Health Organization Data (2004) – 
Tooth Decay Trends (12 year olds) in Fluoridated vs. Unfluoridated Countries: 

And the scientific literature shows that – when fluoridation of water supplies is stopped – cavities do not increase (but may in some cases actually decrease). See this, this, this, this, this and this.

A couple of weeks ago, the British Medical Journal reported that Americans lose a lot more of their teeththan the Brits … even though the U.S. fluoridates a lot more of its water than the UK.

Fluoridating may water also cause reduction in IQ, depression and a variety of other illnesses.

The Guardian notes:

Critics cite studies claiming to have identified a number of possible negative associations of fluoridation, including bone cancer in boys, bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, hip fractures and lower IQ in children.

Newsweek reports:

A growing number of studies have suggested … that the chemical may present a number of health risks, for example interfering with the endocrine system and increasing the risk of impaired brain function; two studies in the last few months, for example, have linked fluoridation to ADHD and underactive thyroid.

But how did the myth that water fluoridation is effective and safe get started in the first place?

The government allegedly ordered Manhattan Project scientists to whitewash the toxicity of flouride (flouride is a byproduct in the production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium). As Project Censored noted in 1999:

Recently declassified government documents have shed new light on the decades-old debate over the fluoridation of drinking water, and have added to a growing body of scientific evidence concerning the health effects of fluoride. Much of the original evidence about fluoride, which suggested it was safe for human consumption in low doses, was actually generated by “Manhattan Project” scientists in the 1940s. As it turns out, these officials were ordered by government powers to provide information that would be “useful in litigation” and that would obfuscate its improper handling and disposal. The once top-secret documents, say the authors, reveal that vast quantities of fluoride, one of the most toxic substances known, were required for the production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. As a result, fluoride soon became the leading health hazard to bomb program workers and surrounding communities.

Studies commissioned after chemical mishaps by the medical division of the “Manhattan Project” document highly controversial findings. For instance, toxic accidents in the vicinity of fluoride-producing facilities like the one near Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey, left crops poisoned or blighted, and humans and livestock sick. Symptoms noted in the findings included extreme joint stiffness, uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea, severe headaches, and death. These and other facts from the secret documents directly contradict the findings concurrently published in scientific journals which praised the positive effects of fluoride.

Regional environmental fluoride releases in the northeast United States also resulted in several legal suits against the government by farmers after the end of World War II, according to Griffiths and Bryson. Military and public health officials feared legal victories would snowball, opening the door to further suits which might have kept the bomb program from continuing to use fluoride. With the Cold War underway, the New Jersey lawsuits proved to be a roadblock to America’s already full-scale production of atomic weapons. Officials were subsequently ordered to protect the interests of the government.

After the war, … the dissemination of misinformation continued.

And Edward Bernays – the father of modern propaganda techniques – may have been the mastermind behind the “safe and effective” myth.

Austrian economist Murray Rothbard wrote in 1993:

The mobilization, the national clamor for fluoridation, and the stamping of opponents with the right-wing kook image, was all generated by the public relations man hired by Oscar Ewing to direct the drive. [Ewing was the chief counsel for Alcoa aluminum company, and fluoride is a byproduct of aluminum production.] For Ewing hired none other than Edward L. Bernays, the man with the dubious honor of being called the “father of public relations.” Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, was called “The Original Spin Doctor” in an admiring article in the Washington Post on the occasion of the old manipulator’s 100th birthday in late 1991.

***

As a retrospective scientific article pointed out about the fluoridation movement, one of its widely distributed dossiers listed opponents of fluoridation “in alphabetical order reputable scientists, convicted felons, food faddists, scientific organizations, and the Ku Klux Klan.” (Bette Hileman, “Fluoridation of Water,” Chemical and Engineering News 66 [August 1, 1988], p. 37; quoted in Griffiths, p. 63) In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays laid bare the devices he would use: Speaking of the “mechanism which controls the public mind,” which people like himself could manipulate, Bernays added that “Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…” And the process of manipulating leaders of groups, “either with or without their conscious cooperation,” will “automatically influence” the members of such groups.

In describing his practices as PR man for Beech-Nut Bacon, Bernays tells how he would suggest to physicians to say publicly that “it is wholesome to eat bacon.” For, Bernays added, he “knows as a mathematical certainty that large numbers of persons will follow the advice of their doctors because he (the PR man) understands the psychological relationship of dependence of men on their physicians.” (Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda[New York: Liveright, 1928], pp. 9, 18, 49, 53. Quoted in Griffiths, p.63) Add “dentists” to the equation, and substitute “fluoride” for “bacon,” and we have the essence of the Bernays propaganda campaign.

Before the Bernays campaign, fluoride was largely known in the public mind as the chief ingredient of bug and rat poison; after the campaign, it was widely hailed as a safe provider of healthy teeth and gleaming smiles.

And award-winning BBC producer and investigative journalist Christopher Bryson writes:

[Bernays] operated from the same office building, One Wall Street, where the Alcoa lawyer Oscar Ewing had also worked. In 1950 Ewing had been the top government official to sign off on the endorsement of water fluoridation, as Federal Security Administrator in charge of the US Public Health Service.

“Do you recall working with Oscar Ewing on fluoridation?” I asked Bernays.

“Yes,” he replied.

***

Bernays’s personal papers detail his involvement in one of the nation’s earliest and biggest water fluoridation battles ….

Bryson goes on for pages describing how Bernays master-minded the campaign to convince Americans to accept water fluoridation.

And watch this brief interview:

(The whole 25-minute interview is a must-watch.)

Even Chemical and Engineering News noted in 1999:

According to Edward Groth III, an associate technical director of Consumers Union who wrote his Ph.D. thesis in biology on the fluoridation controversy in 1973, pro- and antifluoridationists approach the issue from completely different perspectives. “Proponents see it as a simple public health measure, effective and safe, which they need to ‘sell’ to the public, almost like a box of soap.

In other words, the U.S. government apparently hired the leading propagandist to create the myth that fluoride is safe and effective in order to protect its bomb-making program.

US Government Admits Americans Have Been Overdosed On Fluoride

By: Collective Evolution. The US government has finally admitted they’ve overdosed Americans on fluoride and, for the first time since 1962, is lowering their recommended level of fluoride in drinking water.

http://peacefulwarriors.net/us-government-admits-americans-have-been-overdosed-on-fluoride/

The CDC reports that around 40% percent of Americans have dental fluorosis, a condition referring to changes in theappearance of tooth enamel — from chalky-looking lines and splotches to dark staining and pitting — caused by long-term ingestion of fluoride during the time teeth are forming.

The optimal fluoride level in drinking water to prevent tooth decay should be 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water (mg/L), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Monday, down from a accepted previous fluoride level of 0.7 to 1.2  of water mg/L.

The HHS has stated that the newly recommended change is because “Americans now have access to more sources of fluoride, including toothpaste and mouth rinses, than they did when municipal officials first began adding the mineral to water supplies across the United States.”

Federal health officials say the new recommended level will maintain the protective benefits of water fluoridation and reduce the occurrence of dental fluorosis.

Should We Be Adding A Drug To Our Public Drinking Water?

As many of us are already aware, we cannot fully control the dose of a drug that is added to the public water supply, so therefore it begs the question, should we be adding a drug of known toxicity to our public water supply at all? Or should we be approaching fluoride intake from the same perspective we do with other drugs?

Dr. Mercola sums it up clearly:

“If a doctor somehow managed to force a patient to take a drug with known toxic effects and failed to inform them of the dosage and frequency, and never monitored their health outcome, they would be medically negligent and liable to legal and medical board action.”

The theory is that fluoride is added to public drinking water in order to prevent tooth decay, however, fluoride has never been officially approved by the FDA for the prevention of cavities.

The fact is, even with the new lowered acceptable limit of fluoride, we can’t control or properly monitor the total amount of fluoride being ingested by the public when we take into account the amount of fluoride people are getting from food, toothpaste, mouth rinses, beverages, etc.

Dental Fluorosis Not The Only Concern With Fluoride Ingestion

“Dental fluorosis is the most visible form of fluorosis, but it’s far from being “just cosmetic” and of no further concern,” says Mercola.

It can also be an indication that the rest of your body, such as your bones and internal organs, including your brain, has been overexposed to fluoride as well.

In other words, if fluoride is having a visually detrimental effect on the surface of your teeth, you can be virtually guaranteed that it’s also damaging other parts of your body, such as your bones. Skeletal fluorosis, which isn’t visible, is very difficult to distinguish from arthritis.

Symptoms indicative of early clinical stage skeletal fluorosis include:

• Burning, prickling, and tingling in your limbs
• Muscle weakness
• Chronic fatigue
• Gastrointestinal disorders
• Reduced appetite and weight loss

The second clinical stage of skeletal fluorosis is characterized by:

• Stiff joints and/or constant pain in your bones; brittle bones; and osteosclerosis
• Anemia
• Calcification of tendons or ligaments of ribs and pelvis
• Osteoporosis in the long bones

It is important to remember that once fluoride is swallowed, it does not directly and solely collect in your teeth enamel. Rather, it accumulates throughout your body’s bones and tissues.

Interestingly, both the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) have noted that there is no discernible difference in tooth decay between developed countries that fluoridate their water and those that do not.

Even more cause for concern comes from a 2006 NRC report which stated for the first time that fluoride is an “endocrine disruptor,” which means it has the potential to play havoc with the biology and fate of humans and animals. This is far more significant than severe dental fluorosis.

Fluoridation May Not Prevent Cavities, Scientific Review Shows

June 29, 2015 

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/fluoridation-may-not-prevent-cavities-scientific-review-shows.html#more-47803 

If you’re like two-thirds of Americans, fluoride is added to your tap water for the purpose of reducing cavities. But the scientific rationale for putting it there may be outdated, and no longer as clear-cut as was once thought.  

Water fluoridation, which first began in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and expanded nationwide over the years, has always been controversial. Those opposed to the process have argued—and a growing number of studies have suggested—that the chemical may present a number of health risks, for example interfering with the endocrine system and increasing the risk of impaired brain function; two studies in the last few months, for example, have linked fluoridation to ADHD and underactive thyroid. Others argue against water fluoridation on ethical grounds, saying the process forces people to consume a substance they may not know is there—or that they’d rather avoid.

Despite concerns about safety and ethics, many are content to continue fluoridation because of its purported benefit: that it reduces tooth decay. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Oral Health, the main government body responsible for the process, says it’s “safe and effective.”

You might think, then, that fluoridated water's efficacy as a cavity preventer would be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But new research suggests that assumption is dramatically misguided; while using fluoridated toothpaste has been proven to be good for oral health, consuming fluoridated water may have no positive impact. 

The Cochrane Collaboration, a group of doctors and researchers known for their comprehensive reviews—which are widely regarded as the gold standard of scientific rigor in assessing effectiveness of public health policies—recently set out to find out if fluoridation reduces cavities. They reviewed every study done on fluoridation that they could find, and then winnowed down the collection to only the most comprehensive, well-designed and reliable papers. Then they analyzed these studies’ results, and published their conclusion in a review earlier this month.

The review identified only three studies since 1975—of sufficient quality to be included—that addressed the effectiveness of fluoridation on tooth decay in the population at large. These papers determined that fluoridation does not reduce cavities to a statistically significant degree in permanent teeth, says study co-author Anne-Marie Glenny, a health science researcher at Manchester University in the United Kingdom. The authors found only seven other studies worthy of inclusion dating prior to 1975. 

The authors also found only two studies since 1975 that looked at the effectiveness of reducing cavities in baby teeth, and found fluoridation to have no statistically significant impact here, either. 

The scientists also found “insufficient evidence” that fluoridation reduces tooth decay in adults (children excluded).

“From the review, we’re unable to determine whether water fluoridation has an impact on caries levels in adults,” Glenny says. (“Tooth decay,” “cavities” and “caries” all mean the same thing: breakdown of enamel by mouth-dwelling microbes.) 

“Frankly, this is pretty shocking,” says Thomas Zoeller, a scientist at UMass-Amherst uninvolved in the work. “This study does not support the use of fluoride in drinking water.” Trevor Sheldon concurred. Sheldon is the dean of the Hull York Medical School in the United Kingdom who led the advisory board that conducted a systematic review of water fluoridation in 2000, that came to similar conclusions as the Cochrane review. The lack of good evidence of effectiveness has shocked him. “I had assumed because of everything I’d heard that water fluoridation reduces cavities but I was completely amazed by the lack of evidence,” he says. “My prior view was completely reversed."

“There’s really hardly any evidence” the practice works, Sheldon adds. “And if anything there may be some evidence the other way.” One 2001 study covered in the Cochrane review of two neighboring British Columbia communities found that when fluoridation was stopped in one city, cavity prevalence actually went down slightly amongst schoolchildren, while cavity rates in the fluoridated community remained stable.  

Overall the review suggests that stopping fluoridation would be unlikely to increase the risk of tooth decay, says Kathleen Thiessen, a senior scientist at the Oak Ridge Center for Risk Analysis, which does human health risk assessments of environmental contaminants.

“The sad story is that very little has been done in recent years to ensure that fluoridation is still needed [or] to ensure that adverse effects do not happen,” says Dr. Philippe Grandjean, an environmental health researcher and physician at Harvard University.

The scientists also couldn’t find enough evidence to support the oft-repeated notion that fluoridation reduces dental health disparities among different socioeconomic groups, which the CDC and others use as a rationale for fluoridating water.

“The fact that there is insufficient information to determine whether fluoridation reduces social inequalities in dental health is troublesome given that this is often cited as a reason for fluoridating water,” say Christine Till and Ashley Malin, researchers at Toronto’s York University.

Studies that attest to the effectiveness of fluoridation were generally done before the widespread usage of fluoride-containing dental products like rinses and toothpastes in the 1970s and later, according to the recent Cochrane study. So while it may have once made sense to add fluoride to water, it no longer appears to be necessary or useful, Thiessen says.

It has also become clear in the last 15 years that fluoride primarily acts topically, according to the CDC. It reacts with the surface of the tooth enamel, making it more resistant to acids excreted by bacteria. Thus, there's no good reason to swallow fluoride and subject every tissue of your body to it, Thiessen says.

Another 2009 review by the Cochrane group clearly shows that fluoride toothpaste prevents cavities, serving as a useful counterpoint to fluoridation’s uncertain benefits.

Across all nine studies included in the review looking at caries reductions in children's permanent choppers, there was evidence linking fluoridation to  26 percent decline in the prevalence of decayed, missing or filled permanent teeth. But the researchers say they have serious doubts about the validity of this number. They write: “We have limited confidence in the size of this effect due to the high risk of bias within the studies and the lack of contemporary evidence.” Six of the nine studies were from before 1975, before fluoride toothpaste was widely available.

The review also found fluoridation was associated with a 14 percent increase in the number of children without any cavities. But more than two-thirds percent of the studies showing this took place more than 40 years ago, and are not of high quality.

Nearly all these papers were flawed in significant ways. For example, 70 percent of the cavity-reducing studies made no effort to control for important confounding factors such as dietary sources of fluoride other than tap water, diet in general (like how much sugar they consumed) or ethnicity. 

When it comes to fluoridation research, even the best studies are not high quality. Although this was already well-established, it doesn't seem to be well-known.

“I couldn’t believe the low quality of the research” on fluoridation, Sheldon says.

The data suggest that toothpaste, besides other preventative measures like dental sealants, flossing and avoiding sugar, are the real drivers in the decline of tooth decay in the past few decades, Thiessen says. Indeed, cavity rates have declined by similar amounts in countries with and without fluoridation.

Meanwhile, dental health leaves much to be desired in widely fluoridated America: About 60 percent of American teenagers have had cavities, and 15 percent have untreated tooth decay.

One thing the review definitively concluded: Fluoridation causes fluorosis.

This condition occurs when fluoride interferes with the cells that produce enamel, creating white flecks on the teeth. On average, about 12 percent of people in fluoridated areas have fluorosis bad enough that it qualifies as an “aesthetic concern,” according to the review. According to Sheldon, that’s a “huge number.” A total of 40 percent of people in fluoridated areas have some level of fluorosis, though the majority of these cases are likely unnoticeable to the average person.

In a smaller percentage of cases, fluorosis can be severe enough to cause structural damage, brown stains and mottling to the tooth.

Sheldon says that if fluoridation were to be submitted anew for approval today, “nobody would even think about it” due to the shoddy evidence of effectiveness and obvious downside of fluorosis.

There is also a definite issue of inequality when it comes to fluorosis. Blacks and Mexican-Americans have higher rates of both moderate and severe forms of the condition. Blacks also have higher levels. As of 2004, 58 percent of African-Americans had fluorosis, compared to 36 percent of whites, and the condition is becoming more common.

The Cochrane review concerned itself only with oral health. It didn’t address other health problems associated with fluoride, which Grandjean says need to be researched.

Many of the Cochrane study’s conclusions conflict with statements by the CDC, the American Dental Association and others that maintain fluoridation is safe and effective. The ADA, for example, maintains on its website that “thousands of studies” support fluoridation’s effectiveness—which is directly contradicted by the Cochrane findings. The ADA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The  CDC remains undeterred. “Nothing in the Cochrane review” reduces the government’s “confidence in water fluoridation as a valuable tool to prevent tooth decay in children as well as adults,” says Barbara Gooch, a dental researcher with CDC’s Division of Oral Health.

The CDC and others “are somehow suspending disbelief,” Sheldon says. They are “all in the mindset that this is a really good thing, and just not accepting that they might be wrong.” Sheldon and others suggest pro-fluoridation beliefs are entrenched and will not easily change, despite the poor data quality and lack of evidence from the past 40 years.

Derek Richards, the editor of the journal Evidence-Based Dentistry (published by the prestigious Nature group) concedes that “we haven’t got any current evidence” that fluoridation reduces cavities, “so we don’t know how much it’s reducing tooth decay at the moment,” he says. “But I have no qualms about that.” Richards reasons that because fluoridation may help reduce cavities in those who don’t use toothpaste or take other preventative measures, including many in lower socioeconomic groups, it’s likely still useful. He also argues that there’s no conclusive evidence of harm from fluoridation (other than fluorosis), so he doesn’t see a large downside.

But most scientists interviewed for this article don’t necessarily think fluoridation’s uncertain benefits justify its continuation without more stringent evidence, and argue for more research into the matter.

“When you have a public health intervention that’s applied to everybody, the burden of evidence to know that people are likely to benefit and not to be harmed is much higher, since people can’t choose,” Sheldon says. Everybody drinks water, after all, mostly from the tap. “Public health bodies need to have the courage to look at this review,” says Sheldon, “and be honest enough to say that this needs to be reconsidered.”
 

Fluoride:Industry's Toxic Coup

by Joel Griffiths (Food & Water Journal, Summer 1998) http://nofluoride.com/food_and_water.cfm  For nearly 50 years, the U.S. government and media have been telling the public that fluoride compounds (generally referred to simply as "fluoride") are safe and beneficial chemicals that reduce cavities -especially in children. Manufacturers add it to toothpaste and munici-palities put it in the public's drinking water. But fluoride has another side that the government never mentions. It is a toxic industrial pollutant. For decades, U.S. industry has rained heavy doses of waste fluoride on people. By the Environmental Protection Agency's last estimate, at least 155,000 tons a year are released into the air by US industrial plants. Emissions into lakes, rivers and oceans are estimated to be as high as 500,000 tons a year. If this increase in fluoride dose were proved harmful, the impact on industry would be major. The nation's air is contaminated by fluoride emissions from the production of iron, steel, aluminum, copper, lead, and zinc; phosphates (essential for agricultural fertilizers); plastics; gasoline; brick, cement, glass, ceramics, and other products made from clay; coal-burning electrical power plants and uranium processing. As for water, the leading industrial fluoride polluters are the producers and processors of glass, pesticides and fertilizers, steel and aluminum, chemicals and metals copper and brass, titanium, superalloys, and refractory metals for military use. Industry and government have long had a powerful motive for claiming that fluoride is safe. But maintaining this position has not been easy since fluoride is one of the most toxic substances known. "Airborne fluorides, reports the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "have caused more worldwide damage to domestic animals than any other air pollutant." Evidence that industrial fluoride has been killing and crippling human beings has existed at least since the 1930s. Primal Poison Of the highly toxic elements that are naturally present throughout the earth's crust-such as arsenic, mercury and lead-fluorine is by far the most abundant. Normally, only minute amounts of these elements are found on the earth's surface, but industry mines vast tonnages-none in greater quantity than fluorine, which is most often found in the form of calcium fluoride. As early as 1850, fluoride emissions from the iron and copper industries poisoned crops, livestock, and people. By the turn of the century, lawsuits and burdensome regulations threatened the existence of these industries in Germany and England. In 1933, the world's first major air pollution disaster struck Belgium's Meuse Valley. Several thousand people became violently ill and 60 died. Kaj Roholm, the world's leading authority on fluoride hazards, placed the blame on airborne fluoride emissions. It was abundantly clear to both industry and government that U.S. industrial expansion would necessitate releasing millions of tons of waste fluoride into the envirorment. It was equally clear that U.S. industrial expansion would be accompanied by complaints and lawsuits over fluoride damage on an unprecedented scale. Liability into Asset During the industrial explosion of the 1920s, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) was under the jurisdiction of Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, a founder and major stockholder of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). In 1931, a PHS dentist named H. Trendley Dean was dispatched to remote towns in the West where drinking water wells contained high concentrations of natural fluoride. His mission: to determine how much fluoride people could tolerate without sustaining obvious damage to their teeth. Dean found that teeth in these high-fluoride towns were often discolored and eroded, but he also reported that they appeared to have fewer cavities than average. The University of Cincinnati's Kettering Laboratory, funded largely by top fluoride emitters such as Alcoa, quickly dominated fluoride safety research. A book by Kettering scientist (and Reynolds Metals consultant) E.J. Largent was admittedly written in part to "aid industry in lawsuits arising from fluoride damage." Nonetheless, the book became a basic international reference work. In 1939, Alcoa-funded scientist Gerald J. Cox was one of the first to observe that the "present trend toward complete removal of fluoride from water and food may need some reversal." It was Cox who proposed that the "apparently worthless by-product" might reduce cavities in children. Cox fluoridated lab rats, concluded that fluoride reduced cavities and declared flatly: "The case should be regarded as proved." In 1939, the first public proposal that the U.S. should fluoridate its water supplies was made, not by a doctor, or dentist, but by Cox, an industry scientist working for a company threatened by fluoride damage claims. Undoubtedly, most proponents were sincere in their belief that the procedure was safe and beneficial. Nonetheless, their unquestioning endorsement of fluoridation made possible a master public relations stroke. If fluoride could be introduced as a health enhancing substance that should be added to the environment for the children's sake, those opposing it would look like quacks and lunatics. Alcoa Foils Accountability The name of the company with the biggest stake in fluoride was Alcoa -whose name is stamped all over the early history of water fluoridation. By 1938, the aluminum industry (which then consisted solely of Alcoa) was placed on a wartime schedule. During World War II industry's fluoride pollution increased sharply because of stepped-up production of Alcoa aluminum for fighters and bombers. Fluoride was the aluminum industry's most devastating pollutant. Following the war, hundreds of fluoride damage suits were filed around the country against producers of aluminum, iron and steel, phosphates, and chemicals. Most of the lawsuits, particularly those claiming damage to human health, were settled out of court, thus avoiding legal precedents. In a rare exception, a federal court found in Paul M. and Verla Martin v. Reynolds Metals (1955) that an Oregon couple had sustained "serious injury to their livers, kidneys and digestive functions" from eating "farm produce contaminated by [fluoride] fumes" from a nearby Reynolds aluminum plant. Alcoa and six other metals and chemical companies joined with Reynolds as "friends of the court" to get the decision reversed. Finally, in a time-honored corporate solution, Reynolds mooted the case by buying the Martins' ranch for a hefty price. "Friends" of Children The postwar casualties of industrial fluoride pollution were many -from forests to livestock to farmers to smog stricken urban residents -but national attention had been diverted by fluoride's heavily publicized new image. In 1945, shortly before the war's end, water fluoridation emerged with the full force of the federal government behind it. In that year, two Michigan cities were selected for an official "15-year" comparison study to determine if fluoride could safely reduce cavities in children, and fluoride was pumped into the drinking water of Grand Rapids. In 1946, despite the fact that the official 15-year experiment in Michigan had barely begun, six more U.S. cities were allowed to fluoridate their water. In 1947, Oscar R. Ewing, a long-time Alcoa lawyer, was appointed head of the Federal Security Agency, a position that placed him in charge of the Public Health Service. Under Ewing, a national water fluoridation campaign rapidly materialized, spearheaded by the PHS. Over the next three years, 87 additional cities were fluoridated. The two-city Michigan study (the only scientifically objective test of fluoridation's safety and benefits) was abandoned before it was half over. The Father of All Spin Doctors The government's official reason for this unscientific haste was "popular demand." This enthusiasm was not really surprising, considering Oscar Ewing's public relations strategist for the water fluoridation campaign was none other than Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward L. Bernays. Bernays, also known as the father of public relations, pioneered the application of his uncle's theories to advertising and government propaganda. The government's fluoridation campaign was one of his most enduring successes. In his 1928 book, Propaganda, Bernays expounded on "the mechanism" that controls the public mind. "Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society," Bernays wrote, "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.... Our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." Almost overnight, under Bernays' mass mind-molding, the popular image of fluoride -which at the time was widely sold as rat and bug poison-became that of a beneficial provider of gleaming smiles, absolutely safe, and good for children. The prospect of the government mass-medicating water supplies with a well-known rat poison to prevent a non-lethal disease flipped the switches of skeptics across the country. But, under Bernays' spell, fluoride's opponents were permanently engraved on the public mind as crackpots and right-wing loonies. In 1950, the PHS officially endorsed fluoridation. Since then, two-thirds of the nation's reservoirs have been fluoridated and about 143,000 tons of fluoride are pumped in yearly to keep them that way. Today, companies forced to reduce their fluoride emission can even recoup some of their expense by selling fluoride wastes to cities for water fluoridation. Protected Pollutant In 1972, the newly formed EPA surveyed atmospheric polluters and reported: "the fluorides currently emitted [by industry] may damage economic crops, farm animals... and construction [i.e. buildings, statuary and glass]...." Nonetheless, the report concluded that "the potential to cause fluoride effects in man is negligible." Another EPA report confirmed that, "Fluoride emissions ... do have adverse effects on livestock and vegetation" but insisted that "fluoride emissions from primary aluminum plants have no significant effect on human health." In other words: The stuff withers plants, cripples cows, and even eats holes in stone, but it doesn't hurt people. Whenever new scientific evidence threatens fluoride's protected pollutant status, the government immediately appoints a commission -typically composed of veteran fluoride defenders and no opponents. Usually, these commissions dismiss the new evidence and reaffirm the status quo. In 1983, however, a PHS panel of "world-class experts" reviewed the safety data on fluoride in drinking water and was surprised to discover that much of the vaunted evidence of fluoride's safety barely existed. The panel recommended caution, especially in regard to fluoride exposure for children. But when Surgeon General C. Everett Koop's office released the official report a month later,the panel's most important Brushing Your Teeth with industrial Waste These days, it's hard to find any toothpaste I that doesn't contain fluoride. Most brands contain fluoride compounds (stannous fluoride, sodium monfluorophosphate) as the main active ingredient. Most brands limit the amount of fluoride compounds to .15 percent (weight by volume of fluoride ion) and caution parents not to use these cleaners on children younger than 6 years. Fluoride toothpaste is considered a poison. Small type on all brands now warns that if children under six swallow as much as "a pea-sized amount" of fluoridated paste, parents should contact the nearest "poison Some brands that are clearly marketed for children (with brightly colored boxes, friendly looking cartoon figures, and "bubblegum" flavors) contain .72 percent fluoride -nearly five times higher than adult brands. conclusions and recommendations had been deleted. Instead, the government substituted this blanket statement: "There exists no directly applicable scientific documentation of adverse medical effects at levels of fluoride below 8 ppm [parts per million]." The panel's final draft had firmly recommended that "the fluoride content of drinking water should be no greater than 1.4-2.4 ppm for children up to and including age nine because of a lack of information regarding fluoride effect on the skeleton in children (to age nine), and potential cardiotoxic effects [heart damage]." In 1985, basing its action on the Surgeon General's altered report, the EPA raised the amount of fluoride in drinking water from 2.4 ppm for children and everybody else. Bones of contention Between 1990-92, eight different epidemiological studies suggested that water fluoridation may have increased the rate of bone fractures in females and males of all ages across the U.S. A 1992 study in the journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that "low levels of fluoride may increase the risk of hip fracture in the elderly." Since 1957, the bone fracture rate among male children and adolescents has increased sharply in the U.S. according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The National Research Council (NCI) reports that the U.S. hip fracture rate is now the highest in the world. "Clearly," JAMA editorialized in 1991, "it is now appropriate to revisit the issue of water fluoridation." Evidence that fluoride is a carcinogen has cropped up since at least the 1940s. A 1956 federal study found nearly twice as many bone defects (of a type considered possibly pre-malignant) among young males in the fluoridated city of Newburgh, New York. In 1977, congressional hearings revealed that the government had never cancer-tested fluoride and the NCI was ordered to begin an investigation. The study, completed in 1989 - 12 years later - found 'equivocal evidence" that fluoride caused bone cancer in male rats. The NCI found that nationwide evidence "of a rising rate of bone and joint cancer ... was seen in the fluoridated counties but not in the non-fluoridated counties." A new commission, chaired by venerable fluoridation proponent and PHS official Frank E. Young, was empaneled to respond to the NCI's alarming findings. The commission concluded that it could find no evidence establishing an association between fluoride and cancer in humans." As for the evidence on bone fractures, the commission merely stated, "further studies are required." Government Doubts William Marcus, an EPA senior science adviser and toxicologist, maintains that "fluoride is a carcinogen by any standard we use. I believe EPA should act immediately to protect the public, not just on the cancer data, but on the evidence of bone fractures, arthritis, mutagenicity, and other effects." "The level of fluoride the government allows the public is based on scientifically fraudulent information and altered reports," charges Robert Carton, a former EPA scientist. "People can be harmed simply by drinking water," Carton warns. Does fluoridation reduce cavities in children? Over the years, many health professionals -especially abroad have decided the beneficial effects of fluoride are mostly hokum; but open debate has been stifled, if not strangled. "The level of fluoride the government allows the public is based on scientifically fraudulent information and altered reports. People can be harmed simply by drinking water." - Robert Carton, former EPA Scientist During the early 1980s, New Zealand's most prominent fluoridation advocate was John Colquhoun, the country's chief dental officer. He styled himself an "ardent fluoridationist" until he tried to gather statistics to bolster the claim that fluoride was a boon to dental health. "I observed that ... the percentage of children who were free of dental decay was higher in the unfluoridated part of most health districts in New Zealand," Colquhoun reported. The national health department refused to allow Colquhoun to publish his findings and he was encouraged to resign. In 1990, Colquhoun warned that "the harmful effects of water fluoridation are more real than is generally admitted, while the claimed dental benefit is negligible." Earth Island Journal, Spring 1988. Fluoride: Where Does It Come From? What Does It Do? Fluoride comes from fluorine, an elemental gas that Webster's describes as pale, yellowish, flammable, irritating, and toxic. In 1977, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published the following information on fluorine: "Fluorine and some of its compounds are primary irritants of skin, eyes, mucous membranes, and lungs. Thermal or chemical burns may result from contact.... Even when they involve small body areas (less than three percent) [fluoride] can cause... poisoning by absorption of the fluoride through the skin." Brief exposure to inhaled fluorine can cause "sore throat, chest pain, irreversible damage to the lungs and death. Gastrointestinal symptoms of nausea, vomiting diffuse abdominal cramps and diarrhea can be expected. Large doses produce central nervous system involvement with twitching of muscle groups..., convulsions and coma." Fluorine is the active ingredient in Sarin (the nerve gas used to deadly effect in a March 1995 Tokyo subway attack) and in Flusilazole (a fungicide that, in the early '90s, caused crop damage and human ailments in 40 states). "Hydrogen fluoride, hydrofluoric acid and its salts are used in the production of organic and inorganic fluorine compounds such as fluorides and plastics; as a catalyst, in the petroleum industry; and as an insecticide..." the NIOSH report continues." It is utilized in the aluminum industry, in separating uranium isotopes, in cleaning cast iron, copper and brass.... Fluorides are used as an electrolyte in aluminum manufacture, in smelting nickel, copper, gold and silver, as a catalyst for organic reactions, a wood preservative..., a bleaching agent for cane seats, in pesticides, rodenticide, and as a fermentation inhibitor. They are utilized in the manufacture of steel, iron, glass, ceramics, potters enamels, in castings for welding rods, and in cleaning graphite, metals, windows and glassware. Exposure to fluorides may also occur during preparation of fertilizer from phosphate rock." NIOSH noted that elemental fluorine is also used "in the conversion of uranium tetrafluoride to uranium hexafluoride, in the synthesis of organic and inorganic fluorine compounds and as an oxidizer in rocket fuel." Today, compounds made with this chemical can be found in everyday products ranging from Teflon and Freon to toothpaste and baby food. Fluorides are industrial waste products created in the production of aluminum, phosphoric acid and phosphate fertilizers. Some 55 years after DuPont began producing uranium hexafluoride for the Manhattan Project, the company still heavily invests in fluorine. DuPont uses it to make a number of consumer products, including Tedlar polyvinyl fluoride film and Viton fluorocarbon rubber.