18 Scientifically Validated Reasons to End Public Water Fluoridation

Anna Hunt
Activist Post

Many people are coming to realize that far from improving dental health, the fluoridation of municipal water and many store bought foods and drinks is actually detrimental to our overall health. What was once a widely accepted practice is now being scrutinized and condemned by many prominent physicians and free-thinkers, and the scientific evidence to support these condemnations is mounting.

Recently a Harvard medical study claimed that ingesting fluoride leads to a loss of IQ in young children, which is remarkably frightening by itself.

Now, another study has been published, taking a thorough look at the pros and cons of ingesting fluoride. Conducted by Stephen Peckham and Niyi Awofeso, and published in The Scientific World Journal, this new research paper begins with the following important introduction, which calls for an end to public water fluoridation:

Fluorine is the world’s 13th most abundant element and constitutes 0.08% of the Earth crust. It has the highest electronegativity of all elements. Fluoride is widely distributed in the environment, occurring in the air, soils, rocks, and water. Although fluoride is used industrially in a fluorine compound, the manufacture of ceramics, pesticides, aerosol propellants, refrigerants, glassware, and Teflon cookware, it is a generally unwanted byproduct of aluminium, fertilizer, and iron ore manufacture. The medicinal use of fluorides for the prevention of dental caries began in January 1945 when community water supplies in Grand Rapids, United States, were fluoridated to a level of 1 ppm as a dental caries prevention measure. However, water fluoridation remains a controversial public health measure. This paper reviews the human health effects of fluoride. The authors conclude that available evidence suggests that fluoride has a potential to cause major adverse human health problems, while having only a modest dental caries prevention effect. As part of efforts to reduce hazardous fluoride ingestion, the practice of artificial water fluoridation should be reconsidered globally, while industrial safety measures need to be tightened in order to reduce unethical discharge of fluoride compounds into the environment. Public health approaches for global dental caries reduction that do not involve systemic ingestion of fluoride are urgently needed.

Without mincing words, this new study moves right into support these assertions, offering the following indications that fluoride is not only of dubious benefit for dental health, but that it is also terrible for overall human health:

1. Fluoride is not critical for healthy teeth:

It is widely accepted that fluoride only helps prevent dental decay by topical means—by direct action on the tooth enamel predominantly after eruption and dental plaque [16, 17]. However, it is important to note that while fluoride contributes to the remineralisation process in the enamel of the tooth surface this is not dependent on fluoride, and that fluoride’s anticaries effect is critically dependent on calcium and magnesium content of teeth enamel.

2. Fluoride may actually make certain people more vulnerable to dental cavities:

Among young individuals with low calcium and magnesium in teeth enamel (usually due to undernutrition), fluoride ingestion and contact with teeth present histologically as hypo-calcification and/or hypoplasia, which may paradoxically make such individuals more vulnerable to dental caries [18, 19].

3. Because of the complex nature of how dental caries develop, it is too difficult to tell if water fluoridation actually helps prevent dental caries:

…the multiple pathways to the development of dental caries make it difficult to accurately ascertain the contribution of fluoride ingestion to dental caries prevention. Given that the action of fluoride on dental caries prevention is topical, only topical fluoride products are likely to provide optimal benefits claimed for this chemical.

4. The history of research into ingesting fluoride as an effective means of preventing dental caries is controversial, at best:

A survey of 55 reputable oral health specialists on the impacts of artificial water fluoridation and other preventive technologies on the decline in dental caries prevalence over the past four decades in most nations revealed that, apart from fluoridated toothpaste, there were conflicting responses on the impact of artificial water fluoridation and other fluoride-based technologies [32]. Studies focused on dental caries trends following cessation of fluoridation have produced contradictory results, in part due to study technique, availability of other fluoride sources, and consumption patterns of cariogenic foods [33, 34].

5. Fluoride is classified as a pollutant and there is no such thing as a disease caused by fluoride deficiency.

6. Drinking fluoride in public water makes it impossible to administer a proper dose, causing a rise in toxic dental fluorosis:

One of the key concerns about water fluoridation is the inability to control an individual’s dose of ingested fluoride which brings into question the concept of the “optimal dose.” Since the 1980s numerous studies have identified that adults and children are exceeding these agreed limits, contributing to a rapid rise in dental fluorosis—the first sign of fluoride toxicity [35–37].

7. Mass contamination of drinking water with fluoride is toxic for children:

In 1991, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA measured fluoride levels and found that where water is fluoridated between 0.7 and 1.2 ppm overall fluoride, total fluoride intake for adults was between 1.58 and 6.6 mg per day while for children it was between 0.9 and 3.6 mg per day and that there was at least a sixfold variation just from water consumption alone [38].

The inability to control individual dose renders the notion of an “optimum concentration” obsolete. In the USA, a study in Iowa found that 90% of 3-month-olds consumed over their recommended upper limits, with some babies ingesting over 6 mg of fluoride daily, above what the Environmental Protection Agency and the WHO say is safe to avoid crippling skeletal fluorosis [41].

8. Fluoride may increase the risk of dental caries for malnourished children:

Fluoride exposure has a complex relationship in relation to dental caries and may increase dental caries risk in malnourished children due to calcium depletion and enamel hypoplasia, while offering modest caries prevention in otherwise well-nourished children.

9. Water fluoridation effects the cognitive development of children:

In a meta-analysis of 27 mostly China-based studies on fluoride and neurotoxicity, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health and China Medical University in Shenyang found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children [50].

10. Water fluoridation may cause hypothyroidism in children:

In a 2005 study, it was found that 47% of children living in a New Delhi neighbourhood with average water fluoride level of 4.37 ppm have evidence of clinical hypothyroidism attributable to fluoride.

11. Fluoride consumption may actually cause bone disease:

In some cases—where fluoride levels are very high or where there is prolonged ingestion at 2 ppm or higher, cases of skeletal fluorosis have been reported. Skeletal fluorosis is a chronic metabolic bone disease caused by ingestion or inhalation of large amounts of fluoride.

12. As an enzyme disruptor, fluoride interferes with the body’s normal functioning in many complex ways:

Fluoride is a known enzyme disruptor. For example, fluoride’s anticaries effect is derived in part from its ability to derange the enzymes of cariogenic bacteria [20, 21]. Fluoride can interfere by attaching itself to metal ions located at an enzyme’s active site or by forming competing hydrogen bonds at the active site which is not exclusively just on the teeth [64]. There are 66 enzymes which are affected by fluoride ingestion, including P450 oxidases, as well the enzyme which facilitates the formation of flexible enamel [65].

13. “Chronic fluoride ingestion is commonly associated with hyperkalaemia and consequent ventricular fibrillation [70].”

14. Fluoride ingestion has been linked to cancer, although it has not yet been proven to directly cause cancer:

There have also been a number of studies that link fluoride and cancer. More than 50 population-based studies which have examined the potential link between water fluoride levels and cancer have been reported in the medical literature. Most of these studies have not found a strong link between chronic fluoride ingestion and cancer. 

However, population-based-studies strongly suggest that chronic fluoride ingestion is a possible cause of uterine cancer and bladder cancer; there may be a link with osteosarcoma—highlighted as an area where there is evidence of problems requiring further research [30, 72–74].

15. Ethically speaking, mass water fluoridation is medication without consent:

…community water fluoridation provides policy makers with important questions about medication without consent, the removal of individual choice and whether public water supplies are an appropriate delivery mechanism [75, 76].

16. The human body does not need fluoride to be healthy:

One of the early controversies following the completion of the post-1945 Grand Rapids trial of water fluoridation was how fluoride ingested by humans should be classified—a nutrient, medication, or pollutant. Despite numerous studies, the essentiality of fluoride as a trace element or nutrient has not been proven and it is now widely accepted that fluoride is not essential element for human physiology [30, 78]. 

In an extensive review of fluoride and human health published in 2011, the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks concluded that fluoride is not essential for human growth and development [30].

17. Although promoted as a medicine for tooth decay, fluoride is not regulated or controlled as a medicine:

Although fluoride, used in artificial water fluoridation, is promoted as a medicine for preventing tooth decay, it is not subject to the strict guidelines of medicines statutes in the nations that implement artificial water fluoridation. The practice of water fluoridation is recommended as a means of preventing dental caries. Despite this very clear definition of purpose, no fluoridating country defines fluoridation of water supplies as a medicine.

18. There are better alternatives to preventing cavities than fluoridation:

The polarised debate on the role of ingested fluoride in dental health ignores the basic problem that dental caries is essentially the outcome of bacterial infection of teeth enamel. While it might have been excusable in the 1950s to utilise an enzyme poison such as fluoride to undesirably alter dental architecture and to kill cariogenic bacteria, a better understanding of the pathogenesis of dental caries, coupled with development of antibiotics and probiotics with strong anticariogenic effects, diminishes any major future role for fluoride in caries prevention.

Conclusion

Community water fluoridation is actually not the global norm:

Currently, only about 5% of the world’s population—350 million people—(including 200 million Americans) consume artificially fluoridated water globally. Only eight countries—Malaysia, Australia, USA, New Zealand, Singapore, and Ireland, more than 50% of the water supply artificially fluoridate. Over the past two decades many communities in Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand have stopped fluoridating their water supplies and in Israel the Minister for Health announced in April 2013 the end of mandatory water fluoridation.

Fluoride has become so controversial in America that many citizen formed groups are actively, and effectively, petitioning local governments to stop the community fluoridation of municipal water. Couple this with the fact that many product manufacturers are giving consumers options for avoiding fluoride in commonly used products, such as toothpaste and mouthwash.

If your city government hasn’t yet seen the light and eliminated this poison, do yourself and your family a favor and switch to using filtered water in your home. Berkey makes an excellent filter that when couple with the fluoride units, makes it easy to avoid fluoridated drinking and cooking water. You can also get a shower head filter that prevents you from absorbing fluoridated water through your skin each time you shower.

The science is in, fluoride is dangerous to your health. Please be advised, and share this news with your friends and family.

Sources:

• Stephen Peckham and Niyi Awofeso, “Water Fluoridation: A Critical Review of the Physiological Effects of Ingested Fluoride as a Public Health Intervention,” The Scientific World Journal, vol. 2014, Article ID 293019, 10 pages, 2014. doi:10.1155/2014/293019 –http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/293019/
• http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/02/13/fluoride-killing-childs-brain-softly/