More Communities Succeed in Eliminating Water Fluoridation, While
Chemical Industry Raises the Stakes
September 08, 2013
Story at-a-glance
Fluoride is a toxic substance that accumulates in your
tissues over time, wreaks havoc with enzymes, and produces a
number of serious adverse health effects, including
neurological and endocrine dysfunction
A rider in the 2014 House Appropriations Bill would cut back
a lot of EPA’s work and prevent the agency from phasing out
sulfuryl fluoride, a toxic fumigant used on food. Take
action now to stop this rider!
Despite being severely outspent by fluoride proponents,
citizens in Wichita, Kansas and Portland, Oregon voted NO on
water fluoridation; Connecticut, South Carolina, and
Minnesota are looking at lifting mandatory fluoridation
rulings
There are now 15 regional councils in Queensland, Australia
that are either stopping fluoridation or refusing to start.
Hamilton, NZ also recently voted to stop water fluoridation
After generations of misleading propaganda about the benefits
of water fluoridation, the truth is finally getting some
traction.
According to the former EPA risk assessment scientist, Dr.
William Hirzy, water fluoridation still remains a government
policy because of “institutional inertia [and] embarrassment
among government agencies that have been promoting this stuff as
safe.”
Indeed, contrary to popular belief, the science clearly
demonstrates that fluoride is a toxic chemical that accumulates
in your tissues over time, wreaks havoc with enzymes, and
produces a number of serious
adverse health effects, including neurological and endocrine
dysfunction. Children are particularly at risk for adverse
effects of overexposure.
Yet despite the scientific evidence against the
practice, the United States lags far behind other nations in
acknowledging the mistake and ending this tragic “public health”
measure. As usual, the big lie must continue to protect faith in
long term public health policies and agencies.
As a result, individual communities around the US have taken
up the fight to end water fluoridation in their own local areas.
Today, Dr. Paul Connett and I are pleased to report a number of
victories, both in the US and abroad.
An 8-Year Long Fight Ends in Victory, Yet Trouble Brews
Dr. Paul Connett, PhD, a chemist and executive director of
the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), is a recognized leader in the
fluoride education movement, spearheading the organized efforts
to remove fluoride from our water supply in the US and
elsewhere.
One of the organization’s past victories took eight years to
secure, namely the phasing out of sulfuryl fluoride, which is a
toxic fumigant. In the face of defeat, the chemical industry has
resorted to blatant political maneuvers to protect their toxic
income stream.
“This was a major victory for us after [FAN] was
formed in 2000. It took us eight years to get the EPA
Pesticide Division to accept our objections to the use of
sulfuryl fluoride by Dow AgroSciences as a fumigant on
food,” Dr. Connett explains.
The idea of using sulfuryl fluoride as a food fumigant was
extremely worrying as it not only leaves toxic residues on food,
but can be lethal to humans in its pure gas form—the form in
which it is applied to the food. According to Dr. Connett,
people have died during the application of the fumigant.
When applied to food, it breaks down into free fluoride. Many
American children are already heavily overexposed to
fluoride, so this added source of exposure can only worsen
matters. (Organic foods do not permit its use.)
FAN argued that the Food Quality Protection Act requires
companies who want to market a pesticide to show that the
cumulative dose—meaning the dose that will end up on the food as
residues, plus already existing exposure from other
sources—will not exceed the safe reference dose. Dr. Connett
explains what happened in this case:
“We were able to show, very easily, that millions of
children are already exceeding the safe reference dose of
fluoride from a combination of sources – in the water,
toothpaste and other dental products, pollution, and so on.
No way should the EPA allow Dow to add more fluoride to the
food supply.
Eventually, after going backwards and forwards for
many years, and threatening legal action with the help of
the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Beyond Pesticides,
we eventually got the EPA to agree to accept all our
objections, and they announced that sulfuryl fluoride will
be phased out in three years.”
Again, this was a major victory at the time, but Dow did not
back down. Since then, they’ve done everything in their power to
stop the implementation of the EPA’s decision—and in a manner
that is quite worrying. First, they tried to introduce an
amendment to the Farm Bill that would have allowed them to
continue using sulfuryl fluoride, which meant subverting the EPA
for doing its job.
“The EPA listened to the science. They agreed with
us. They said, 'We’re going to phase it out.' But through
the back door, Dow tried to get the Farm Bill to get it in.”
Fortunately, they didn’t succeed. Congress kept that
amendment out. But, Dow came back again, this time
using the 2014 House Appropriations Bill to cut back a lot of
EPA’s work, including that relating to sulfuryl fluoride.1
In essence, the bill would prohibit the EPA from obstructing
Dow’s use of this pesticide/fumigant!
Tell Your Congressman to Avert Dow Atrocity
The fact that a company has the power to even try to
write its own laws in this way, and quite literally making it
illegal for a federal agency to do its job with regards to a
specific product, truly boggles the mind. And while many other
industries have used similar tactics, infiltrating and
manipulating politicians and the federal agencies for their own
benefit, at just about any cost, this example is a particularly
blatant circumvention. This is where it stands at the moment...
FAN has issued a bulletin to its members to write to Congress
and urge your Congressman to take action to avert this atrocity.
I join FAN in this call to action. Click
here to
find your Congressman.
According to Dr. Connett, there’s every reason to be
concerned about the use of sulfuryl fluoride gas on food,
because some of the fluoride residues allowed by the EPA are
“astronomical.” For example, the EPA was allowing 120 parts per
million (ppm) of fluoride on wheat flour. Wheat flour is
consumed in so many foods on a daily basis by most people that
you not only need to be concerned about chronic effects of
low-level fluoride intake, but also with its acute
effects.
Dr. Connett goes so far as to say that you could potentially
be in serious trouble simply by eating a pizza made from a
recently fumigated batch of wheat flour. At one point, the EPA
even allowed 900 ppm of fluoride on dried eggs. One-third of the
eggs sold in the US are dried eggs for institutions like
hospitals. If you were to eat an omelet or pancakes made with
dried eggs recently treated with sulfuryl fluoride, carrying
fluoride residue at 900 ppm, you’d be very close to the level of
fluoride found in toothpaste, which is 1,000 ppm.
“And you know what you’re told about toothpaste:
Don’t swallow; only use a pea-sized amount (which is a
quarter of a milligram), and if you accidentally swallowed
more, contact the Poison Control Center,” Dr. Connett
says.
“I should point out that around the world, the only
country that applies sulfuryl fluoride directly to food as a
fumigant is Australia – no other country does it... In other
words, it’s quite clear that modern agriculture can survive
without using sulfuryl fluoride. You can use heat and cold
control. You can use carbon dioxide. There are a number of
ways.
One of the problems for America is a lot of our
storage facilities and our food storage facilities, are
hopelessly out of date. What we should be doing is to
modernize those facilities, so that these other techniques
used by most of the civilized world could be also used in
America. [Using sulfuryl fluoride] is a cheap and dirty way
around doing the right thing, which is to modernize food
storage facilities in the US.”
Good News from Around the United States
I did promise you good news, and there is plenty to
celebrate. In the US, FAN achieved a number of important
victories:
In Wichita, Kansas, they won 60 percent
of the votes in the referendum, despite being considerably
outspent by the fluoride proponents
Portland, Oregon. Here,the proponents spent nearly a million dollars to
get fluoridation into Portland (about three times the amount
spent by the anti-fluoridation side), yet they lost the vote
at 40 percent. One of the most disturbing challenges was
that huge amounts of money were given to minority groups by
the fluoride proponents, ostensibly to support fluoridation.
Essentially, they bought the support of the very minority
groups that fluoridation actually hurts the most!
The states of Connecticut, South Carolina, and Minnesota
are also looking at lifting mandatory fluoridation rulings.
Dr. Connett recently travelled to Hartford, Connecticut and
gave a presentation at the Legislative Office Building in
Connecticut at the request of Representative Markley, who is
trying to introduce a bill to lift mandatory fluoridation in
Connecticut. Markley also invited the proponents of
fluoridation, including the dental society and various public
health authorities, to debate the issue with Dr. Connett.
“To begin with, they said that they would do it. And
then the day before, they said, no, they weren’t going to
participate. They refused to debate and refused to come,”
Dr. Connett says. “So, I was given a solo platform
for an hour. I gave the arguments why fluoridation should
never have started and why we shouldn’t use the public water
supply to deliver any medicine – lithium, statins, or
fluoride – because you can’t control the dose, you can’t
control who gets it, and you are violating an individual’s
right to informed consent to medication.
Then I gave seven relatively recent events which
should have ended fluoridation... One of the key ones was
when the proponents admitted that fluoride works
topically – on the surface of the teeth –
not from inside the body. When they admitted that,
in my view, it should have ended fluoridation.”
In addition to FAN’s book, The Case Against Fluoride,2,
3 which contains about 80 pages worth of
scientific source listings, print copies of key scientific
papers were also given to those attending the meeting. (The book
can currently be found on sale at Chelsea Green Publishing4.)
All of this now easily available research clearly shows that:
Water fluoridation does not work to prevent cavities
Fluoride works when topically applied only
There are unacceptable risks involved in the practice of
water fluoridation
With all this documentation, it’s not surprising that the
defenders of water fluoridation opted out of the debate. They
simply do not have the science on their side, and they know an
open debate will expose that fact. In the video below, Dr.
William Hirzy was invited to give testimony to the US Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on
Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water on behalf of the National
Treasury Employees Union. At the time, Dr. Hirzy was serving his
sixth term as the Senior Vice-President of the Union. In his
presentation, titled: "Why EPA's Union of Professionals Opposes
Fluoridation," he discusses the reasoning behind the
professional and official stance of his Union members, which is
in direct opposition to the EPA's support of fluoridation.
The Bullies of Brooksville, Florida
A similar situation has developed in Brooksville, Florida.
When Pinellas County stopped fluoridation, some of the local
dentists, and one in particular named Johnny Johnson, set out to
boot all of the commissioners who voted against fluoridation out
of office. They succeeded. And, needless to say, put “the fear
of God” into everybody else. Now they’re trying to do the same
thing in the little town of Brooksville, which is about an hour
from Tampa Bay.
The Brooksville mayor, Lara Bradburn, who is working on
getting fluoridation out of her town, has subsequently become
the victim of the same bullying tactics. After dentists accused
her of being over-emotional and disregarding the science, Dr.
Connett offered to hold a meeting in Brooksville, which she
accepted. Johnny Johnson was invited to present his evidence
alongside Dr. Connett.
“True to form, Johnny ran for cover. He has refused
to participate,” Dr. Connett says. “It didn’t stop
him insulting me. I just find this all so unacceptable, but
it’s typical of the bullies, which are usually cowards.
That’s what we’ve got in this case... Again, the reason for
the cowardice is he simply doesn’t have the science.”
The proponents of fluoridation are very good at two things
though:
Persuading you that every health and dental body in the
world is pro-fluoridation. They hold the endorsement of the
World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC), the American Dental Association (ADA), the
American Medical Association (AMA), the American Public
Health Association (APHA), for example. All these
organizations endorse fluoridation, and they cannot all be
wrong, the argument goes. It appears to be a strong
argument, but the fact is that most of these organizations
have never reviewed the full body of available literature.
Still, the argument works when addressing the general
public.
Conveying to the public that the opponents of
fluoridation are a bunch of “Looney Tunes” who get their
facts from the Internet or other paranoid nut-jobs. What
they do not address is the scientific literature itself,
which overwhelmingly support the anti-fluoride stance. As
mentioned earlier, The Case Against Fluoride lists
80 pages of references, and the FAN health database5
is the most extensive database on fluoride in the world.
There’s no shortage of scientific evidence to back up the
claims that a) swallowing fluoride does not reduce tooth
decay, and b) it poses potentially very serious health
risks. When was the last time you heard a fluoride proponent
cite published studies in support of their own claims of
benefit and safety?
Good News from Down Under
Over the past five years, a literal avalanche of Queensland
communities has stopped fluoridating their water supplies. There
are now 15 regional councils in Queensland that are either
stopping fluoridation or refusing to start. That affects about
50 different townships. That, of course, has encouraged people
not only in Queensland, but throughout Australia. In New
Zealand, several communities have also stopped fluoridation over
the last few years. The most recent was Hamilton, which is the
second largest city in New Zealand. At the end of an exhaustive
four-day process, the Hamilton council voted seven to one to
stop fluoridation.
Also worthy of note is the news that the Ministry of Health
in Israel recently announced it will lift the mandatory
requirement for fluoridation in 2014.6
Not only that, but the Supreme Court of Israel also ruled that
the new regulations will put an end to all
fluoridation, whether mandatory or voluntary.
Take Action to Keep Fluoride Out of Our Food Supply
In closing, please take a few moments to contact your US
Congressman to make sure the EPA restriction keeping sulfuryl
fluoride out of your food supply remains in place. Also, of
particular benefit would be to contact members of the Senate on
the appropriations committee.
“That will be our last line of defense – to get the
Senate to overrule the House on this issue,” Dr.
Connett says. “In my talks, I close by saying,
'Affecting change is like trying to drive a nail through a
piece of wood. The expert can sharpen the nail, but he or
she cannot push the nail through the piece of wood. I’ve
helped to sharpen the nail by giving you the facts that can
end fluoridation. But we need you. We need the weight of
public opinion to drive that nail home.'