Key arguments against water fluoridation

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Key arguments against water fluoridation
Once again, plans are being made to add fluoride to mains tap water throughout England and Wales despite there being a long standing controversy over the long-term health effects. Ministers' announced plans to add fluoride to drinking water everywhere have been met by severe opposition from green, health, and consumer groups. The law is expected to be changed so that local strategic health authorities can force water treatment companies to top up natural levels of fluoride with the by-product of the phosphate fertilizer industry for the purpose of helping tooth decay.Environmental Minister, Elliot Morley and Deputy Health Minister, Hazel Blears' said that anyone opposed to the planned changes in law would be able to use filtered or bottled water. This may increase the environmental impact of bottled water if more people decide to start using it as a result of the water fluoridation plans.The Daily Mail reported this week that "a recent study found that in the fluoridated Republic of Ireland, 40% more people contracted bone cancer than in non-fluoridated Northern Ireland. Fluoride is a corrosive industrial waste used in rat poison, and is more toxic than lead. The vast increase of fluoride in the water would therefore be an environmental concern as well as a health worry."Well known anti-fluoridationists have been noted as saying the following:
  • Earl Baldwin, British House of Lords:  “They decided far too early before the science was properly in, that fluoridation was a good thing.”
  • Dr. Vyvyan Howard, Fetal Patho-Toxicologist: “The weight of evidence is more about it doing damage than against.”
  • Sir Iain Chalmers, Health Services Researcher: “Fluoride is a medicine. Fluoride is being put in specifically to alter you physically. To make a physical change in you.”
  • Dr. Arvid Carlsson, Nobel Laureate in Medicine. “It’s absolutely obsolete. In modern pharmacology it’s so clear that even if you have a fixed dose of a drug, different individuals respond very differently to one and the same dose. Now in this case you have it in the water and people are drinking different amounts of water so you have huge variations in the consumption.”
  • Dr Phyllis Mullenix, Pharmacologist, Toxicologist: “The whole name of the game in toxicology is to give the right dose to the right person at the right time. And that’s not what fluoridation does. It can’t do it.”
  • Earl Baldwin, British House of Lords:  “What physician you know, in his right mind, would treat somebody whose medical history he doesn’t know, who he’s never met, with a substance that’s meant to do change in their bodies and just with the advice to have as little or as much as you like but you’ll take it for a lifetime because it’s meant to help someone else’s teeth.”
  • Dr. Tim Kropp, Environmental Working Dentist:  “Fluoride is not an essential element.”
  • Dr. Kathleen Thiessen, Risk Assessment Scientist. “There’s not a bodily requirement for fluoride.”
  • Earl Baldwin, British House of Lords:  “Fluoride is not an essential nutrient as far as the UK goes. You look it up in the books to see what our Department of Health says and they say that no essential use has been found for fluoride in the human body. So it is not in the category of vitamins and apart from anything it’s miles more toxic than any of the vitamins.”
  • Dr. Bill Osmunson, Dentist: “National Research Council has a research report which just came out in 2006 which is one of the best sources of finding out what fluoride is doing to the rest of the body. “
  • Dr. Robert Isaacson, NRC Panel Member: “One of the most interesting things in the report is the diversity of the number of organs that are being affected by the fluoride beyond either the teeth or the bones.”
To understand the debate in more detail, we have gathered evidence from reptutable scientific studies.A good starting point would be the conclusions by the Fluoride Action Network (which consists of over 2000 Doctors and Dentists who have conducted reviews of the scientific literature and who oppose the practice of water fluoridation)."We observed that for males diagnosed before the age of 20 years, fluoride level in drinking water during growth was associated with an increased risk of osteosarcoma, demonstrating a peak in the odds ratios from 6 to 8 years of age. All of our models were remarkably robust in showing this effect, which coincides with the mid-childhood growth spurt." (Bassin, et al., Cancer, Causes & Control, 2006)  The Fluoride Action network state that “According to the National Toxicology Program (NTP), “the preponderance of evidence” from laboratory studies indicates that fluoride is a mutagen (a compound that can cause genetic damage). A chemical that can cause genetic damage is one that can likely cause, or contribute to, the development of cancer.While the concentrations of fluoride causing genetic damage in laboratory studies are generally far higher than the concentrations found in human blood, there are certain “microenvironments” in the body (e.g., the bones, bladder, kidneys, oral cavity, pineal gland) where cells can be exposed to fluoride levels that are comparable to those causing genetic damage in the laboratory. Moreover, some research has found that cells of primates (including great apes and humans) are more susceptible to fluoride’s mutagenic effects than cells of rodents. These factors may help explain why seven studies since the 1990s have found evidence of genetic damage in humans with high fluoride exposures. (Some studies have not found this association.)”According to a study by Tiwari and Rao in a publication “Curcumin supplementation protects from genotoxic effects of arsenic and fluoride. Food & Chemical Toxicology”“Our study has supported the role of As [arsenic] and F [fluoride] as potent genotoxic agents, since in vitro exposure of both caused increased chromosomal anomalies along with primary DNA damage, in human peripheral blood cultures.”According to Zhang R, et al. (2009) in “A stable and sensitive testing system for potential carcinogens based on DNA damage-induced gene expression in human HepG2 cell.“:“In order to analyze potential carcinogenic and genotoxic responses caused by exposure to pollutants existing in environment, a screening method has been established in our laboratory that uses a stably transfected HepG2 cell lines containing gadd153 promoter regions which drive a luciferase reporter gene. Activation of the exogenous gadd153 promoter was quantified using the luciferase activity following drug exposure. Twenty four agents were used to evaluate this screening assay. We selected the agents, ranging from DNA alkylating agents, oxidative agent, radiation, DNAcross-linking agent, nongenotoxic carcinogens, precarcinogenic agents, which included cadmium chloride, chromium trichloride, mercuric chloride, lead nitrate, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, deltamethrin, biphenylamine, 2-aminofluorene, benzo[a]pyrene, 2,3,7,8,-tetracblorodibenzo-p-dioxin, diethyl-stilbestrol, carbon tetrachloride, mitomycin C, hydroxycamptothecin, UV, sodium fluoride, acrylamide, hydrogen peroxide. In addition, two complex genotoxic agents (water samples) existing in the environment were selected. The results showed that all 20 tested known carcinogenic and genotoxic agents were able to induce gadd153-Luc expression at a sublethal dose. In contrast, four tested non-carcinogens, included 4-acetylaminofluorene, pyrene, benzylpenicillin sodium and vitamin C, were unable to induce gadd153-Luc expression. In conclusion, this reportersystem can facilitate in vitro screening for potential carcinogens. Therefore, the gadd153-Luc test system we have developed appears to be a useful and complementary system to existing genotoxic and mutagenic tests.” According to Erciyas K, Sarikaya R. (2009) “Genotoxic evaluation of sodium fluoride in the Somatic Mutation and Recombination Test (SMART). Food & Chemical Toxicology”:“In this study we concluded that NaF, in 5 and 10 lg/ml NaF concentrations cause genotoxic alterations. So genotoxic, mutagenic and teratogenic effects of NaF need to be carefully screened and evaluated together with other long-term effects using in vitro and in vivo animal test models.” This study provides evidence of mutagenicity, which is often associated with carcinogenicity.  Note that the units of concentration used in the study (ug/ml) are equivalent to mg/L or ppm.  So, these fruit fly test animals were drinking water with 0, 2.5, 5, and 10 mg/L NaF, which would provide approximately 0, 1.2, 2.5, and 5 mg/L fluoride ion concentration.  So, these concentrations are very close to the range that humans drink and this study cannot be criticized for using concentrations much higher than humans are exposed to.  Therefore we believe this is a relevant study.According to the Fluoride Action Network:“Several human epidemiological studies have found an association between fluoride in drinking water and the occurrence of osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in young males. (Bassin 2006; Cohn 1992; Hoover 1991 (17)(18)). These studies are consistent with the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) cancer bioassay which found that fluoride-treated male rats had an dose-dependent increase in osteosarcoma. (Bucher 1991). Although a number of studies have failed to detect an association between fluoride and osteosarcoma, none of these studies have measured the risk of fluoride at specific windows in time, which is the critical question with respect to fluoride and osteosarcoma.As acknowledged by the NTP and most other observers, a fluoride/osteosarcoma connection is biologically plausible. The biological plausibility centers around three facts: 1) Bone is the principal site of fluoride accumulation, particularly during the growth spurts of childhood; 2) Fluoride is a mutagen when present at sufficient concentrations, and 3) Fluoride stimulates the proliferation of bone-forming cells (osteoblasts), which may ”increase the risk for some of the dividing cells to become malignant.” (NRC 2006).A number of studies have failed to detect an association between fluoride and osteosarcoma. None of these studies, however, have looked at the risk of fluoride during specific ages in life. This is important because, in 2001, an age-specific analysis of a national case-control study that previously reported no association between lifelong exposure to fluoridated water and osteosarcoma (Douglass 1995) found that boys consuming fluoridated water during their 6th, 7th, and 8th years of life (the mid childhood growth spurt) had a statistically significant, “remarkably robust,” risk of developing osteosarcoma during their teenage years. (Bassin 2001). Initially published as a PhD dissertation at Harvard, the study was later published in 2006 in the journal Cancer, Causes, and Control. (Bassin 2006).Although a study in 2011 purported to refute the findings that fluoride causes osteosarcoma (Kim 2011), the study’s methods — by the authors’ own admission — were incapable of assessing the age-specific risk during the critical window period (ages 6 to 8 ) that Bassin identified as the critical risk period from fluoride exposure.” In a paper entitled “Fluoride – A Modern Toxic Waste “ Dr. Yiamouyiannis documented  research showing that fluoride increases the tumor growth rate by 25% at only 1 ppm, produces melanotic tumors, transforms normal cells into cancer cells and increases the carcinogenesis of other chemicals.Dr Dean Burk is noted as saying "In point of fact, fluoride causes more human cancer death, and causes it faster than any other chemical." ( Congressional Record 21 July 1976)In 1977, it was shown that fluoridation caused about 10,000 cancer deaths in epidemiological studies by Dr. Dean Burk, former head of the Cytochemistry Section at the National Cancer Institute.  What researchers found was that following fluoridation, deaths from cancer went up immediately- in as little as a year.Most European governments oppose fluoridation because of the evidence that it increases the risk of bone cancer, it kills red blood cells, and leads to the breakdown of collagen, as well as the standard medical ethic that no-one should be forced to take medication without their consent.The government's plans are may therefore be considered as the forced medication of Britain. In this country, the National Pure Water Association has repeatedly asked the UK Department of Health to cite one scientific or laboratory study from anywhere in the world which proves that fluoridation reduces tooth decay in humans. They have failed to do so.TELL US WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT WATER FLUORIDATION AND THE CURRENT PLANS.