FAN Bulletin #560
April 7, 2006
Dear All,
In a letter published in the Rutland Herald, April 6, Dr. Steve Arthur, Director of Oral Health for the state of Vermont, confirmed his “rubber stamp” status for fluoridation (see letter below).
In his commentary on the NRC review, Arthur states that “the NRC committee’s comprehensive review of the literature finds no new evidence of health effects below 2 mg/L” and that the recommendation of the NRC panel to lower the MCLG has no bearing on water fluoridation and accuses those who are using one to influence the other as being “misleading, dishonest and irresponsible.”
Arthur cannot have read this 450 page report very closely - if at all. But why should he, he is paid to promote fluoridation, why should the information actually contained in this thorough three year study deflect him from what he has to do?
State Oral Health Directors are merely the fluoridation foot soldiers of the US Public Health Service (a uniformed branch of the US government). Pawns obeying orders, if you will. The US PHS’s obsession with this nonsense began in 1950 when they endorsed the measure before a single health study or trial on fluoridation’s safety or effectiveness had been completed or published. This policy has little to do with science, and never has been, a fact which Arthur amply illustrates in his letter by ignoring the substance of the NRC review.
Politics aside, what has the public the right to expect from someone in a position like Arthur’s? Arthur is a paid employee of the Vermont Department of Health - the Vermont taxpayers pay his salary. If this state health department gets federal grants, then we all contribute towards his salary. So what do we have the right to expect him to do on a practice like water fluoridation? In my view, we should expect him to provide a carefully balanced view of the issue to decision makers. He should be honest about the benefits and honest about the risks. He shouldn’t be a mouthpiece for one side of this controversial issue - we have the Vermont Sate Dental Society to do that.
I don’t expect Arthur will respond to us, but maybe someone in Vermont will ask him these 10 questions:
1) Did you actually read the 450 page NRC report?
2) Did you carefully consider the information in the chapters on the brain, the endocrine system and the bone?
3) Based upon this reading are you absolutely sure that there were no findings presented which suggest serious health effects might occur with someone drinking water at 1 ppm - especially a heavy water drinker?
4) What margin of safety would you want for such end points?
5) Did you read the exposure analysis in Chapter 2?
6) Based on this reading do you maintain that no adult living in communities fluoridated at 1 ppm will exceed 8 milligrams per day or that no bottle fed baby, infant or young child would exceed 0.114 mg/bodyweight per day (the current safe limit) with a combination of fluoride from water and from other sources?
7) If the answer to 6) is yes, then do you believe that if the current safe limit is lowered - as recommended by the NRC panel - that no one will exceed the new safe limit at 1 ppm?
8) Do you have any idea what the new safe limit might be when the EPA has performed a health risk assessment as recommended by the NRC panel (a new health risk assessment would have to take into account end points other than crippling skeletal fluorosis used in their 1985 determination as well as the NRC’s exposure analysis)?
9) As the NRC recommended a need for many future studies to resolve key unanswered questions on safety, are you certain that not one future study will reveal any problems?
10) If so much research is needed to resolve unanswered questions, does this not make water fluoridation an ongoing experiment on the American people? Is such an experiment permitted by the Nuremburg code, in as much as it demands that human experiments have the “informed consent” of the individuals being treated?
Paul Connett
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Rutland Herald
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060406/NEWS/604060319/1037
Letters
Distorting debate on fluoridation
April 6, 2006
April 6, 2006
Daniel Barlow’s recent article regarding the question of continuing water fluoridation in the village of Bellows Falls failed to emphasize an important difference between public water fluoridation and the recent recommendation from the National Research Council (NRC). In fact, the two issues are not related at all. The NRC committee was charged with reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current maximum levels, which are used to limit and filter out fluoride that occurs in excess naturally. Two levels were reviewed - the upper level of 4 mg/L (same as 4.0 parts per million) at which no negative health effects should occur, and the lower limit of 2 mg/L at which no negative cosmetic effects should occur. The NRC report clearly states it was not addressing the U.S. Public Health Service water fluoridation guidelines, 0.7 mg/L-1.2 mg/L, which are still recommended and proven effective for protection against tooth decay in areas where naturally occurring fluoride levels are inadequate.
After a complete review of the most current and scientifically sound research available, this independent group of professionals recommended only that the EPA consider lowering the upper limit of 4 mg/L for allowable concentrations of naturally occurring fluoride. That’s it. The adverse health effects related to this high concentration included enamel defects and tooth discoloration in some children (severe fluorosis), and possible increased bone fractures in adults from sustained consumption at this level over a lifetime. The report makes it crystal clear that strong evidence exists that severe fluorosis is near zero at concentrations below 2.0 mg/L. Additionally, the NRC committee’s comprehensive review of the literature finds no new evidence of health effects below 2 mg/L.
The public’s dental health is best promoted and protected by use of municipal water fluoridation at its current recommended levels of 0.7 mg/L-1.2 mg/L. For anti-fluoridation activists to use this NRC committee recommendation on natural fluoride limits as rationale for eliminating public water fluoridation is misleading, dishonest and irresponsible.
Dr. STEVE ARTHUR
(Director, Office of Oral Health,
Vermont Department of Health)
Burlington
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Paul Connett’s posted reply to Dr. Steve Arthur’s letter:
In a letter published in the Rutland Herald, yesterday, Steve Arthur, Director of Oral Health for the state of Vermont, claims that the recently published National Research Council’s three year review of fluoride’s toxicology in water “finds no new evidence of health effects below 2 mg/L.” Arthur cannot have read this 450 page report very closely - if at all. It contains alarming evidence that fluoride can have effects on the brain, the endocrine sytem, the bones, and other tissues, at levels very close to and in some instances lower than current exposure levels. The chapters on the brain and the endocrine system are particularly disturbing.
He claims that the NRC’s recommendation to lower the MCLG (maximum contaminant level goal) from 4 ppm, is not related in any way to water fluoridation at 1 ppm. He writes: “the two issues are not related at all.”
To state this Arthur must willfully disregard a critical consideration of an adequate “margin of safety” required to protect a whole population, especially heavy water drinkers. It was this discussion that the NRC panel passed to the US EPA by recommending that they perform a health risk assessment based upon the science they have unearthed. Remember when the US EPA set (fraudulently according to Dr. Bob Carton, who was at the EPA when this determination was made) the MCLG at 4 ppm in 1985, they assumed that people drank just TWO LITERS of water per day. Many people drink a lot more water than this.
For Arthur to claim that there is no connection between the NRC’s recommendation to lower the 4 ppm and the future of water fluoridation pre-supposes that the EPA will not be forced to use a margin of safety which would lower the new MCLG to below 1 ppm. It shouldn’t require a great deal of thought on Arthur’s part to recognize that there is a totally inadequate margin of safety at 1 ppm for some of the toxic effects discussed in the NRC review, especially when you consider that merely by controlling the concentration of fluoride in water to 1 ppm (i.e. 1 milligram per liter) does not mean that you can control the dose in milligrams per day that adults get or the dosage (mg/kg bodyweight/day) that children get. If Arthur was to read the exposure analysis presented in Chapter 2 of the NRC report he would discover that there are some people - by virtue of how much water they drink - who are already exceeding the current safe limit (8 milligrams per day or 0.114 mg/kg bodyweight per day). This number of people will only increase if that safe limit is lowered as recommended by the NRC.
I find it reprehensible that a state official, whose department’s job is to protect the public’s health, should use insulting rhetoric like, “For anti-fluoridation activists to use this NRC committee recommendation on natural fluoride limits as rationale for eliminating public water fluoridation is misleading, dishonest and irresponsible.”
As a scientist who has studied this issue for 10 years, and someone who gave invited testimony before the NRC panel, I must say that it is not the opponents of fluoridation who are distorting the NRC review, but it is Dr. Arthur himself. But I guess you can get away with that if you are Director of the Office of Oral Health, for the Vermont Department of Health.
Dr. Paul Connett
Professor of Chemistry
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY 13617
315-229-5853 (office)
315-379-9200 (home)
Executive Director
Fluoride Action Network
http://www.fluorideaction.net
Posted by Anita
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