Dear All,

Before we get to Arcata, a word about two very interesting follow-up articles I was sent in response to the last bulletin on depleted uranium. If you wish to receive either of  these please email Dr. Geoff Paine in Perth, Western Austalia at  for a very clear summary of DU effects and to Alexandra McKee-Bennett” for her article entitled “The Future for our Children. This latter article deals with the contamination of Port Hope, Ontario with uranium, fluoride and other toxic materials

If you have been involved in this battle over fluoridation for more than a few months, you have already been exposed to atrociously ill-informed editorials on this issue. Many of us choose to ignore them, because they are usually so awful that the writer is clearly unreachable and to try to do so only raises the blood pressure - and  it is usually too late any way as they run just a few days before the election.

This has just happened in Arcata, California (see 2). This is very sad because this small community in Northern California is supposedly a very progressive community.

What really got my goat on this is that their editorial appeared in the same edition in which the paper printed a long letter from me (see 1). I just cannot understand how someone reading that letter (and many other fine ones sent in by well-informed readers) could have written an editorial with so much disdain and sarcasm. For example, for those who have seen the meticulous science we have presented on our website http://www.FluorideAction.net, how could he or she entertain the following notions:

I was so upset with this characterization of our concerns and our research that I fired off the letter below (see 3).

Hopefully, enough people in Arcata will be incensed, as I was, by this insulting editorial that they will vote YES on Measure W on Tuesday.  But how much better for everyone if this newspaper had attempted to provide a balanced and rational discussion of the arguments presented to them from both sides, instead of weighing in with their “witty” vitriol on behalf of the ill-informed dental lobby. I would love to know what the latter say to these editors to get them so fired up to write the rubbish that they do without any sense of embarassment. We saw the same kind of thing in Burlington, Vermont (another very progressive community) where the only argument presented by the dental establishment in their advertisements was “Got Teeth, Keep Fluoride.” Historians will chuckle at this, but meanwhile millions of people are unnecessarily being exposed to a poison, over which those who should have oversight (e.g. the FDA), are derelict in their duty.

Paul Connett

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1) My letter printed on Oct 31 in the Arcata Eye

While Measure W - and others like it elsewhere in the country - if successful, will force a temporary halt to water fluoridation in jurisdictions that pass the measure, it need not be permanent unless those who wish to see this practice continue, a) fail to locate a source of pharmaceutical grade fluoride (not the industrial waste product currently being used) and b) fail to recruit the national proponents of fluoridation (the ADA and CDC) to obtain approval of the FDA for the ingestion of fluoride. Something they should have done years ago.

In my view, these requirements are modest and extremely reasonable. Afterall fluoride is the most prescribed medication in the U.S. - going to over 170 million people daily in their drinking water. Moreover, the prescriptions are being issued by people like local councilors, most of whom have never had medical training. For them to prescribe a medication which has not been approved by the FDA is extraordinary. Measure W will do well if it forces fluoridation proponents to get the FDA to do its duty in this matter.

In my view, it is also shocking that we ever allowed industrial waste products - obtained from the wet scrubbers of the phosphate fertilizer industry - to be added to our drinking water. This material is contaminated with arsenic, lead and even low levels of radioactive isotopes. It cannot be dumped into the sea by international law but it is allowed in our drinking water. Absurd but true. Measure W is attempting to eliminate this absurdity - at least in Arcata.

I would add, having reviewed the literature on fluoride’s toxicity through the eyes of a professor who has taught environmental chemistry and toxicology for many years, that the practice of water fluoridation is an anachronism in the 21st century. It was started at a time when we put lead in our gasoline; asbestos on our pipes, PCBs in our transformers and DDT was being sprayed on kids at picnic tables. All of these practices have fallen by the wayside, but fluoridation clings on.

Fluoridation clings on because it was endorsed by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1950, and after the dental and medical establishments fell into line, quickly reached the status of a “sacred cow” in the public health community. The book, The Fluoride Deception by Chris Bryson goes into the collusion between industry and U.S. Public Health Services on the promotion of this practice, but I will not dwell on that history here. It is enough to say that those who are prepared to review the scientific literature with an open mind on this matter, will quickly discover that fluoridation is unnecessary; ineffective and unsafe.

It is unnecessary because the mechanism whereby fluoride hardens the enamel is topical not systemic. In other words swallowing fluoride makes as much sense as swallowing sunblock to protect against ultraviolet light. Meanwhile, the CDC (2005) acknowledges that over one-third of U.S. children are impacted by dental fluorosis (even those living in unfluoridated communities) which means our kids are being overexposed to fluoride not underexposed. No one needs it in the water. Toothpaste is more rational, but even so I would prefer the Scandinavian approach of using xylitol in toothpaste. Xylitol is a natural sugar which we make in our own bodies and occurs in many foods such as strawberries. Like fluoride it prevents the bacteria that convert sugar to acid from flourishing in the mouth.

Its ineffectiveness is best illustrated by the fact that the vast majority of industrialized countries do not fluoridate their water - some fluoridate their salt - and their children’s teeth (according to figures available online from WHO) are just as good if not better than ours. The largest survey ever conducted in the U.S., which examined 39,000 children in 84 communities, found only a very meager saving in tooth decay in the permanent teeth. An average saving of 0.6 of one tooth surface out of the approximate 100 tooth surfaces in a child’s mouth (Brunelle and Carlos, 1990). Surveys in Australia have found even less. Meanwhile, front page news stories in several American cities indicate dental crises among inner city children, even though these cities have been fluoridated for over 20 years. Tooth decay has far more to do with poverty than it has to do with fluoride. Moreover, poor children are the last children who should receive fluoride since fluoride’s toxic effects are more pronounced when accompanied by poor nutrition.

It is unsafe. A recent three year review of fluoride’s toxicity by the National Research Council (NRC, 2006) did a masterful job of summarizing fluoride’s effect on the teeth, bone, brain, kidneys and the endocrine system. The panel recommended that the U.S. EPA lower the safe drinking water standard of 4 ppm since it was unprotective of the teeth and the bones. With water fluoridation at 1 ppm, that leaves a totally unsatisfactory margin of safety between benefit and harm.

For those who argue that 1 ppm is so small you shouldn’t worry about it, let me point out that the level of fluoride in mothers’ milk (NRC, 2006) is 0.004 ppm. This means that a mother who bottle feeds her baby right now in Arcata and uses tap water to make up the formula is giving her baby 250 times more fluoride than nature intended at a time when the baby’s blood brain barrier is not fully developed. This is the kind of issue that the FDA would be forced to examine if they were required to approve fluoride as a medication. Voting yes on Measure W would encourage such a sensible examination before continuing with fluoridation.

Sincerely,
Dr. Paul Connett
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry
Executive Director, Fluoride Action Network
fluorideaction.net
St. Lawrence University

Canton, New York

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2) Arcata Eye Editorial October 31, 2006

If we wanted to convince you that you should lock your car at night, it would be simple to find theft victims to tell their story.

If we were to argue that bicycle helmets are prudent, we could easily locate individuals who’ve suffered bike-related head injuries.

If we wanted to prove that dogs should be leashed, we could call up a mauling victim and introduce him to you.

Those who wish to persuade us that fluoride poses a health peril give us little more than websites, anecdotes and fear. That isn’t enough.

The Arcata Safe Water group contends that  fluoridation is a public health catastrophe with victims suffering myriad maladies.

Odd then, isn’t it, that the medical community, locally and nationally, hasn’t identified any linkage between fluoride and poor health? And that no living, breathing, ailing fluoride victims have stepped forward? Arcata has been adding fluoride to its water since the early 1960s. If we had a problem, wouldn’t there be an identifiable portion of Arcata’s populace with fluoride-related medical problems?

If what Arcata Safe Water alleges is true, we’d have two huge stories on our hands:

1. Large numbers of casualties among the tapwater-consuming public from intentional government poisoning of our water supply.

2. The failure of the medical community to recognize an omnibus pandemic traceable to a single source.

While there are lots of people with health problems, despite embarrassingly strenuous efforts to manipulate data, no link to fluoridation has been established. People get hit by cars in crosswalks. Should we eliminate crosswalks?

Those who actually spend their work lives interacting with the public and its health situations  - doctors, dentists, social workers, educators, elected officials - near-universally back fluoride and fluoridation.

How do we explain the startling disparity between the menace opponents say fluoride represents and the hundreds of professionals and public servants of many disciplines who fervently advocate fluoridation?

It’s not that hard, really. Billion-dollar industries thrive around entirely imaginary “phenomena.” Astrology, numerology, UFOs, alien abductions, Holocaust denial, the face on Mars, “chemtrails,” innumerable media-centered conspiracy theories and fluoride-phobia thrive because they inhabit that magical nexus where paranoia meets superstition - fertile ground for fomenting fear.

A prime indication of how little factual information matters any more is the endless incantation of the frightening words “arsenic, lead and mercury.” The City of Arcata had an independent laboratory test the water for these substances, and not only were they all below allowable levels - none whatsoever were detected. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Ain’t there.

Predictably, the response from fluoride foes is that the test results must be invalid. Superstition is a powerful part of human nature, but for Arcata’s sensible, well-educated voters, it probably won’t be enough to overcome the documented proof of fluoride’s safety and effectiveness.

Through health history, quacks and flim-flammers have sold everything from snake oil to bogus contraptions with talk of “toxins.” So the plan, apparently, is to repeat the disproven shibboleth of contamination over and over until it becomes conventional wisdom on some level. Or just plain scares folks. That’s misleading at best, and fairly contemptible at worst. Especially since there are known threats to our health  - obesity-induced diabetes, for one, and a diminishing number of doctors available to treat them.

Meanwhile, fluoride-hobbled wretches fill the hospitals, debilitated by arsenic poisoning. OK, we made that last part up, obviously.

Requiring FDA approval of fluoride is just a gadget to end-run any requirement of evidence of harm. Maybe the zero-tree cut advocates could take a cue from it and say we shouldn’t harvest any timber from the sustainably managed Community Forest until NASA signs off on it.

Anyway, if fluoride’s a drug, how come they aren’t smoking it behind the donut shop?

For Arcata, the fluoride debate is especially fascinating, because it places at odds lots of people normally in general agreement on most other things. Progressive physicians and dentists are being suggested as in league with the aluminum industry. Social workers who daily deal with the tragedies of neglected children have been accused of classism because they warn that fluoridation is the only dental care some kids are going to get.

Measure W proponents suggest that there are better ways to provide dental care for the underprivileged. But what have they done up till now for these kids, and what will they do about it after Nov. 7? Nothing at all.

After years of work, with the measure on the ballot and voters’ pens poised, the Arcata Safe Water side now has a chance to terminate what’s been described as one of the biggest achievements in modern public health. But doing that in sensible Arcata will require more than fluffed-up fears and quack websites.

Even as election day nears, we have yet to hear a compelling presentation - something other than strained extrapolations of data and baseless rhetoric - by the anti-fluoride side. Given the scope of the menace they believe fluoride represents, it ought to have been easy.

Arcatans are skeptical of assurances from authority. That’s good. But they aren’t foolish, and that’s even better. No on Measure W.

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3) My response to this Editorial sent today (Nov 2, 2006)

Dear Kevin,

I was forwarded the letters and editorial in your last issue. I am intrigued. Did you write this editorial? If so, how can you possibly rationalize your intense and sarcastic disdain for the scientific and rational basis of those who oppose fluoridation with the information contained in my letter? You can hardly pretend that you didn’t read it, based upon your communication below (communication to me above saying they were printing the letter and wanted a photo to go with it, PC).

Why instead of insulting the intelligence of those who have the temerity to want the most prescribed medication in the US approved by the FDA, could you not have engaged the rational arguments I presented in my letter and others presented in theirs? Certainly the FDA does not regulate water - but it does  (or should) regulate medicines. The delivery system does not make it any less of a medicine, and because of the inability to control dose, and because those who generally give the go ahead to dose the community, are not medically qualified,  tight regulation is even more necessary than for a prescribed tablet to an individual.

You say: show us the dead bodies if it is as bad as you say. Well have those who push this (remember the US Public Health Service endorsed this in 1950 before any health trial had been completed) looked in a scientific manner? Have they, for example, ever tracked the level of fluoride in the bones of the American people (we know that 50% of each daily dose accumulates there)? No. Have they looked to see if any of the 63 million Americans who suffer from arthritis have had this condition caused by fluoride exposure (afterall we know that the first signs of fluoride’s poisoning of bone - skeletal fluorosis - is identical to arthritis). No. Have they looked to see if any of the over 20,000 (should have been 20 million, PC) Americans with hypothyroidism have had this condition caused or exacerbated by fluoride (after all European doctors from the 1930s to the 1950s used sodium fluoride tablets at low doses to treat the symptoms of HYPERthyroism)? No. Have they used the severity of dental fluorosis in children (a known biomarker of fluoride exposure) to see if there is any correlation with various childhood concerns: lowered IQ, behavioral problems, onset of puberty or bone fractures? No. WHY NOT?

If you don’t look, you don’t find. When people do look in other countries (e.g. India and China) they are finding some of these relationships. The National Research Council did a masterful job of reviewing the worldwide literature on this. It took them 3 and half years and their 450 page report has over 1000 references. Hardly people with ‘tin-foil” hats. On what basis do proponents ignore this scientific review? They say that the recommendation to lower the drinking standard from 4 ppm has no relevance to water fluoridation at 1ppm. Give me a break! You can use one liners to dismiss issues in editorials, but it doesn’t work that way in science.

It is easy to take pot shots at websites in general - we know there is a lot of crazy stuff out there - however, go to our website http://www.FluorideAction.net, which my son has spent many patient years building, and tell me that your characertization of this source of information is fair. I challenge you to pull out anything which fits into your notions of pseudo-science.

I didn’t want this issue. At the time, I thought anti-fluoridationists - like you now, I assume - were a little crazy, but my wife forced me to look at the issue. I reviewed the literature with an open mind and was appalled - and for the last 10 and half years I have tried to right a great wrong.

Now I may have wasted the last ten years - and perhaps despite my career in science - I might have got this all wrong, but I think those of us who have spent so much time studying the literature, deserve just a wee bit more respect.

Here is a very interesting exercise for you, since you are so clearly confident that the mighty columns of white coats who support this practice are right, and I am wrong: find any single person in their ranks  to provide a documented writen response to the “50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation” which you will find on our home page. If the arguments are as clear cut as you indicate it should be easy for one of these people to do this. You should certainly try the CDC. Afterall this agency supports mandatory statewide fluoridation, and says that fluoridation is one fo the top ten public health achievements of the Twentieth Century. It should be as easy for them to find scientific arguments and citations to dismiss these “ravings” of mine as swatting a fly off a wall. Please let me know when you have found someone willing to do this.

If you didn’t write this editorial perhaps you would be kind enough to pass these thoughts onto the person who did.

Paul Connett