FAN Bulletin 798

April 20, 2007

Dear All,

The first item is an excellent editorial by Pat Arena, a citizen who in a relatively short time has educated himself thoroughly on the fluoridation issue, so much so that he is causing gigantic waves in his Florida county. His editorial appears in today’s TC Palm, which is sweet because this paper has had some disparaging things to say about Pat over the past few months.

The second item comes from the world’s greatest sleuth on all things fluoride, Carol Kopf from the organization, New York State Citizens Opposed to Fluoridation (NYSCOF@aol.com). She read through a report entitled “Improving Oral Health Care for Young Children,” by Shelly Gehshan & Matt Wyatt, which was published by National Academy for State Health Policy, April 2007.

Hats off to Carol you have to have a very strong stomach to read through these “Oh so respectable”, official-sounding, well paid, reports from pseudo government agencies which pretend to be non-partisan and caring, but remain deliberately ignorant of the real issues and simply exist to feed back to the government what they want to hear. In it she found a table, prepared by the Oral Health Division of the CDC, listing the largest communities in the US which remain unfluoridated. Clearly, these communities will be targeted since these CDC zealots (the Oral Health Division) will not rest until they have fluoridated every last remaining city, town, village, town, well and bottle of water in the country. The report’s authors also indicate what strategies we might expect:

“The push to fluoridate water systems is hampered by several variables, including lack of federal and state legislative mandates and funding, which leaves many local governments without the necessary funds to pay for a fluoridation system. Lack of mandates also means that each community must navigate its own decision-making and public comment process. Despite decades of research proving its safety, water fluoridation is still controversial and subject to persistent misinformation campaigns that make unsubstantiated claims that it causes a host of illnesses and conditions.”

(my emphasis)

Please check the CDC’s “target list” and see if you know anyone in any of these communities and warn them what might be coming their way. Make sure they go to our web site http://www.FluorideAction.net and arm themselves like Pat Arena. Encourage them to get these free FAN bulletins (simply email me) and look at the Bryson and other fluoride videos, on Google video.

The third item comes from FAN’s new west coast spokesperson, Dr. Bill Osmunson. He gives the simple calculation which shows that a pea sized amount of toothpaste (check the warning on your toothpaste) contains the equivalent amount of fluoride contained in one glass of fluoridated tap water!

One of the tragedies of this whole sorry 60 year history of fluoridation is that the FDA has not done its job with fluoride; it has never regulated fluoride for ingestion, even though, via the public drinking water, it is the most prescribed medicine in US history.

The nearest the FDA has got to regulating fluoride was requiring that toothpaste manufacturers put that warning label on their toothpaste tubes. If they had regulated the fluoride in water in the same way they regulated the toothpaste, they would have required a warning on each faucet which says, “only drink one glass of water; if your child should drink more please contact a poison center immediately”! Of course, this extrapolation is not absolutely correct, because the concern about toothpaste , which contains 1000 ppm fluoride, is that a child could eat a lot and make themselves acutely sick. While, the concern with water is chronic exposure and more subtle effects like lowering of IQ, interfering with thyroid function, accumulating in the pineal gland and the bone and possibly causing an increase in bone cancer in boys and young men. Subtle, but still debilitating and life threatening, but not so obvious and not something a poison center could do much about.

However, it is precisely these things (subtle, and long term effects) that the FDA normally worries about when regulating drugs, including monitoring side effects from patients. No one in this country is monitoring the long term effects of fluoride, let alone the immediate side effects from ingesting fluoridated water, even though as long ago as 1961, Feltman and Kossel showed that approximately 1 % of children and pregnant women were sensitive to a daily dose 1 milligram of fluoride per day – that is equivalent to one liter (approximately one quart) of water fluoridated at 1 ppm (Feltman R, Kosel G. (1961) Prenatal and postnatal ingestion of fluorides - Fourteen years of investigation - Final report. J Dent Med 16:190-99).

In his piece, Bill Osmunson, indicates some of the reasons why people should drink a lot of water. Bill knows how sad it is to make this important recommendation when drinking a lot of fluoridated water can damage the health of our babies, our children, our elderly, the infirm, and people with poor nutrition and poor kidney function. He ands others from Oregon are in the thick of fighting off a bill which would require mandatory fluoridation of every town in Oregon over 10,000 people.

If those at the top of the health system (FDA, CDC, EPA) are not doing their job on fluoride exposure, perhaps it is not surprising that those at the bottom of the system are not doing theirs either. Doctors are not being trained to recognize that many common symptoms may be caused by fluoride, nor are they trained to investigate fluoride exposure as a possible exacerbating factor in thyroid function, arthritis, osteoporosis and other serious diseases. Fluoride is off nearly everyone’s radar screen. We have to change this but it is a tough uphill job when the CDC Oral Health Division continues its massive deception of the medical community and the public at large on the safety and effectiveness of fluoridation.

Hopefully, next week Dr. Hirzy and I can make some in roads into alerting the US congress to the lethargic response of the EPA water division to the NRC (2006) report to lower the MCLG from 4 ppm, as well as the need to investigate the nefarious role of the Oral Health Division (OHD) at the CDC. Is this division a rogue elephant? Is anyone else at the CDC overseeing the OHD pronouncements on fluoridation? What review took place at the CDC in the six days between the publication of the 500 page NRC report on March 22, 2006, recommending that the EPA lower its MCLG from 4 ppm, and the statement on the CDC web site on March 28, that this report was consistent with their promotion of fluoridation at 1 ppm? How much detailed inspection of the NRC report could have taken place in SIX days and who did it? Why is the FDA allowed to sit back and do nothing to warn the public of the dangers of ingesting fluoride (other than toothpaste) – the most prescribed drug in US history?

It is really quite simple: if the EPA, CDC and the FDA did their job the NRC (2006) report spells the end of water fluoridation.

One of the jobs of the US Congress is to oversee government funded agencies, let’s hope we can get some REAL oversight on the EPA, CDC and the FDA on this issue. Jeff Green and colleagues tried this a few years back and got some astounding answers from the EPA and FDA on the lack of any study on the most commonly used fluoridating agents (the silicon fluorides). The NRC (2006) has now made our case that more compelling. Thanks again to the many of you who have helped secure appointments for us. I will try to summarize our efforts Sunday week.

Paul Connett
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1) Pat Arena’s editorial

Guest columnist: New scientific developments subvert pro-fluoride position

By PAT ARENA
guest columnist
April 21, 2007

In recent months the News has written three or four editorials supporting the use of fluoride in public drinking water. I’d like to make residents aware of recent developments in the scientific community that contradict this view.

Dramatic developments have changed the scientific understanding of fluoridation’s health risks. Most significant is the March 2006 report, “(Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards,” issued by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences — our nation’s top science adviser. This watershed report represents three years of deliberations by a balanced panel of 12 scientists and contains disturbing findings about fluoride’s harm to human health.

Although fluoridation proponents claim the 450-page NRC report isn’t relevant to fluoridation, it clearly cites newly identified adverse effects — most of which occur at, and even below, the 1 part-per-million level used for fluoridation. These include dental fluorosis, decreased thyroid function, impaired glucose tolerance (Type II pre-diabetes), arthritis (joint inflammation), brain cell damage and possible bone cancer in males. Hip fractures and lowered IQ in children were found to occur dangerously close to 1 ppm. Dr. Robert Isaacson, an author of the NRC report, said it “should be a wake-up call.”

The report cited fluoridated tap water as the major dietary source of fluoride exposure. It also noted the wide range of individual fluoride doses due to the variable amounts ingested from both water and food. Many people are exposed to a total daily intake of fluoride that exceeds the amount now known to cause harm. In fact, fluoride received from food alone may exceed this amount. And, because of lower body weight, children receive three to four times the fluoride dose as compared to adults.

In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control reported 32 percent of all U.S. children now have dental fluorosis (mottled/stained tooth enamel). This visible evidence of systemic harm is caused by increasingly unavoidable exposure to fluoridated water, food and beverages processed with fluoridated water, toothpaste and dental products, fluoride pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and industrial air pollution. Despite this fluoride overload, tooth decay among disadvantaged children is epidemic — even in long-fluoridated cities — proving that fluoridation has dismally failed its intended target group.

Further, the American Dental Association has finally admitted that infants are at risk of fluoride overdose. It recently reversed its long-standing policy, stating that fluoridated water should not be used to prepare infant formula during the first year of life because of elevated risk of dental fluorosis. This admission of harm to the most vulnerable of our population is reason alone to end this practice.

The fluoridation controversy is no longer about tooth decay. It’s about cumulative systemic effects of long-term fluoride ingestion. It’s about disposal into our drinking water of a toxic, industrial grade waste from phosphate mining (hydrofluosilicic acid) for which there are zero safety studies. Ultimately, it’s about an archaic health policy, set in stone 60 years ago, that falsely claims fluoridation is good for everyone and harms no one. Fluoridation proponents are entrenched in a scientifically insupportable position, and our health is on the line.

As public awareness continues to grow, enlightened cities across America are taking action to eliminate this toxin from their water (www.fluorideaction.net/).

Arena lives in Jensen Beach.
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2) Carol Kopf’s sleuthing: CDC hit list

Long Island Tops the “Hit List” of Most Populous Non-Fluoridated Communities compiled by the CDC and they suggest state and federal mandates to achieve success.

Table 4: The 15 Most Populous Non-Fluoridated Communities

Long Island, New York 1,239, 564 [really closer to 3 million people]
San Jose, California 979,000
South East Pennsylvania (Philadelphia suburbs) 820,000
Bergen and Hudson Counties, New Jersey 764,820
Tucson, Arizona 675,000
Fresno, California 485,000
Eastern Municipal California (Moreno Valley, Perris, Hemet, Murrieta, Temecula, and San Jacinto) 458,000
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 385,272
Colorado Springs, Colorado 360,890
Newark, New Jersey 275,221
Passaic Valley, New Jersey (Clifton, Passaic, and Paterson) 275,000
Reno, Nevada 270,000
Riverside, California 259,738
Jersey City, New Jersey 238,000
Rockland County, New York 225,000

Source: Centers for Disease Prevention and Control

This table appeared in, “Improving Oral Healh Care for Young Children,” by Shelly Gehshan & Matt Wyatt, which was published by National Academy for State Health Policy, April 2007

Note the Authors’ acknowledgements

The authors are sincerely grateful for the time and expertise of the following people who reviewed and gave comments on drafts of this report: Dr. Jim Bramson, Dr. Al Guay, and Dr. Laura Neumann of the American Dental Association; Tim Lynch and Megan Fitzpatrick of the American Dental Hygienists’ Association; Dr. David Nash of the University of Kentucky; Dr. Ron Nagel of the Indian Health Service; Meg Booth of the Children’s Dental Health Project; Beth Mertz of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the University of California; and Andy Snyder of NASHP. This report was produced with the generous support of the National Oral Health Policy Center.

Among their solutions or “Findings” is fluoridation, of course:

States and communities should reconsider their efforts to ensure equal access to community water with optimal fluoride levels. Despite being one of the top ten public health accomplishments in the 20th century, fluoridated water is still under-utilized as a source of dental caries prevention. Rural communities without access to fluoridated water might consider fluoridating water in their schools.
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3) Bill Osmunson’s calculations

In the past few months I have presented the FDA warning not to swallow 0.5 mg of fluoride in toothpaste, the same amount found in 2 glasses of water. Dr. Maas and John MacArthur both had me read the CDC report. The CDC report clearly states a pea size of fluoridated toothpaste has 0.25 mg rather than the 0.5 mg which I have been reporting. Half the pea size and amount I estimated.

In other words, the FDA is concerned about the fluoride in just one glass of fluoridated water. Twice the concern I’ve been reporting. If the FDA were to be responsible for placing warnings on fluoridated water, they would say do not drink one glass of water. If more than one glass is drunk, call the poison control center.

We need to drink more water, not have warnings to drink less.

#1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. (Likely applies to half the world population.)

#2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is mistaken for hunger.

#3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one’s metabolism as 3%.

#4. One glass of water will shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of
Washington study.

#5. Lack of water, the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

#6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain
for up to 80% of sufferers..

#7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on
the computer screen or on a printed page.

#8. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast
cancer by 79%., and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer. Are you drinking the amount of water
you should drink every day?

Please note the CDC committee did not have any MD’s.

Bill Osmunson DDS MPH