FAN Bulletin 827

July 2, 2007

Dear All,

Today, two editorials appeared in media from the West Coast. Paul Engelking wrote a powerful piece about the potential for fluoride to interfere with the functioning of fish, a fact not considered at all during discussions of the Oregon bill to mandate fluoridation throughout Oregon, which was fortunately defeated. David Ottson wrote an equally powerful, and wise, editorial in a Juneau (Alaska) paper decrying efforts by the ADA to try to overturn the decision by the Juneau council to stop fluoridation. I believe that both of these editorials need a wider circulation.

Paul Connett
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Paul Engelking

GUEST VIEWPOINT Oregon Register Guard Newspaper
Published: Monday, July 2, 2007

The effects of fluoride on fish totally ignored during policy debate

“And be it remembered that these noted problems had been long since given up by scientific bodies as insolvable mysteries and above man’s ability to comprehend”
- Justification in a bill in the Indiana
By Paul Engelking

How long would our species last if the air we breathed deprived us of your senses? Made us mull around aimlessly instead of acting with purpose? Stymied our reproduction?

Controlled studies have demonstrated that levels of fluoride exceeding 0.2 parts per million (by weight) in the fresh water they swim in produce those effects in salmon. (See D.M. Damkaer and D.B. Dey, “Evidence for Fluoride Effects on Salmon Passage at John Day Dam, Columbia River, 1982-1986,” North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 1989.)

Levels of fluoride, well below those levels deemed acutely toxic to humans drinking it, are acutely lethal to salmonidea. (See J.M. Neuhold and W.F. Sigler, “Effects of Sodium Fluoride on Carp and Rainbow Trout,” Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 1960.)

Now, change the scene from salmon climbing fish ladders at the research station on Big Beef Creek in Washington state and trout swimming in aquaria in Utah labs, to well-heeled lobbyists prowling Gucci gulch outside the committee rooms of the Oregon Legislature.

House Bill 3099 would have mandated fluoridation of public water supplies in Oregon municipalities with populations of 10,000 or more. Of the thousands of pounds of fluoride that would have been placed into water daily if this bill had passed, only one billionth would have ended up in human teeth. The rest would go down the drain and into Oregon rivers, lakes and streams.

Wouldn’t curiosity, if not a sense of responsibility, be motive enough to try to figure out what all this fluoride would do in the environment?

How much of the bill’s language considered the environmental effects of the thousands of pounds of fluoride that would pass through sewers, right through waste treatment plants, and into Oregon streams and rivers daily? None.

Would environmental effects be ever a part of the decision to fluoridate of a municipal water supply or not? No. The bill actually would have prevented anyone, any state or local agency, from taking into consideration any environmental effects on any species other than humans in making the determination to add fluoride or not!

In the 1890s, the Indiana Legislature had a bill to mandate the value of pi - the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle - as the rational fraction sixteen-fifths, or 3.2, rather than 3.14159. … (Even a schoolchild’s approximation of twenty-two sevenths is better than this!) Approved by the House unanimously, the bill had a second reading on the floor of the Senate with the full endorsement of the Temperance Committee before a visiting mathematician finally brought the body to its senses.

I am not totally against fluoride, or fluorine. I testified against a bill in the 1980s that would have outlawed the use of the chemical elements in a whole column of the periodic table! (”This is the halogen police; drop the stannous fluoride and come out with your hands up!”) In that case, I was adamantly pro fluorine. I even put fluoride on my own teeth. And, I note that there were two bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, that would have protected children’s teeth with fluoride without the potential of adversely affecting salmon and trout. I am not arguing fluoridation; I am just pro fish!

What is that phrase: “Fish or cut bait”? Just because members of a citizen Legislature might throw up their collective hands over the task of figuring out what is or is not good for the environment should not preclude others from trying.

The evidence is there. You just have to look.

Paul Engelking of Lowell is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon.

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2. David Ottson

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/062907/opi_20070629008.shtml

Web posted June 29, 2007

My Turn : Fluoridate our water? No thanks.

No amount of debate, not even a city election, will make fluoridated water a good idea

DAVID OTTOSON

Recently, a group of Juneau citizens began circulating a petition to put the issue of fluoridating our drinking water on the fall ballot.

“Wait a minute,” you might ask, “Didn’t we just resolve a contentious three-year debate about fluoride? Didn’t the Juneau Assembly decide 6-3 last November to take it out of our water?”

Yes, we did.

But like a bad penny, fluoridation keeps coming back, especially when there are national organizations such as the American Dental Association willing to spend money to keep it alive. The ADA is paying people a dollar a signature to drum up support for a ballot measure to reintroduce fluoride to our drinking water.

While the motives of petition supporters are no doubt honorable, that still doesn’t make fluoridation a good idea. Contrary to common belief, fluoride is not a nutrient required for human health, anymore than arsenic is. The recommended dietary allowance for fluoride is zero. The sodium fluoride formerly added to our drinking water is classified as an industrial grade hazardous waste.

The evidence on which fluoridation was originally introduced back in the 1940s would be considered laughable today. After more than half a century of fluoridation, scientific support for its benefit in preventing tooth decay is equivocal at best. The largest U.S. study on fluoridation, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, found the decay rate of permanent teeth was virtually the same in fluoridated and nonfluoridated areas.

The final nail in the coffin of fluoridated drinking water should have been the publication last year of the National Academy of Sciences report on fluoride. That authoritative report contains more red flags than a Soviet May Day parade. It cited research showing that even modest concentrations of fluoride inhibit enzyme systems, impair kidney and thyroid function, impact brain development and IQ, and contribute to bone pathology.

The report raised serious questions about the effect of fluoride exposure on vulnerable segments of the population, including pregnant women, infants and small children. These concerns were highlighted in a recent Environmental Working Group analysis that found infants and young children are at a three to four times higher risk of overexposure to fluoride than adults because of their smaller size. Infants consuming formula made from fluoridated tap water were judged to be at greatest risk.

The acolytes of fluoridation, like all true believers, seemed unfazed by this avalanche of bad news. Shortly afterwards, the ADA issued an advisory to its members addressing concerns about fluoride exposure in infants. The association’s solution? Advise parents to use bottled water when making infant formula.

Of course, according to the ADA, the reason we need to fluoridate in the first place is because many parents don’t have the wherewithal to practice good nutrition and dental hygiene with their children. Yet ADA believes these same parents will go out and buy bottled water to protect their infants from fluoride’s ill effects. Now that’s a leap of faith.

Here’s a better idea: Let’s not dump industrial grade hazardous waste into the water in the first place. That way, we won’t have to worry about protecting folks from it. There are plenty of ways those who want fluoride can get it without contaminating everyone else’s drinking water. Between toothpastes, mouthwashes and the background fluoride already present in food, most people are already getting more than enough.

Water fluoridation is a half-baked idea which most of the civilized world rejected long ago. More debate and a municipal election will not make it a better idea. It will only divert our attention from addressing the real causes of tooth decay, which are poor nutrition and lack of dental hygiene, not lack of fluoride.

David Ottoson owns Rainbow Foods and is a Juneau resident.