FAN Bulletin 945
   
March 25, 2008

Dear Supporter,

One thing which is really apparent about proponents of fluoridation is that they cannot provide scientifically based answers to scientific questions. This is especially true of their inability to provide a written analysis as why they (e.g. government health agencies and dental trade associations from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Israel and the UK) do their level best to ignore the important findings in the National Research Council’s landmark review published on March 22, 2006.

Most shocking is the fact that the US EPA, who used US taxpayers’ money to pay for this report, has yet - after 2 years  - to provide one word in response to the panel’s recommendation that the EPA prepare a new health risk assessment to determine a new and more protective Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG). Currently this is set at 4 ppm, which is 1000 times higher than the level in mothers milk! Maybe nature new something about fluoride’s toxicity that the US Public Health Service, which endorsed fluoridation in 1950, has tried to ignore for 58 years and the EPA for the 22 years since it determined this current outrageously high value. Even the fluoridation-promoting WHO has a safe drinking water standard of 1.5 ppm (still far too high).

Based upon the new science presented in the NRC report, and the data presented in the exposure analysis (chapter 2) it should be clear to anyone who can read that some people are already exceeding safe levels of fluoride at 1 ppm and for the rest of the population there is simply no adequate margin of safety.  This isn’t rocket science; it is pocket calculator stuff. Meanwhile, there is one huge clue too visible to ignore: the fact that 32% of American kids now have the telltale signs of over-exposure to fluoride: dental fluorosis (CDC, 2005). Those who hang on to the notion that fluoride could have this systemic effect on the growing tooth without impacting any other tissue in the infant’s developing body are clutching at very thin straws. And why clutch at those straws when the evidence of any benefit today is now so meager?

Now that we have over 40 animal studies which indicate that fluoride can damage the brain and nearly 20 human studies indicating that fluoride can lower children’s IQ (three alone published last year, and one the year before) it is staggering that there is anyone left to support fluoridation (of course it is less staggering when you note that they are unwilling to read anything but handouts from the ADA and its CDC affiliate). Those that do must have a very lopsided view of the relative importance of the teeth and the brain in a child’s overall development. And that is even granting them the very dubious notion that ingested fluoride does much to lower tooth decay.

So why can’t the EPA do its job and deliver us from this evil? Why do our children have to face another day with the real possibility that the water they consume, and the beverages and processed food made with it, could be lowering their intelligence, lowering their thyroid function and accumulating in their pineal glands? Not to mention beginning a lifetime accumulation of fluoride in their bones? Well it is certainly not because the science is unavailable - the NRC has put 507 pages of that on the table.

No, it is not lack of science. Our children have suffered whatever subtle shifts in their bodily metabolism that fluoride can achieve in two years because of the sickening politics that continues to put a stranglehold on the science of this matter. This is not a scientific exercise for the EPA. Their inaction is political. The people who have to do these calculations are scared stiff.  They know that if they do their job and come back with a scientifically defendable MCLG (to protect everyone in society against known and “reasonably anticipated” health effects) that it will have to be much less than 1 ppm and they know that that this will force the end of the fluoridation program. Such a finding will bring down the wrath of the US Public Health Service onto their necks. As far as their careers and pensions are concerned, they do not want to be the ones to pull the rug from under this “sacred cow” of the dental and public health establishment.

This is another very important reason why we need a Congressional hearing. We need Congress to say to the EPA personnel: “Do your job no matter where the science takes you. We are here to make sure that you are not penalized for doing that job.”

To date over 1600 professionals and over 10,900 people have called for an end to fluoridation worldwide and for Congressional Hearings which undoubtedly will expedite this end. Officials at the EPA, CDC and the FDA can ignore our questions but they will not be able to ignore the questions of Congress but we need more pressure from the public to make this happen.  Please get everyone you know to sign either the Professional Statement or the Online message to Congress. It is very simple to do. We need more signatures on both to get the attention of Congress and to lend support to the lobbying efforts of the Environmental Working Group to get such a hearing.
 
Paul Connett