FAN Bulletin 1042

January 20, 2009

First, a correction to yesterday’s bulletin. The certification required for any chemical added to water is

ANSI/NSF Standard 60 (paragraph 3.2.1).

An extra C slipped into this title in yesterdays’ bulletin. The whole 3 step program is repeated below ? with the corrected title inserted.

Second, over 600 people watched the Bill Osmunson video yesterday, bringing the total number of viewers to over 100,000! You can view this historic video (and six other videos we have posted on YouTube) at http://www.youtube.com/user/fluoridealert

Third, I will be about of town until Feb 5. The next bulletin will probably be on Feb 6, unless something very important comes up in which case Ellen will put something out.

Skagit County, WA, likely to reverse decision to fluoridate

Here is some very good news. With the election of a new commissioner in Skagit County the commissioners now have a 2 to 1 majority against fluoridation and are likely to vote to rescind the decision made two years to fluoridate the county. However, needless to say this has produced howls of rage from the pro-fluoridation establishment there which were echoed in a nasty and ill-informed editorial in the local newspaper (The Skagit Herald, Jan 16, 2009, printed on its website GoSkagit.com) The paper made of point of saying that the editorial was a consensus of the whole editorial board.

I always find it interesting that the nastiest editorials are written by the least informed. I suspect because the authors simply parrot what their friends in the dental lobby cluck into their ears. Beats reading! In fact, after I wrote that, Carol Kopf, our media officer, came across this sentence in a document on “public policy grant making” http://www.gih.org/usr_doc/Path_to_policy_change_no26.pdf

This brochure features a piece on how the dental lobby went about securing the original endorsement of fluoridation in Skagit County in 2005, “Fluoride for a Healthy Skagit: Adventures in Public Policy Grantmaking”. It makes for very interesting reading. On page 6 they write:

“The community organizing phase led to earned media including letters to the editor and op-ed pieces in the Skagit Valley Herald. Some members of the strategy group met with the Herald’s editorial board, the result being an unequivocal endorsement of the fluoridation campaign. The public fight had been engaged.”

This probably refers to a “fluoride friendly editorial” written in 2005.

Meanwhile you can read their Jan 16 editorial at http://www.goskagit.com/home/print/13839/

Here is what I wrote to the editorial board:

Jan 17, 2009

Dear Editors,

In your Jan 16 editorial you write that water fluoridation is a “fine idea” and that much of the opposition “is sparked by fear-mongering inflamed by dubious ‘facts’ culled from the Internet.” As the Executive Director of the organization which has one of the most used of the internet sites on fluoridation ( http://www.FluorideAlert.org ) I take a real pride in our effort to make sure all our facts are accurate and that our health concerns are science based. We make a mistake from time to time, like everyone else, but we approach this issue with integrity. We are not in the business of fear-mongering. However, the facts about both the promotion of this practice and its potential dangers are disturbing.

Personally, I have spent over 12 years of my life researching this issue, first as a professor of chemistry, with a specialty in environmental chemistry and toxicology, and now, having retired, as the full time director of the Fluoride Action Network. I began as a skeptic on the anti-fluoridation arguments, but I am now convinced, after rigorously examining the primary literature on this matter, that proponents of this practice have wildly exaggerated its benefits and downplayed its risks.

On the former, after 60 years, there is still no grade A scientific evidence (i.e. double blind studies where cases and controls are randomly selected) that there is a difference in tooth decay between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities. Meanwhile, tooth decay data for 12 year olds in different countries published by the World Health Organization and presented graphically at http://www.FluorideAlert.org/who-dmft.htm, shows no difference in the rates of decline in tooth decay between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries over the period from the  1960s to 2000.  A similar graph was published by Cheng et al. in the British Medical Journal in 2007.

For the evidence of risk, see the National Research Council report “Fluoride in Drinking Water” published in 2006. This 507-page report contains over 1000 references (and oh yes it is viewable via the internet!). I challenge you to find one professional (doctor, dentist, or scientist) who will state that in their professional view that there is a an adequate margin of safety between the levels of fluoride where several of the numerous health effects documented in this review occur, and the levels that some people are going to get drinking uncontrolled amounts of water, together with the fluoride that they get from numerous other sources today. And here of course we are talking about protecting everyone ? not just the average person ? and everyone includes the very young, the very old, those with ailments such as diabetes and poor kidney function, and those with poor diet, including people with borderline iodine intake.

Now I know that sounds like a tough hurdle to cross, but that is the requirement specified in the Safe Drinking Water Act, which essentially requires water standard goals (MCLG) for contaminants which protect everyone in society, including the most vulnerable from, “known and reasonably anticipated health effects.”

While you are looking for this professional, will you tell me, and your readers what primary literature has convinced you that fluoridation is a “fine idea” ? If not primary literature are you relying on the word of agencies and associations which have promoted this practice for years. If it is the latter, are you happy simply accepting the statements of just one side of a controversial issue, at face value? Are there other issues where your standards are so low?

Paul Connett, PhD
315-389-9200

To date I have not had a reply to this letter. I also sent a 300-word version of this to Letters-to-the-editor (fulfilling all their requirements for publication).

Paul Connett
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If you live in the US here is the

THREE STEP PROGRAM TO STOP FLUORIDATION IN YOUR COMMUNITY

STEP 1. Write this letter to your local water utility:

Dear Director,

I am very concerned about the quality of my water. Would you please provide to me on your letterhead a reference to one long-term toxicological study done on the product that you use to fluoridate our water supply, which supports the certification required by ANSI/NSF Standard 60 (see paragraph 3.2.1).

Sincerely

Note: do not give him or her your phone number. You want this in writing and on their letterhead. For your own information, no such study exists, which makes what they are doing illegal.

If they do reply take it to one of your councilors and advance to step 2. If they refuse to reply, then ask your councilor to get a reply (in writing) on your behalf.

STEP 2. When your councilor is suitably shocked by their answer - or puzzled by their unwillingness to respond - this is the time to give your councilor the Professionals’ Statement calling for an end to fluoridation worldwide, now signed by over 2000 professionals, with the number rising by the day. Hopefully, by the time you get to Step 2 you will have in your hands a copy of our new DVD, “Professional Perspectives on the Fluoridation Debate” and you should give that to the councilor as well.

STEP 3. Now that you have softened him or her up with the notion that this practice is not legal (by their own limited standards) nor safe, it is time to throw the third punch. Tell him or her that when they stop fluoridation they are going to SAVE MONEY! That message is going to ring very loudly in 2009.

If you have any trouble negotiating these three steps please contact either myself or Maureen.

If you live outside the US you might wish to find out if your country has similar regulations on the chemicals they add to water.

Happy hunting!