How's the water?

[joeyforpresident]

How's the water up in NH? Is it flouridated? Should I invest in bottled water?

Speaking of, do you guys have Ozarka up there?

[Kat Kanning]

Keene doesn't fluoridate the water.

[Pat McCotter]

Coupla places you can fill jugs with spring water free!

[PattyE]

Water Supply Engineering Bureau Fact Sheets


New Hampshire
Public Water Systems that Add Fluoride

[Russell Kanning]

Speaking of, do you guys have Ozarka up there?

[KBCraig]

How's the water up in NH? Is it flouridated? Should I invest in bottled water?

Speaking of, do you guys have Ozarka up there?

I prefer Mountain Valley. Ozarka has a bitter twang.

Kevin

[Kat Kanning]

 Fluoride Follies

by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller17.html


The federal government?s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Dental Association (ADA) are holding a symposium in Chicago this week titled: "National Fluoridation Symposium 2005: Celebrating 60 Years of Water Fluoridation" (July 13?16). The CDC ranks fluoridation of community drinking water as one of the ten most significant public health achievements of the 20th century.

No speaker at this symposium will dare question the safety or efficacy of fluoride. That is now a given and has become dogma. But like in 1968 when protests against the Vietnam War were held in the Windy City outside the Democratic National Convention, this week protesters have assembled in Chicago to fight fluoridation.

Fluoridation of community drinking water began in Grand Rapids, Michigan on January 12, 1945. It was the brainchild of two people who worked for Andrew W. Mellon, founder of the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA), Drs. H. Trendley Dean and Gerald J. Cox. Mellon was US Treasury Secretary, which made him (at that time, in 1930) head of the Public Health Service (PHS). He had Dean, a researcher at the PHS, study the effects of naturally fluoridated water on teeth. Dean confirmed that fluoride causes mottling (discoloration) of teeth, and he hypothesized that it also prevents cavities. Cox, a researcher at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, was urged to study the effect of fluoride on tooth-decay in rats. Determining that it had a beneficial effect, he proposed, in late 1939, that the US should fluoridate its public water supply.

Fluorine is a halogen, like chlorine and iodine. It is the smallest and most reactive element in the halogen family (elements with 7 electrons in their outer shell). Fluorine exists in nature attached to other elements as the negatively charged ion fluoride, most notably to hydrogen, calcium, sodium, aluminum, sulfur, and silicon. Sodium fluoride, a by-product of aluminum smelting, initially was used to fluoridate water. Silicofluorides (fluoride combined with silicon), wastes of phosphate fertilizer production, are now used almost exclusively for fluoridation. Fluorine is also present in compounds called organofluorines, where fluorine atoms (not fluoride anions) are tightly bound to carbon. Teflon (poly-tetra-fluoro-ethylene), Gore-Tex, and many drugs, Prozac (fluoxetine), Cipro (ciprofloxacin), and Baycol (cerivastatin) among them, are organofluorines.

Doctors and public health officials did not think sodium fluoride, used commercially as a rat and bug poison, fungicide, and wood preservative, should be put in public water. The Journal of the American Dental Association said (in 1936), "Fluoride at the 1 ppm [part per million] concentration is as toxic as arsenic and lead? There is an increasing volume of evidence of the injurious effects of fluorine, especially the chronic intoxication resulting from the ingestion of minute amounts of fluorine over long periods of time." And the Journal of the American Medical Association" noted (in its September 18, 1943 issue), "Fluorides are general protoplasmic poisons, changing the permeability of the cell membrane by certain enzymes." But, as Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson reveal in "Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb," and Bryson in his book The Fluoride Deception, officials in the Manhattan Project persuaded health policy makers and medical and dental leaders, in the interests of national security, to do an about-face and join the fluoridation bandwagon.

Vast amounts of fluoride were required to build the atom bomb. Fluoride combines with uranium to form the gas uranium hexafluoride, which, when passed through a semi permeable membrane, separates bomb-grade, fissionable uranium-235 from the much more abundant and stable uranium-238. This done, fluoride is released into the environment as waste. (During the Cold War millions of tons of fluoride were used in the manufacture of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons.) Also, large amounts of fluoride were generated in producing aluminum required for warplanes.

With several instances already on record of fluoride causing damage to crops, livestock, and people downwind from industrial plants, government and industry, lead by officials running the Manhattan Project, sought to put a new, friendlier face on fluoride. This would dampen public concerns over fluoride emissions and help forestall potentially crippling litigation. Instead of being seen as the poison it is, people should view fluoride as a nutrient, which gives smiling children shiny teeth, as epitomized in the jingle that calls fluoride "nature?s way to prevent tooth decay."

It worked. Early epidemiological studies showed a 50 to 70 percent reduction in dental cavities in children who drank fluoridated water. These studies, however, were poorly designed. None were blinded, so dentists examining children for caries would know which kind of water they were drinking. Data gathering methods were shoddy. By today?s evidence-based medicine standards these studies do not provide reliable evidence that fluoride does indeed prevent cavities.

Based on these studies and its promotion, municipalities across the country started adding fluoride to their water supply. Within 15 years a majority of Americans were washing their clothes, watering their vegetable gardens, bathing with, and drinking fluoridated water.

On its 60th anniversary proponents still have not proved that the hypothesis fluoride [put in public water] prevents cavities and is perfectly safe is true. The first part of the hypothesis, at least, has biological plausibility. Fluoride prevents cavities by combining with calcium in dental enamel to form fluoroapetite, which increases the resistance of teeth to acid demineralization. And fluoride inactivates bacteria that damage teeth by interfering with their enzymes. But biological plausibility alone is not sufficient to prove efficacy. Epidemiological evidence is required to do that. A debate open to well-informed opponents of fluoridation, if the CDC and ADA ever agreed to hold one, would show that existing epidemiological evidence does not prove that fluoride prevents cavities.

In evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews (meta-analyses) are considered to be the best, most "scientific" evidence. A systematic review of water fluoridation studies, published in the British Medical Journal in 2000, found, as the chair of the Advisory Group that commissioned the review puts it, "The review did not show water fluoridation to be safe. The quality of the research was too poor to establish with confidence whether or not there are potentially important adverse effects in addition to the high levels of [dental] fluorosis." He adds, "The review team was surprised that in spite of the large number of studies carried out over several decades there is a dearth of reliable evidence with which to inform policy." The case for fluoride does not stand up to careful evidence-based scrutiny.

Evidence that "fluoride [put in public water] does not prevent cavities and is not safe" (the null hypothesis) is more convincing. If a court of law held a trial on fluoride?s safety and efficacy, the anti-fluoridationists would win. The judgment in their favor would most likely be beyond a reasonable doubt, or at least on a more likely than not basis. In a courtroom the pro-fluoridationists would not be permitted to employ ad hominem attacks that focus on the character of the opposing witness instead of the evidence, and dogmatic assertions on the safety and efficacy of fluoride would be subject to cross examination.

Proponents of fluoridation will not willingly admit they are wrong. As Tolstoy puts it, "Most men can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, have proudly taught to others, and have woven thread by thread into the fabric of their lives."

There are exceptions. Two prominent leaders of the pro-fluoridation movement willingly admitted publicly (in 1997 and 2000) that they were wrong. One was the late John Colquhoun, DDS, Principal Dental Officer for Auckland, New Zealand and chair of that country?s Fluoridation Promotion Committee. He reviewed New Zealand?s dental statistics in an effort to convince skeptics that fluoridation was beneficial and found that tooth decay rates were the same in fluoridated and nonfluoridated places, which prompted him to re-examine the classic fluoridation studies. He recanted his support for it in "Why I Changed my Mind About Water Fluoridation" (Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1997;41:29?44). The other is Dr. Hardy Limeback, PhD, DDS, Head of Preventive Dentistry at University of Toronto. His reasons are given in "Why I am Now Officially Opposed to Adding Fluoride to Drinking Water." Another former pro-fluoridationist that is fighting fluoride in Canada, and elsewhere, is Richard G. Foulkes, MD, a health care administrator and former assistant professor in the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology at the University of British Columbia.

Chlorine is added to water to kill bacteria. Chlorination (begun in 1908) has eradicated typhoid fever and cholera, two water-borne diseases that used to kill thousands of Americans each year. Chlorine is a disinfectant. Fluoride is a medication, which the state requires all people to consume because government officials believe it is good for a segment of the population. The putative benefit of this medication is for children age 5 to 12 (when enamel for their permanent teeth is being formed). This age group drinks 0.01 percent of the water people use.

This is how the CDC justifies compulsory fluoridation: "Although other fluoride-containing products are available [e.g., toothpaste], water fluoridation remains the more equitable and cost-effective method of delivering fluoride to all members of most communities, regardless of age, educational attainment, or income level." Fluoridation, therefore, addresses social inequalities and fosters social justice. It provides fluoride to poor families without their having to buy (fluoride) toothpaste and make their children brush their teeth with it. The common good takes priority over individual freedom to choose to not take this medication. This communitarian ethic increasingly governs US public health policy. One of the goals of the government?s Healthy People 2010 initiative (Objective 21-9) is to "increase the proportion of the U.S. population served by community water systems with optimally fluoridated water [the target: 75 percent]."

Murray Rothbard (in an article written in 1992) describes water fluoridation as "ALCOA-socialism," arising from "an alliance of three major forces: ideological social democrats, ambitious technocratic bureaucrats, and Big Businessmen seeking privileges from the state." It is a legacy of war, with its call for aluminum and enriched uranium, and the New Deal.

Fluoridation is an especially destructive type of socialism because fluoride is a poison. It is the 13th most common element and one of the most toxic elements in the earth?s crust. It is an insidious poison that produces serious multisystem effects on a long-term basis.

Fluoride disrupts enzymes (by altering their hydrogen bonds) and prevents them from doing their job of making proteins, collagen in particular, the structural protein for bone and teeth, ligaments, tendons, and muscles. It damages DNA repair enzymes and inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase in the brain, which is involved in transmitting signals along nerve cells. All cells in the body depend on enzymes. Consequently, fluoride can have widespread deleterious effects in multiple organ systems. One researcher has uncovered 113 ailments that fluoride is said to cause.


The first visible sign of fluoride poisoning is dental fluorosis. It begins as small white specks in the enamel that then turn into spots, become confluent, and, in its most severe stage, turn brown. Dental fluorosis of varying degree affects 20 to 80 percent of children who grow up drinking fluoridated water. Moderate to severe changes, with brown mottling, occurs in 3 percent of children. Dental fluorosis is an indicator of fluoride toxicity in other parts of the body. Like in growing teeth, fluoride accumulates in the brain. One manifestation of "brain fluorosis" in children could be this: Researchers (in China) have found that children living in an area where the water has high fluoride content (4.12 ppm) have IQ scores that are 6 to 12 points lower than children living in a low fluoride district (the difference in IQ scores, at p <0.02, is statistically significant).

Fluoride has a particular affinity for calcium and thus for bone; and it poisons bones the same way it does teeth. The average American living in a fluoridated community now ingests 8 mg of fluoride a day. Unlike teeth where the enamel, once formed, remains static, 10 percent of bone tissue is broken down and replaced annually, giving fluoride an opportunity to steadily accumulate year-after-year in bones. People who consume 10?25 mg of fluoride a day over 10 to 20 years, or 2mg/day over 40 years, will develop skeletal fluorosis. The first manifestations of this disease, before there are any changes on x-ray, are joint pains and arthritic symptoms, which are indistinguishable from osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis; muscle weakness; chronic fatigue; and gastrointestinal disorders. In the next stage, osteoporosis develops and bones become more brittle and weak, making them prone to fracture. (The third and final stage, crippling fluorosis, occurs mainly in India where the natural fluoride content of the water is high.)

There is an epidemic of arthritis, osteoporosis, hip fractures, and chronic fatigue syndrome in the United States. Could fluoride be causing this epidemic? It turns out that even people who live in nonfluoridated areas consume a lot of fluoride, on average 4 mg/day. It is in toothpaste; in fruit juices, soda pop, tea, and processed foods; and, unfortunately, in California wines, whose grapes are sprayed with the pesticide cyrolite (sodium aluminum fluoride). American physicians know little or nothing about skeletal fluorosis, and the early, arthritic stages of this disease mimic other bone and joint diseases. It is a hypothesis worth testing.

Studies show that the rates of bone cancer are substantially higher in fluoridated areas, particularly in boys. Other cancers, of the head and neck, GI tract, pancreas, and lungs, have a 10 percent higher incidence. Fluoride affects the thyroid gland and causes hypothyroidism, which is also an increasingly frequent disorder in the US. Other studies show that high levels of fluoride in drinking water are associated with birth defects and early infant mortality.

Fluoride also damages the brain, both directly and indirectly. Rats given fluoridated water at a dose of 4 ppm develop symptoms resembling attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. High concentrations of fluoride accumulate in the pineal gland, which produces serotonin and melatonin. Young girls who drink fluoridated water reach puberty six months earlier than those who drink unfluoridated water, which is thought to be a result of reduced melatonin production. People with Alzheimer?s disease have high levels of aluminum in their brains. Fluoride combines with aluminum in drinking water and takes it through the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD, a neurosurgeon, spells out in chilling detail the danger fluoride poses to one?s brain and health in general in his book Health and Nutrition Secrets that can Save Your Life (2002).

Try to avoid fluoride, in all its guises. It is not an element the body needs or requires, even in trace amounts. There are no known naturally occurring compounds of fluorine in the human body.

Live in a nonfluoridated community. If that is not possible, drink distilled water or tap water passed through a filter that can remove fluoride (a third method using an activated alumina absorbent is not practical because of its expense). Regular activated carbon filters do not work because the diameter of a fluoride anion (0.064 nm) is smaller than the pore size of the filter. It requires a reverse osmosis filter. (Living in a fluoridated area, my family uses a table top reverse osmosis filter that we purchased online.) Distilled water has been given a bad rap by some health writers, which is not deserved (see "Blowing the Lid off Distilled Water Myths"). Distillation units are relatively inexpensive.

Fluoride is readily absorbed through the skin (and inhaled). Two-thirds of the fluoride we take into our bodies using fluoridated public water comes from bathing and wearing clothes washed in it. Drinking fluoride-free water in a fluoridated district only reduces fluoride intake by about a third.

One of the greatest public health advances in the 21st century will be removing fluoride from public water supplies. This "important public health measure" is a Potemkin Village ? an impressive fa?ade that hides undesirable facts. In this village, the US Surgeon General, the Czar, in this case, tells visiting dignitaries that "Community water fluoridation benefits everyone," and "There is no credible evidence that fluoridation is harmful." This has given fluoride a protected pollutant status for 60 years when the stark fact is that this substance is slowly poisoning us.

In addition to being contaminated with trace amounts of arsenic, beryllium, mercury, and lead, silicofluorides (hexafluorosilicic acid [H2SiF6] and its sodium salt hexafluorosilicate [Na2SiF6]) carry lead through the intestine into the body. These are the compounds that, untested, now are used to fluoridate water. Lead interferes with the neurotransmitter dopamine, which controls impulsive and violent behavior; and studies show that lead pollution is linked to higher rates of violent crime. The average violent crime rate in US counties that have lead pollution is 56 percent higher when their drinking water is fluoridated, as reported in "A Moratorium on Silicofluoride Usage will Save $$Millions (Fluoride 2005;38:1?5). School shootings occur ten times more frequently in fluoridated communities, as Jay Seavey points out in "Water Fluoridation and Crime in America (Fluoride 2005;38:11?22).

Antifluoridationists weaken their case by mistakenly putting florine-carbon organofluorines in the same category as fluoride anions, as Joel Kauffman, a chemist, points out. The fluorine in these compounds is not dangerous (Teflon heated continuously at 500? F does not release any fluoride.) Policy makers will be better able to deal with fluoridation of water alone and ban it when organic (carbon-based) fluorine compounds are removed from consideration.

The day will come when fluoridation of community drinking water will suffer the same fate as blood letting. Used for over a millennium to treat disease, it was abandoned three centuries ago.

[mvpel]

We have some of the best-tasting well water in the state.  No filters, just straight up and straight out the tap, and it's cool, crisp, refreshing, and delicious.  Maybe that was one of the factors that put Merrimack in the top 50 of best places to live in America.

One of my coworkers isn't quite so fortunate - he had to spend thousands on a sophisticated computerized filtering and UV purification system in order to get rid of the rotten-egg, rusty nail taste of his well water.

[Kat Kanning]

 Fluoridation Revisited

by Murray N. Rothbard

This essay originally appeared in the January 1993 issue of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report.

Yes, I confess: I'm a veteran anti-fluoridationist, thereby ? not for the first time ? risking placing myself in the camp of "right-wing kooks and fanatics." It has always been a bit of mystery to me why left-environmentalists, who shriek in horror at a bit of Alar on apples, who cry "cancer" even more absurdly than the boy cried "Wolf," who hate every chemical additive known to man, still cast their benign approval upon fluoride, a highly toxic and probably carcinogenic substance. And not only let fluoride emissions off the hook, but endorse uncritically the massive and continuing dumping of fluoride into the nation's water supply.

First: the generalized case for and against fluoridation of water. The case for is almost incredibly thin, boiling down to the alleged fact of substantial reductions in dental cavities in kids aged 5 to 9. Period. There are no claimed benefits for anyone older than nine! For this the entire adult population of a fluoridated area must be subjected to mass medication!

The case against, even apart from the specific evils of fluoride, is powerful and overwhelming.

(1) Compulsory mass medication is medically evil, as well as socialistic. It is starkly clear that one key to any medication is control of the dose; different people, at different stages of risk, need individual dosages tailored to their needs. And yet with water compulsorily fluoridated, the dose applies to everyone, and is necessarily proportionate to the amount of water one drinks.

What is the medical justification for a guy who drinks ten glasses of water a day receiving ten times the fluorine dose of a guy who drinks only one glass? The whole process is monstrous as well as idiotic.

(2) Adults, in fact children over nine, get no benefits from their compulsory medication, yet they imbibe fluorides proportionately to their water intake.

(3) Studies have shown that while kids 5 to 9 may have their cavities reduced by fluoridation, said kids ages 9 to 12 have more cavities, so that after 12 the cavity benefits disappear. So that, at best, the question boils down to: are we to subject ourselves to the possible dangers of fluoridation solely to save dentists the irritation of dealing with squirming kids aged 5 to 9?

(4) Any parents who want to give their kids the dubious benefits of fluoridation can do so individually: by giving their kids fluoride pills, with doses regulated instead of haphazardly proportionate to the kids' thirst; and/or, as we all know, they can brush their teeth with fluoride-added toothpaste. How about freedom of individual choice?

(5) Let us not omit the long-suffering taxpayer, who has to pay for the hundreds of thousands of tons of fluorides poured into the nation's socialized water supply every year. The days of private water companies, once flourishing in the U.S., are long gone, although the market, in recent years, has popped up in the form of increasingly popular private bottled water even though far more expensive than socialized free water.

Nothing loony or kooky about any of these arguments, is there? So much for the general case pro and con fluoridation. When we get to the specific ills of fluoridation, the case against becomes even more overpowering, as well as grisly.

During the 1940s and 50s, when the successful push for fluoridation was underway, the pro-forces touted the controlled experiment of Newburgh and Kingston, two neighboring small cities in upstate New York, with much the same demographics. Newburgh had been fluoridated and Kingston had not, and the powerful pro-fluoridation Establishment trumpeted the fact that ten years later, dental cavities in kids 5 to 9 in Newburgh were considerably lower than in Kingston (originally, the rates of every disease had been about the same in the two places). OK, but the antis raised the disquieting fact that, after ten years, both the cancer and the heart disease rates were now significantly higher in Newburgh. How did the Establishment treat this criticism? By dismissing it as irrelevant, as kooky scare tactics. Oh?

Why were these and later problems and charges ignored and overridden, and why the rush to judgment to inflict fluoridation on America? Who was behind this drive, and how did the opponents acquire the "right-wing kook" image?

[Kat Kanning]

(continued)
THE DRIVE FOR FLUORIDATION

The official drive began abruptly just before the end of World War II, pushed by the U.S. Public Health Service, then in the Treasury Department. In 1945, the federal government selected two Michigan cities to conduct an official "15-year" study; one city, Grand Rapids, was fluoridated, a control city was left unfluoridated. (I am indebted to a recent revisionist article on fluoridation by the medical writer Joel Griffiths, in the left-wing muckraking journal Covert Action Information Bulletin: "Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalist Ploy?" [Fall 1992], pp. 26?28, 63?66.) Yet, before five years were up, the government killed its own "scientific study," by fluoridating the water in the second city in Michigan. Why? Under the excuse that its action was caused by "popular demand" for fluoridation; as we shall see, the "popular demand" was generated by the government and the Establishment itself. Indeed, as early as 1946, under the federal campaign, six American cities fluoridated their water, and 87 more joined the bandwagon by 1950.

A key figure in the successful drive for fluoridation was Oscar R. Ewing, who was appointed by President Truman in 1947 as head of the Federal Security Agency, which encompassed the Public Health Service (PHS), and which later blossomed into our beloved Cabinet office of Health, Education, and Welfare. One reason for the left's backing of fluoridation ? in addition to its being socialized medicine and mass medication, for them a good in itself ? was that Ewing was a certified Truman Fair Dealer and leftist, and avowed proponent of socialized medicine, a high official in the then-powerful Americans for Democratic Action, the nation's central organization of "anti-Communist liberals" (read: Social Democrats or Mensheviks). Ewing mobilized not only the respectable left but also the Establishment Center. The powerful drive for compulsory fluoridation was spearheaded by the PHS, which soon mobilized the nation's establishment organizations of dentists and physicians.

The mobilization, the national clamor for fluoridation, and the stamping of opponents with the right-wing kook image, was all generated by the public relations man hired by Oscar Ewing to direct the drive. For Ewing hired none other than Edward L. Bernays, the man with the dubious honor of being called the "father of public relations." Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, was called "The Original Spin Doctor" in an admiring article in the Washington Post on the occasion of the old manipulator's 100th birthday in late 1991. The fact that right-wing groups such as the John Birch Society correctly called fluoridation "creeping socialism" and blamed Soviet Communism as the source of the fluoridation campaign (no, not Bolsheviks, guys: but a Menshevik-State Capitalist alliance, see below) was used by the Bernaysians to discredit all the opposition.

As a retrospective scientific article pointed out about the fluoridation movement, one of its widely distributed dossiers listed opponents of fluoridation "in alphabetical order reputable scientists, convicted felons, food faddists, scientific organizations, and the Ku Klux Klan." (Bette Hileman, "Fluoridation of Water," Chemical and Engineering News 66 [August 1, 1988], p. 37; quoted in Griffiths, p. 63) In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays laid bare the devices he would use: Speaking of the "mechanism which controls the public mind," which people like himself could manipulate, Bernays added that "Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country...our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of..." And the process of manipulating leaders of groups, "either with or without their conscious cooperation," will "automatically influence" the members of such groups.

In describing his practices as PR man for Beech-Nut Bacon, Bernays tells how he would suggest to physicians to say publicly that "it is wholesome to eat bacon." For, Bernays added, he "knows as a mathematical certainty that large numbers of persons will follow the advice of their doctors because he (the PR man) understands the psychological relationship of dependence of men on their physicians." (Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda [New York: Liveright, 1928], pp. 9, 18, 49, 53. Quoted in Griffiths, p.63) Add "dentists" to the equation, and substitute "fluoride" for "bacon," and we have the essence of the Bernays propaganda campaign.

Before the Bernays campaign, fluoride was largely known in the public mind as the chief ingredient of bug and rat poison; after the campaign, it was widely hailed as a safe provider of healthy teeth and gleaming smiles.

After the 1950s, it was all mopping up ? the fluoridation forces had triumphed, and two-thirds of the nation's reservoirs were fluoridated. There are still benighted areas of the country left however (California is less than 16 percent fluoridated) and the goal of the federal government and its PHS remains as "universal fluoridation."

DOUBTS CUMULATE

Despite the blitzkrieg victory, however, doubts have surfaced and gathered in the scientific community. Fluoride is a non-biodegradable substance, which, in people, accumulates in teeth and bone ? perhaps strengthening kiddies' teeth; but what about human bones? Two crucial bone problems of fluorides ? brittleness and cancer ? began to appear in studies, only to be systematically blocked by governmental agencies. As early as 1956, a federal study found nearly twice as many premalignant bone defects in young males in Newbergh as in unfluoridated Kingston; but this finding was quickly dismissed as "spurious."

Oddly enough, despite the 1956 study and carcinogenic evidence popping up since the 1940s, the federal government never conducted its own beloved animal carcinogenicity test on fluorides. Finally, in 1975, biochemist John Yiamouyiannis and Dean Berk, a retired official of the federal government's own National Cancer Institute (NCI), presented a paper before the annual meeting of the American Society of Biological Chemists. The paper reported a 5 to 10 percent increase in total cancer rates in those U.S. cities which had fluoridated their water. The findings were disputed, but triggered congressional hearings two years later, where the government revealed to shocked Congressmen that it had never tested fluoride for cancer. Congress ordered the NCI to conduct such tests.

Talk about foot-dragging! Incredibly, it took the NCI twelve years to finish its tests, finding "equivocal evidence" that fluoride caused bone cancer in male rats. Under further direction of Congress, the NCI studied cancer trends in the U.S., and found nationwide evidence of "a rising rate of bone and joint cancer at all ages," especially in youth, in counties that had fluoridated their water, but no such rise was seen in "non-fluoridated" counties.

In more detailed studies, for areas of Washington state and Iowa, NCI found that from the 1970s to the 1980s bone cancer for males under 20 had increased by 70 percent in the fluoridated areas of these states, but had decreased by 4 percent in the non-fluoridated areas. Sounds pretty conclusive to me, but the NCI set some fancy statisticians to work on the data, to conclude that these findings, too, were "spurious." Dispute over this report drove the federal government to one of its favorite ploys in virtually every area: the allegedly expert, bipartisan, "value-free" commission.

The government had already done the commission bit in 1983, when disturbing studies on fluoridation drove our old friend the PHS to form a commission of "world-class experts" to review safety data on fluorides in water. Interestingly, the panel found to its grave concern that most of the alleged evidence of fluoride's safety scarcely existed. The 1983 panel recommended caution on fluoride exposure for children. Interestingly, the panel strongly recommended that the fluoride content of drinking water be no greater than two parts per million for children up to nine, because of worries about the fluoride effect on children's skeletons, and potential heart damage.

The chairman of the panel, Jay R. Shapiro of the National Institute of Health, warned the members, however, that the PHS might "modify" the findings, since "the report deals with sensitive political issues." Sure enough, when Surgeon General Everett Koop released the official report a month later, the federal government had thrown out the panel's most important conclusions and recommendations, without consulting the panel. Indeed, the panel never received copies of the final, doctored, version. The government's alterations were all in a pro-fluoride direction, claiming that there was no "scientific documentation" of any problems at fluoride levels below 8 parts per million.

In addition to the bone cancer studies for the late 1980s, evidence is piling up that fluorides lead to bone fractures. In the past two years, no less than eight epidemiological studies have indicated the fluoridation has increased the rate of bone fractures in males and females of all ages. Indeed, since 1957, the bone fracture rate among male youth has increased sharply in the United States, and the U.S. hip fracture rate is now the highest in the world. In fact, a study in the traditionally pro-fluoride Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), August 12, 1992, found that even "low levels of fluoride may increase the risk of hip fracture in the elderly." JAMA concluded that "it is now appropriate to revisit the issue of water fluoridation."

Clearly, it was high time for another federal commission. During 1990?91, a new commission, chaired by veteran PHS official and long-time pro-fluoridationist Frank E. Young, predictably concluded that "no evidence" was found associating fluoride and cancer. On bone fractures, the commission blandly stated that "further studies are required." But no further studies or soul-searching were needed for its conclusion: "The U.S. Public Health Service should continue to support optimal fluoridation of drinking water." Presumably, they did not conclude that "optimal" meant zero.

Despite the Young whitewash, doubts are piling up even within the federal government. James Huff, a director of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, concluded in 1992 that animals in the government's study developed cancer, especially bone cancer from being given fluoride ? and there was nothing "equivocal" about his conclusion.

Various scientists for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have turned to anti-fluoridation toxicologist William Marcus's warning that fluoride causes not just cancer, but also bone fractures, arthritis, and other disease. Marcus mentions, too, that an unreleased study by the New Jersey Health Department (a state where only 15 percent of the population is fluoridated) shows that the bone cancer rate among young males is no less than six times higher in fluoridated than in non-fluoridated areas.

Even coming into question is the long-sacred idea that fluoridated water at least lowers cavities in children five to nine. Various top pro-fluoridationists highly touted for their expertise were suddenly and bitterly condemned when further study led them to the conclusion that the dental benefits are really negligible. New Zealand's most prominent pro-fluoridationist was the country's top dental officer, Dr. John Colquhoun.

As chairman of the Fluoridation Promotion Committee, Colquhoun decided to gather statistics to show doubters the great merits of fluoridation. To his shock, he found that the percentage of children free of dental decay was higher in the non-fluoridated part than in the fluoridated part of New Zealand. The national health department refused to allow Colquhoun to publish these findings, and kicked him out as dental director. Similarly, a top pro-fluoridationist in British Columbia, Canada, Richard G. Foulkes, concluded that fluoridation is not only dangerous, but that it is not even effective in reducing tooth decay. Foulkes was denounced by former colleagues as a propagandist "promoting the quackery of anti-fluoridationists."

WHY THE FLUORIDATION DRIVE?

Since the case for compulsory fluoridation is so flimsy, and the case against so overwhelming, the final step is to ask: why? Why did the Public Health Service get involved in the first place? How did this thing get started? Here we must keep our eye on the pivotal role of Oscar R. Ewing, for Ewing was far more than just a social democrat Fair Dealer.

Fluoride has long been recognized as one of the most toxic elements found in the earth's crust. Fluorides are by-products of many industrial processes, being emitted in the air and water, and probably the major source of this by-product is the aluminum industry. By the 1920s and 1930s, fluorine was increasingly being subject to lawsuits and regulations. In particular, by 1938 the important, relatively new aluminum industry was being placed on a wartime footing. What to do if its major by-product is a dangerous poison?

The time had come for damage control; even better, to reverse the public image of this menacing substance. The Public Health Service, remember was under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department, and treasury secretary all during the 1920s and until 1931 was none other than billionaire Andrew J. Mellon, founder and head of the powerful Mellon interests, "Mr. Pittsburgh," and founder and virtual ruler of the Aluminum Corporation of America (ALCOA), the dominant firm in the aluminum industry.

In 1931, the PHS sent a dentist named H. Trendley Dean to the West to study the effects of concentrations of naturally fluoridated water on people's teeth. Dean found that towns high in natural fluoride seemed to have fewer cavities. This news galvanized various Mellon scientists into action. In particular, the Mellon Institute, ALCOA's research lab in Pittsburgh, sponsored a study in which biochemist Gerald J. Cox fluoridated some lab rats, decided that cavities in those rats had been reduced and immediately concluded that "the case (that fluoride reduces cavities) should be regarded as proved." Instant science!

The following year, 1939, Cox, the ALCOA scientist working for a company beset by fluoride damage claims, made the first public proposal for mandatory fluoridation of water. Cox proceeded to stump the country urging fluoridation. Meanwhile, other ALCOA-funded scientists trumpeted the alleged safety of fluorides, in particular the Kettering Laboratory of the University of Cincinnati.

During World War II, damage claims for fluoride emissions piled up as expected, in proportion to the great expansion of aluminum production during the war. But attention from these claims was diverted, when, just before the end of the war, the PHS began to push hard for compulsory fluoridation of water. Thus the drive for compulsory fluoridation of water accomplished two goals in one shot: it transformed the image of fluorine from a curse to a blessing that will strengthen every kid's teeth, and it provided a steady and substantial monetary demand for fluorides to dump annually into the nation's water.

One interesting footnote to this story is that whereas fluorine in naturally fluoridated water comes in the form of calcium fluoride, the substance dumped into every locality is instead sodium fluoride. The Establishment defense that "fluoride is fluoride" becomes unconvincing when we consider two points: (a) calcium is notoriously good for bones and teeth, so the anti-cavity effect in naturally fluoridated water might well be due to the calcium and not the fluorine; and (b) sodium fluoride happens to be the major by-product of the manufacture of aluminum.

Which brings us to Oscar R. Ewing. Ewing arrived in Washington in 1946, shortly after the initial PHS push began, arriving there as long-time counsel, now chief counsel, for ALCOA, making what was then an astronomical legal fee of $750,000 a year (something like $7,000,000 a year in present dollars). A year later, Ewing took charge of the Federal Security Agency, which included the PHS, and waged the successful national drive for water fluoridation. After a few years, having succeeded in his campaign, Ewing stepped down from public service, and returned to private life, including his chief counselship of the Aluminum Corporation of America.

There is an instructive lesson in this little saga, a lesson how and why the Welfare State came to America. It came as an alliance of three major forces: ideological social democrats, ambitious technocratic bureaucrats, and Big Businessmen seeking privileges from the State. In the fluoridation saga, we might call the whole process "ALCOA-socialism." The Welfare State redounds to the welfare not of most of society but of these particular venal and exploitative groups.

[FSPinNY]

What kind of toothpaste do you use?

This is a funny coincidence.  I was standing in the food store an hour ago looking for my toothpaste.  A woman standing next to me,  apparently doing the same thing, said, "what kind of toothpaste do you use?"   

Funny huh?  BTW, I've been using Tom's of Maine, peppermint, no fluoride, for more than 20 years.

[Kat Kanning]

Some natural stuff with no fluoride.  All the Tom's toothpaste I saw was the kind with fluoride.

[FSPinNY]

They make both.  I saw the one "With Fluoride" on the shelf tonight - they look the same except for that banner.  I was at Wegmans.

[Pat McCotter]

We use Monadnock, also, but at times we go out Rte 4 and fill the bottles at a spring-fed water spigot there.

(Once I get the veg oil going in the car this will be a more frequent (cheaper) trip.)

[cathleeninnh]

What hasn't been mentioned here, but I read somewhere, is that there is far more potential for flouride poisoning from the water that you wash your clothes in and bathe in. Many many more times absorption through the skin than through drinking or brushing.

Cathleen