The fluoride controversy continues: an update - part 1

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  Dec, 2002  by Gary Null,  Martin Feldman

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Most Americans associate the fluoride in their drinking water with positive images of tooth protection, strong bones and a government that cares about their dental needs. So it may come as a surprise that water fluoridation, long portrayed as a safe and effective way to prevent tooth decay, is in fact a fraud that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and a weakened immune system in tens of millions more.

In recent years research has shown that fluoridation is neither essential to good health nor protective of teeth. What it does is poison the body. "We would not purposely add arsenic to the water supply. And we would not purposely add lead. But we do add fluoride," said the late Dr. John Yiamouyiannis in a 1995 interview. "The fact is that fluoride is more toxic than lead and just slightly less toxic than arsenic." (1)

The fluoride added to public drinking water is not a pharmaceutical, but rather a crude industrial waste product of the aluminum and fertilizer industries. (Fluoride is one of industry's major pollutants; in 1989 155,000 tons annually were released into the air (2) and 500,000 tons were disposed of in our lakes, rivers and oceans. (3)) Waste fluoride is toxic enough to be used as rat poison.

How did Americans learn to love an environmental hazard? This phenomenon can be attributed to a carefully planned marketing program that began even before Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first community to officially fluoridate its drinking water in 1945. (4) As a result of this ongoing campaign, many American communities have enthusiastically followed Grand Rapids' example. Approximately 162 million Americans were receiving fluoridated water at the end of 2000; they represented 65.8% of the 246 million Americans on public water supply systems and 57.6% of the US population. (5,6) Of the 50 largest cities in the United States, 43 have fluoridated water. (7)

With this three-part series, we examine whether water fluoridation is the safe and beneficial process the US government and the American Dental Association claim it to be. In Part 1, we discuss the research on dental decay rates, the government's position on fluoridation, the thin margin of safety that exists for fluoride, and our increasing exposure to fluoride from multiple sources. In Part 2, we will present studies showing that water fluoridation and fluoride exposure are associated with disorders such as dental fluorosis, skeletal fluorosis, bone fractures, cancer and reduced intelligence. And in Part 3, we will discuss the fluoride accidents that occur at water facilities, the steps a person can take to reduce the risk of a fluoride overdose, one city's decision to reject a fluoridation proposal, and the difficulties of challenging an entrenched system such as water fluoridation.

How to Market a Toxic Waste

Fluoride's toxicity was recognized as far back as the 1850s, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, when iron and copper factories discharged it into the air and poisoned plants, animals and people. (8)

By the 1920s rapid industrial growth had exacerbated the problems of industrial pollution, and fluoride was one of the biggest. Medical writer Joel Griffiths explains that "it was abundantly clear to both industry and government that spectacular US industrial expansion -- and the economic and military power and vast profits it promised -- would necessitate releasing millions of tons of waste fluoride into the environment." (9)

In the early 1930s the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) took a proprietary interest in this issue because fluoride is a major waste product of aluminum production. The company wanted to know how much fluoride exposure people could tolerate without getting mottled, discolored teeth. (10)

This question was addressed that same year, when H. Trendley Dean, head of the Dental Hygiene Unit of the National Institutes of Health, conducted research in Texas and claimed that "fluoride levels of up to 1.0 ppm (part per million) in drinking water did not cause mottled enamel; if the fluoride exceeded this level, however, fluorosis would occur." (11) He proposed that fluoridating water at the magic threshold of 1 ppm would prevent tooth decay while avoiding damage to bones and teeth. (12) He recommended further studies to determine whether his hypothesis was true.

Government and industry strongly supported water fluoridation, (13) and overwhelming acceptance allowed them to proceed hastily. A clinical trial of fluoridation in Grand Rapids was supposed to take 15 years, during which time health benefits and hazards would be studied. In 1946, however, just one year into the experiment, six more US cities adopted the process. By 1947, 87 more communities were treated; popular demand was the official reason for this unscientific haste.

The Fluoride Myth Doesn't Hold Water

The big hope for fluoride was that it would protect children's developing teeth against cavities. Rates of dental caries were supposed to plummet in areas where water was treated. Yet decades of experience and worldwide research have contradicted this expectation numerous times. Here are just a few examples: