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Fluoride can kill. Prepare yourself
for the tragic fable of the chemist, the water board, the
dentist and his life.
By
George Glasser
The Ecologist, September, 20000
Once, there was a dentist. His name was Lester. For
many years, like all the other dentists he knew, Lester believed
that fluoride in the drinking water was good for everyone.
Like all the other dentists, Lester had learnt in dental school
that fluoride reduces tooth decay. And, like all the other
dentists, Lester
believed that fluoride was fluoride.
Then, one day, he met a chemist and
began discussing drinking water fluoridation.
The chemist asked what kind of fluoride was being used to
fluoridate the drinking water. Lester replied: "We are
simply adjusting the fluoride level in the water by adding
one part per million of, well, just fluoride."
There is no such thing as "just
fluoride", said the chemist. Lester scratched
his head. But they told me that it was only fluoride
they are adding to the water.
The chemist laughed heartily. "Fluorine is the most
reactive, electronegative element and it's never found alone
in nature," he said. "There are many kinds of
fluorides: for instance, calcium fluoride is found naturally
in water. Then there are other fluorides such as lead fluoride,
aluminium fluoride, etc. If you add fluoride to the water
it has to be a compound. You can't just add fluoride
to the water, so which one is it?"
Lester felt silly. He didn't know.
The next day Lester went to the library to check the chemistry
books and learnt that calcium fluoride is, indeed, found naturally
in the water. He also discovered that calcium fluoride
is almost insoluble and could not be easily absorbed by the
body. And his friend the chemist was quite right - there
were innumerable fluoride compounds.
Now intrigued, Lester looked up some scientific studies about
water fluoridation. He read that in laboratory tests, workers
use a very pure grade of sodium fluoride and purified water
to do their research. He discovered that sodium
fluoride is taken up by the body much more readily than calcium
fluoride. His friend was right. The dentist
wondered how anyone could say that calcium fluoride is the
same as sodium fluoride.
The next day, Lester called his water department to ask if
they were adding sodium fluoride or calcium fluoride to his
drinking water. The Water Department (WD) manager said that
they were adding a product called silicofluorides
to the water.The WD manager said they
bought a very low grade product because it would be too expensive
to use a good grade and, anyway, the public health people
would not pay for a good quality calcium fluoride, because,
they said, fluoride is fluoride, no matter where it comes
from. By now, Lester was completely bewildered.
"Where do you buy these silicofluorides from?"
he asked. The WD manager said that the silicofluorides
known as hexafluorosilicic acid are the toxic
waste product from phosphate fertilizer pollution scrubbers.
The dentist was aghast. "You have to be crazy putting
that stuff in the water!"
The water department manager agreed
because, he said, the hexafluorsilicic acid also contains
other toxic substances such as arsenic, beryllium, mercury,
lead and many more. He said he didn't drink the city water
because many of the contaminants in the fluoridation agent
cause health problems. "For instance," he said,
"arsenic causes prostate, bladder, kidney, skin and lung
cancers and there is no safe level
for arsenic."
Lester was appalled. He asked the manager why he did not
stop fluoridating the water with this pollution scrubber liquor.
"And why would anyone add any amount of a known carcinogen
to the water?"
Shrugging, the manager replied, "I'm just doing my
job. The public health people have their agenda, and I have
a family to feed."
After a sleepless night, Lester contemplated the fluoridation
dilemma as he soaped himself in the shower. "They
say they are simply adjusting the level of natural fluoride
in the water which is calcium fluoride but they
are using a pure grade of sodium fluoride and very pure water
for the rat experiments in the laboratory. But they are adding
toxic pollution scrubber liquor to my drinking water!"
It didn't make sense.
He called a man at the dental association and told him what
he had learnt. The man said, coldly: "If you value your
licence to practise, don't ever mention this subject again!"
Lester was shocked.
He had worked hard and
was very proud of his
practice and his two classic cars. He couldn't bear to lose
them. He thought about his wife and family and how they would
miss their luxury home with its four bathrooms and a jacuzzi,
the private schools and foreign vacations. After a while he
made a decision. "We won't drink the tap water. We'll
buy bottled water." But he was not a happy man as
he walked into the reception room and greeted his first patient
of the day.
Several months later he visited his friend the doctor for
his annual check-up and was stunned to learn that he had prostate
cancer. He recalled the words of the water department manager.
"Arsenic causes prostate cancer."
Lester was shattered. He couldn"t understand it. Yet
there was a reason. Despite taking care to drink only bottled
water, Lester didn't know that much more of the pollution-laced
tap water is absorbed through the skin from bathing and washing
clothes.
Poor Lester.
Although 6491 per cent of exposure
to waterborne contaminants is known to occur via dermal absorption,
no studies have ever been done to determine the toxicity of
pollution scrubber liquor the fluoride used in water
fluoridation schemes.
George Glasser is an investigative
journalist who focuses on environmental issues.
Taken from The
Ecologist, September 2000 Vol 30
No 6. (www.theecologist.org
)
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