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What's the Deal With Fluoride? pt.1
by Steve
Pavlina
Like many Americans my age,
I grew up with a positive association to fluoride. Toothpaste
commercials told me that fluoride helped prevent tooth decay and
that I should brush my teeth with fluoride toothpaste, so I used
it every day. The dentist gave me fluoride treatments for my
teeth. Fluoride was also added to municipal water supplies, so
drinking tap water (and anything made with it) gave me a daily
dose of fluoride too. Like most other people, I assumed it must
be healthy. Otherwise, why would people add it to toothpaste and
water?
Many years ago though, I
started hearing rumors about fluoride being potentially
unhealthy. I realized I’d never looked into fluoride and didn’t
really even know what it was and why I should be consuming it. I
had to admit that all my knowledge of fluoride ultimately came
from the people who were marketing it. People market plenty of
other products that aren’t healthy (cigarettes, junk food,
etc.), so why should I assume fluoride was healthy just because
the marketers said it was?
So way back in 1997, I got
curious and started taking a deeper look into fluoride. Today
this is very easy to do because there’s plenty of info available
online. I’ll share some of that info with you and provide some
links so you can look into it further if you so choose. My goal
is to help you consciously decide whether you wish to continue
using fluoride.
What is fluoride?
The substance fluoride is
technically a fluorine ion. Fluorine is a gas, and in nature it
will be found bonded with other substances, forming compounds
such as calcium fluoride.
Fluoride is a naturally
occurring substance found abundantly in the earth’s crust.
Consequently, it is found in natural water supplies, usually in
very low levels (well below 1 part per million). Plants
naturally absorb fluoride from the soil, so small amounts of
fluoride compounds are present in all our food. Fluoride is also
commonly used in pesticides, so plant foods grown with
pesticides will have a higher concentration of fluoride.
The highest dietary
concentration of fluoride occurs in animal foods and in
processed foods, especially fish. Fluoride builds up in the
tissues of animals. And whenever fluoridated water is used in
food production, fluoride will be concentrated in the final
product. The same goes for cooking with fluoridated water.
Although it is a natural
substance, fluoride is highly toxic to human beings, even more
so than lead. If you were to injest a mere 2-5 grams of sodium
fluoride (a common ingredient in toothpaste), you would probably
die. The amount of fluoride in a typical tube of fluoride
toothpaste is sufficient to kill a small child if it were
consumed all at once. Fluoride toothpaste contains a much higher
concentration of fluoride than what is found in nature.
In the USA the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) regulates fluoride usage.
Is fluoride necessary for
health?
Not remotely. Unlike calcium
or magnesium, fluoride is not an essential nutrient for your
body. If you were to consume zero fluoride your entire life, you
wouldn’t suffer for it. There’s no such thing as fluoride
deficiency.
What is fluoride’s purported
role in tooth decay?
Fluoride acts as an enzyme
inhibitor. For this reason it is believed to help prevent
cavities by literally poisoning the bacteria in your mouth.
Unfortunately, because fluoride is so toxic, you’re taking a big
risk by using it to try to prevent cavities. You not only poison
the bacteria in your mouth but your other cells as well.
“Fluoride inhibits enzymes
that breed acid-producing oral bacteria whose acid eats away
tooth enamel. This observation is valid, but some scientists now
believe that the harmful impact of fluoride on other useful
enzymes far outweighs the beneficial effect on caries
prevention.” - UNICEF, Dec 1999
Fluoride only works
topically. If you swallow fluoride, it won’t help your teeth at
all except to the extent it touches them. So fluoride
supplements are utterly worthless.
What are the risks of
fluoride consumption?
Aside from the risk of
death, fluoride can cause serious problems even at low levels of
injestion that come from using toothpaste or mouthwash or
drinking fluoridated water.
One risk is a condition
known as fluorosis, caused by excessive exposure to fluoride.
This comes in two kinds: dental fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis.
Dental fluorosis occurs at a young age, and the main symptom is
discolored and/or pitted teeth, but the outward signs on the
teeth are believed to be linked with a deeper neurological
impairment.
Skeletal fluorosis is an
arthritic disease caused by a build-up of fluoride in the bones
that can cause the bones to become brittle. Studies published in
the Journal of the American Medical Association noted that hip
fractures are more common in communities that fluoridate their
water supply.
Drinking fluoridated water
is linked with reduced cognitive ability in children. There are
also over 30 animal studies showing that fluoride is a
neurotoxin which reduces learning and memory. Essentially,
fluoride makes you a bit less intelligent.
If you wish to look into
this further, you can find a lengthy list of health problems
associated with fluoride and links to some of the research here:
Fluoride Health Effects Database
There are many more health
problems than the few I’ve listed above, including kidney damage
and cancer. Fluoride problems are an active area of research. A
lot of new information has come out in just the past decade.
Why did people start adding
fluoride to toothpaste and water?
You don’t want to know.
Really you don’t.
But if you do, you can start
by reading these articles: Industry and Fluoridation Fluoride,
Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb
And if you really want to
hurt yourself, you can read all about the fluoride fraud here:
Suppression of Scientific Dissent on Fluoride’s Risks and
Benefits
If you don’t want to read
the above, the bottom line is that fluoride is an industrial
pollutant which became a serious problem several decades ago,
and this problem was essentially solved by devising ways to feed
the stuff to humans. Today it’s become a difficult issue that
involves big business, large sums of money, the ADA, the FDA,
and somewhere near the bottom of the political food chain…
health.
What about water
fluoridation?
Water fluoridation is common
practice in the USA. About 60% of the U.S. water supply is now
fluoridated. My city of Las Vegas started fluoridating its water
supply a few years ago (in what was apparently something of a
political fiasco).
The last time I checked,
water fluoridation was banned in Japan, China, India, and most
European countries. What’s interesting though is that in Europe
the levels of tooth decay are no worse than in the USA. In both
the U.S. and Europe, the levels of tooth decay have been falling
at about the same rate for decades. Fortunately for non-U.S.
residents, the politics of fluoride which have infected the U.S.
have not similarly infected the rest of world.
The theoretical reason for
water fluoridation is that it supposedly helps prevent tooth
decay. The problem, however, is that the theory just doesn’t
hold true. There’s no evidence that water fluoridation helps
prevent tooth decay at all. The evidence in fact shows that
fluoridation has no effect whatsoever on tooth decay, but
fluoridation does cause other health problems such as fluorosis.
“All of the recent
large-scale studies on fluoridation and tooth decay show that
fluoridation does not reduce tooth decay. Studies from New
Zealand, Canada, Europe, and the US have confirmed no difference
in decay rates for permanent teeth of residents of fluoridated
vs. non-fluoridated communities.” (source)
“In summary, we hold that
fluoridation is an unreasonable risk. That is, the toxicity of
fluoride is so great and the purported benefits associated with
it are so small - if there are any at all - that requiring every
man, woman and child in America to ingest it borders on criminal
behavior on the part of governments.” - Dr. J. William Hirzy,
Senior Vice-President, Headquarters Union, US Environmental
Protection Agency, March 26, 2001
“I am quite convinced that
water fluoridation, in a not-too-distant future, will be
consigned to medical history.” - Dr. Arvid Carlsson, Winner of
the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine
So what are the health
reasons for water fluoridation? There aren’t any. The real
reason for fluoridation is a combination of business and
politics. The health claims are largely used to draw attention
away from the real reason. In the USA it isn’t so hard to get
fluoridation policies passed in new cities simply by leveraging
the previous marketing work that has been done in favor of
fluoride. Communities will vote in favor of fluoridation because
most of the people doing the voting don’t know any better.
People will emotionally defend something as true which deep down
they never understood.
Continued on the next page...
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