The study measured fluoride in urine and found the average level of fluoride in urine was 0.9mg/L (mg/L = parts per million). This roughly equates to urine levels found in women drinking fluoridated water at concentrations of 0.5 – 1.5 mg/L.
This study was very carefully done by a group of researchers who have produced over 50 papers on the cognitive health of children in relationship to environmental exposures. It was funded by the US National Institutes of Health and was a multi-million dollar study. This was the group’s first study of fluoride – their other studies mostly dealing with lead, mercury and other environmental neurotoxicants.
This study controlled for a wide range of potential factors that might have skewed the results and produced a false effect. It was able to largely rule out confounding effects by these other factors. The factors ruled out included lead, mercury, socio-economic status, smoking, alcohol use, and health problems during pregnancy.
This study offers confirmation of previous studies in Mexico, China and elsewhere.
Fluoridegate is about the blatant corruption in Washington DC, particularly the EPA, that allows the continued poisoning of local water supplies with the industrial toxin hydrofluorosilic acid (aka “fluoride”).
The last decade has produced an abundance of peer reviewed research establishing unequivocally that chronic exposure to fluoridated water causes osteoporosis, decreased IQ and other neurodevelopmental problems, hypothyroidism, birth defects, cancer and dental and skeletal fluorosis. All the pertinent federal agencies (EPA, FDA, CDC) acknowledge that 1) using fluoridated water in kidney dialysis can be lethal and 2) using fluoridated water to dilute formula causes serious fluoride toxicity in infants. Yet there is absolutely no effort to warn the public of these dangers.
The documentary highlights the case of Dr William Marcus, the former chief toxicologist at the EPA’s Office of Drinking Water. In 1994, Marcus was fired after a colleague leaked one of his reports to the media identifying fluoride as a probable carcinogen. In the wrongful dismissal suit Marcus filed, he established that the EPA had engaged in perjury, forgery and witness tampering in their efforts to destroy his career and reputation. The court rescinded the dismissal and awarded him back pay, damages and all legal fees.
Last year the US Department of Health and Human Services reduced their maximum recommended fluoride level for drinking water from 1.2 parts per million to 0.7 parts per million. This despite volumes of research indicating there is no safe level of chronic fluoride exposure – just as there is no safe level of lead or mercury exposure.
The primary source of fluoride used in public drinking water is hydrofluorosilic acid, a toxic byproduct of the fertilizer industry. Prior to the decision to add “fluoride” to drinking water in the 1950s, exposure of this extremely toxic chemical was a major headache for car makers and the aluminum and chemical industry. For more background on the conspiracy Alcoa, Dupont, GM and propaganda specialist Edward Bernays cooked up to dump it in our water (by telling us it was good for our teeth) see Ending Water Fluoridation: One We Can Win
Nearly all of Europe, except for the UK, has banned the use of fluoride in drinking water. In 2011, I and 60 other members of Fluoride Free New Plymouth successfully campaigned to have fluoride removed from our water.
Residents of over 100 US communities have successfully ended water fluoridation. For a full list see link.
Directed by Phillip Rainford and Gail Blundell (2013)
Film Review
Mask of Deception, whose title is somewhat misleading, is best described as an Australian public service documentary about ways our food and health system are killing us. Overall I think viewers will find it useful to have all the major health risks covered in one place.
Unfortunately the film finishes a bit raggedly, with a diffuse attack on the Australian health care system and its long waiting lists, shortage of nurses, and efforts to suppress natural food supplements. The call for civil disobedience at the end seems to come out of nowhere.
Sadly western medicine has grown into an industry dedicated to marketing pharmaceuticals. In a a health system geared towards health promotion and disease prevention, our doctors would be warning us about these health risks instead of handing us prescriptions.
Some of the specific risks (gluten, fluoride, mercury-laden dental amalgam, white sugar, artificial sweeteners, transfats, liquid vegetable oils, vaccinations, mammograms, statins and chemical food additives) mentioned are fairly well covered by Natural News, Dr Mercola and similar natural health sites.
Others are less well known. For example, I was totally unaware of the link between high soy diets (especially for infants on soy formula) and hypothyroidism and type I diabetes.*
*The soy common in Asian diets has been heavily fermented, in some cases 5-7 years, to make it more digestible.
Erin Brockovich has called for an immediate repeal of all laws that require or enable fluoridation; holding of Fluoridegate hearings; and for professional associations and advocacy groups (who have never studied the science) to rescind allowing their names to be used to endorse fluoridation.
Erin Brockovich is famous for her work in bringing litigation against Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) for contaminating groundwater in Hinkley, California, with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium. PG&E told Hinkley residents that they used a safer form of chromium. The true story was later made into the 2000 feature film, Erin Brockovich.
The Ministry of Health has constantly denied the fact that fluoridation chemicals are industrial waste products contaminated with heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury. This contamination is allowed under an industry-set (not government-set) standard for fluoridation chemicals. A recent request to the Ministry of Health Oral Health division to have the actual source of fluoridation chemicals added to the government’s website fluoride facts has been denied. If the Ministry of Health is so proud of their much vaunted water fluoridation programme they seem awfully shy in sharing the actual details.
In Fluoride Deception, BBC journalist Christopher Bryson describes how the decision to deliberately dose US municipal water supplies with a potent industrial toxin was basically a corporate scam dreamed up by Alcoa, GM and Dupont, with the help of Edward Bernays, the infamous father of the public relations industry. Their cynical goal was to stem a tide of lawsuits related to death and injuries from toxic fluoride pollution – by convincing the public that fluoride is good for you.
Fluoride is an extremely toxic pollutant produced by aluminum smelting. GM and Dupont became involved with the scheme because GM held the patent on fluoride-based Freon and Dupon manufactured it. Freon was a common refrigerant which the EPA banned in 2010.
According to Bryson, the FDA first raised the alarm about fluoride toxicity in the early thirties, resulting in scores of lawsuits for aluminum workers crippled and killed from fluoride poisoning and farmers near aluminum plants, whose livestock were killed due to fluoride poisoning.
Public Relations: Cheaper than Pollution Controls
Rather than encouraging Alcoa to institute pollution controls, an Alcoa researcher named Francis Frary decided a better approach was to alter public perception of fluoride. He approached Mellon Institute researcher Gerald Cox. In 1937, Cox performed a single study in rats (who rarely suffer tooth decay to begin with) in 1937 and “proved” fluoride strengthened their teeth.
Frary and Cox were soon joined in their little scheme by Charles Kettering’s GM’s research director and Freon magnate, who approached the American Dental Association, began funding many of their activities. He also got himself appointed to their three member Advisory Committee on Research in Dental Caries. Meanwhile GM and Dupont hired scientist Robert Kehoe to perform safety studies on both fluoride and tetra ethyl lead, a gasoline additive co-manufactured by the two companies. Unsurprisingly, Kehoe declared both leaded gasoline and fluoride safe at “low levels.”
Enter the Father of Public Relations
The most prominent villain in this sordid history was Edwards Bernays, the father of public relations industry. At the beginning, there was massive public opposition to water fluoridation, led mainly by doctors who were well aware of fluoride’s toxicity. Bernays’ answer was to enlist even more prominent doctors to declare it safe, starting with prominent baby doctor Benjamin Spock.
The common perception of a potent toxin such as fluoride being safe and good for teeth is based on decades of corporations paying researchers to produce the scientific results they want – and burying research and firing and blacklisting scientists whose studies show otherwise.
Bryson details numerous deliberate smear campaigns against extremely reputable doctors and scientists who dared to publish research regarding the adverse effects of water fluoridation:
Dr. George Waldbott a world famous doctor who first identified penicillin allergy and the link between smoking and emphysema. Waldbott published numerous double blind studies in the fifties showing that fluoride is harmful to human health. The result was a massive corporate smear campaign that destroyed his reputation by marginalizing and demonizing him.
Dr William Marcus – a senior EPA toxicologist in the Office of Water, fired in 1992 for attempting to publicize studies showing that fluoride causes bone and liver cancer. In 1994 Marcus won lawsuit against the federal government and was reinstated. While the EPA still refuses to ban water fluoridation, the unions representing EPA scientists have called for a moratorium.
Dr Phyllis Mullinix – research toxicologist hired by Forsyth Dental Institute to study the effect of fluoride on the brain. Mullinex was first fired and then blacklisted in the mid-nineties when she published research showing fluoride produces memory and behavior problems in children.
Where Fluoride Comes From
Although fluoride is added to municipal water supplies as a “drug” – that allegedly improves dental health – it has never been approved by the FDA. In fact most communities source their fluoride from the phosphate fertilizer industry, as hydrofluorosilicic acid. This is an extremely toxic, hazardous waste, and the EPA requires phosphate manufacturers to capture it via “wet scrubbers” in their chimneys (to prevent toxic fluoride gas from being released into the air). The resulting liquid is then loaded, unpurified, into tanker trucks and sold to cities to be added to their public water supply. In addition to fluoride, it also contains a number of heavy metals and radionucleotides (radioactive elements – mainly uranium-238, uranium-234, thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222, lead-210, and polonium-210).
*2014 update
In 2003 the EPA commissioned the National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Sciences) to examine all the peer reviewed research to make a determination whether an upper limit of 8 mg of fluoride (eight glasses of water with a fluoride concentration of 4 mg/liter) was still within the margin of safety. In 2006 the NRC came back with the recommendation that 8 mg (4 mg/liter) was definitely too high – as many Americans were experiencing symptoms of chronic fluoride poisoning at this dose.
In addition to lower IQ in children, the NRC found that water flouridation was contributing to an epidemic of hypothyroidism, infertility, arthritis and hip fracture.
Based on the high probability that Americans drinking fluoridated water were suffering serious and irreversible health damage, the NRC urgently recommended that the EPA ban water fluoridation until the safe threshold (based on urine fluoride measurements) could be determined.
The Bush administration and corporate media buried the report.
98% of European municipalities have banned water fluoridation.
In 2011, I was part of a local citizen’s groups that persuaded New Plymouth District Council to remove the fluoride from our water. We had major support from New Zealand’s Fluoride Action Network and internationally renowned biochemist Dr Paul Connett.
Below a presentation by Dr Connett to Toronto anti-fluoride activists:
The Most Revolutionary Act 