Fluoride -Friend or Foe?

Fluoride – a Health Aid or Toxic Menace?

Fluoride is routinely added to drinking water in many areas of Britain and most of the Republic of Ireland. The stated reason for this is that it is essential as a preventative measure for tooth decay and that this is promoted as an established fact backed up by scientific research.
There are a number of issues with these claims and perhaps a greater issue with facts which are witheld or suppressed by those with an agenda.

But firstly a little history.

In the 1940’s during WW2 the German government was faced with a situation where large amounts of people had been forced into concentration camps. Maintaining camp discipline and control of such large numbers was problematic. This problem was passed on to German scientists. It did not take them long to come up with a solution – add sodium fluoride to the camps water supply. No doubt some promoters of fluoridation would, even now, try to persuade you that this was done out of concern for the inmates teeth! The truth was then, as it is now, that fluoride in regular small doses causes passivity in the recipient, a very attractive outcome for governments.
Fast forward to post war Britain.
The phosphate industry produces as a by-product of the manufacturing process, highly toxic waste which includes fluoride gases. In the past, when these gases were permitted to escape, vegetation became scorched, crops destroyed, and cattle crippled.
To combat this, pollution control devices known as ‘wet scrubbers’ were introduced which effectively dealt with this problem and at the same time created another; what to do with the waste material?

The Plan A brilliant plan (from the industries point of view) was devised. Sell the toxic waste, which would otherwise be costly to dispose of, as a health product! After being captured in the scrubbers, the fluoride acid (hydrofluorosilicic acid), a classified hazardous waste, is barreled up and sold, unrefined, to communities across the country.  Communities pay for the privilage of adding hydrofluorosilicic acid waste to their water supplies as the primary fluoride chemical for water fluoridation.This substance is so toxic and corrosive that full Hazchem suits are required by the operators.

To quote Senior Vice-President of EPA Headquarters Union-   “If this stuff gets out into the air, it’s a pollutant; if it gets into the river, it’s a pollutant; if it gets into the lake it’s a pollutant; but if it goes right into your drinking water system, it’s not a pollutant. That’s amazing… .”

Further, all safety studies on fluoride to date have been conducted using pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride, not industrial-grade silicofluorides. So when you are told that sodium fluoride is good for your teeth, you can educate those making such a claim that it is not sodium fluoride that’s added to their water but hydrofluorosilicic acid.So can sodium fluoride be shown to improve teeth. Yes – if you cherry pick the research. Equally it can be shown to have no effect or to actually damage teeth if you look at other research.

In the March 2014 edition of The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical research publications in the world, authors Dr. Phillippe Grandjean, MD and Philip J. Landrigan, MD officially classified fluoride as a neurotoxin.

In terms of acute toxicity (i.e., the dose that can cause immediate toxic consequences), fluoride is more toxic than lead, but slightly less toxic than arsenic. This is why fluoride has long been used in rodenticides and pesticides to kill pests like rats and insects. In fact there is enough fluoride in a tube of toothpaste to kill a young child if were a swallowed at once.

Scientific investigations(1) have revealed that fluoride is an endocrine distrupter. A member of the halide group of chemicals, it displaces essential iodine, another halide, in the thyroid gland with dire long term consequences.

“… [H]igher prenatal fluoride exposure, in the general range of exposures reported for other general population samples of pregnant women and nonpregnant adults, was associated with lower scores on tests of cognitive function in the offspring at age 4 and 6 [to] 12 y[ears].”

There are many ways to protect your children’s teeth which do not endanger their long term health; avoiding sugar, ensuring sufficient calcium and Vitamin D levels and a general re-mineralization of the body being among the most important. We highly recommend  a visit to the website of the renown  Weston A Price Foundation for holistic dental information & advice.

List of fluoridated areas in the UK by postcodes

Removal of fluoride from your family’s drinking water or indeed from all the water throughout your home is quite achievable. To see our range of filters which can remove fluoride please see Here

(1)    National Research Council of the National Academies 2006, page 266

(2)     Environmental Health Perspectives September 2017; 125(9)

(3)    WRAL September 21, 2017

(4)    Newsweek September 19, 2017    

(5)    Romper September 20, 2017