Irish ask EU to help rid drinking water of toxic fluoride
During a Brussels seminar for the review of the European Union's Drinking Water Directive, groups in Ireland and the UK have asked the EU to help end fluoridation, which they say is leading to adverse health effects in the population. Voice of Irish Concern for the Environment as well as the UK's National Pure Water Association have made submissions asking to incorporate guarantees in the directive which would allow them to insist on pure drinking water without the imposition of added fluoride.
Fluosilic acid, the substance used to fluoridate drinking water, is an industrial waste product and according to VOICE, has never been studied for toxic effects with a view to human consumption. Dental fluorosis, an indication of systemic fluoride poisoning, is seen in as much as 37% of 15 year olds in the affected Irish communities.
Since fluoridation is imposed as a public health measure, with the declared aim of preventing dental caries in children and adolescents, it should be regulated like any other medical intervention. Fluoridation should be subject to informed consent of the population receiving the medication, and the compound used for the purpose be registered as a medicinal product for human use, according to the two associations representing people in both Ireland and Great Britain.
Apart from Ireland and the UK, we find fluoride in drinking water also in wide areas of the US. Jenny Thompson of the Baltimore Health Sciences Institute has examined the question of how to avoid fluoride in the land of the free...
The Art of Subtraction
Health Sciences Institute e-Alert
November 13, 2003
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It's fluoride time again.
The fluoridation of public water is a controversy I return to every few months, just to keep it on the burner, so to speak. This is an important health issue that affects virtually everyone who lives in or near any large population center in the U.S. And it's a subject that always prompts a surprised response from those who haven't yet heard that fluoride contains dangerous toxins, even though it's added to the water supplies in thousands of communities.
Fortunately there are ways to avoid fluoride intake. And believe it or not, avoiding fluoride just might make your teeth healthier.
But is there a way to remove fluoride buildup from your body? Good question. But difficult to answer.
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Binding molecule
-------------------------------------------------------------I recently received this e-mail from an HSI member named Owen:
"Fluoride is a toxin which accumulates in the bones and glands over a lifetime. It makes bones brittle, and has been linked to the plague of hip-fractures which effectively end the lives of 350,000 elderly Americans each year.
"I've been taking good care of myself for decades, but I drank tap water when I was a young man. There's bound to be fluoride in my bones, unless the clean living of the last 26 years has removed it. That's what I want to know: are there foods or supplements which effectively remove fluoride from bones and glands?"
Unfortunately, the answer to Owen's question appears to be, "No." So far, anyway.
I asked HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., about the possibility of chelating fluoride accumulation from the body, and he pointed out that fluoride has an unusually strong binding molecule. This is part of the reason why many water filters are ineffective in extracting fluoride. Dr. Spreen says, "It's well known that fluoride is difficult to remove from water with conventional water filters. Much of the chlorine can be removed using a good carbon filter, but fluoride will not come with it."
I wish I had better news for Owen and all the rest of us who gulped unfiltered tap water for many years. Dr. Spreen told me he'll continue to review his research sources to try and find a natural way to chelate fluoride. In the meantime, this gives us an even greater incentive to avoid further fluoride intake.
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Cumberland Blues
-------------------------------------------------------------In a Daily Dose e-letter titled "Fighting Back Against Fluoride" (10/31/03), William Campbell Douglass II, M.D., featured the small town of Cumberland, Maryland, where the citizens adopted a charter provision in the 1960s to reject fluoridation of their water. But in 2000, a city referendum overruled the provision. Now that the tap water of Cumberland is fluoridated, many residents continue to fight the reversal of their charter provision in court.
In Dr. Douglass' typical, straightforward style, he gets to the heart of the fluoride debate with this barb: "But even if fluoride in the drinking water meant an absolute guarantee of never having to go the dentist again, EVER, you shouldn't consume it. Why? Because cavities can't kill you, but fluoride can."
Here's a quick rundown of a few of fluoride's potential dangers:
* A number of studies have linked fluoride to as many as 10,000 cancer deaths each year, with a high incidence of bone cancer among men exposed to fluoride
* In animal trials, fluoride has been shown to enhance the brain's absorption of aluminum (the toxin shown to contribute to Alzheimer's disease)
* Several osteoporosis studies have associated hip fractures with fluoride intake
And add to all of this the irony that when too much fluoride is consumed, teeth can become discolored and crumble. And how can you tell when you're getting too much? You can't! As Dr. Spreen stated in a previous fluoride e-Alert, "Whether you are pro or con in the fluoride controversy, there is one simple problem that nobody can dispute: You can't control the dose."
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Land of the free
-------------------------------------------------------------Usually when the government interferes with our healthcare choices, it's done by forbidding or restricting access. With fluoride it's the opposite; your freedom of choice is compromised when your local government puts a chemical in your water "for your own good." So every time you drink from a faucet, you're being medicated without your consent. Or - in the case of the citizens of Cumberland, MD - against your expressed wishes.
Want to hear some truly radical thinking? Many countries throughout the world have rejected water fluoridation programs based on the idea that health treatments should be a personal choice, not mandated by the government.
Meanwhile, tooth decay trends tracked by the World Health Organization from 1970 to the present show that the incidence of decayed, missing, or filled teeth has been steadily in decline with each passing year in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Iceland, and Greece. Better oral hygiene and improved dentistry are the most likely reasons for this upswing in dental health. But it certainly can't be attributed to the fluoride. Because out of all of those countries, only one adds fluoride to the public water supply: the United States.
Here is an interesting overview of the world situation on fluoridation by Dr. Rudolf Ziegelbecker of Graz, Austria:
Basel (Switzerland) stopped water fluoridation after 41 years 9 April 2003.Since the time fluoridation commenced in Basel, water fluoridation in Europe was stopped, contrary to the recommendations of the WHO, in 1969, 1975 and 1978 in 8 european countries and in Japan. Water fluoridation was stopped in Kassel (Western Germany; 1952-1971), in the Netherlands (1953-1976), in Sweden (1952-1971), Czechoslovakia (1958-1988/90), Eastern Germany 1959-1990/93), Poland (1968-1990/91), USSR (1960-1990), Finland (1959-1993), and outside Europe in Japan (1952-1972). For more than 53 million people in Europe fluoridation has been stopped.
At the Twenty-Second World Health Assembly, Boston 8-25 July 1969, the Deputy Chief Delegate of Italy, Professor G. PENSO, Director, Microbiology Laboratories, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, cited in the Records: "If the results so far obtained from fluoridation experiments were studied scientifically, it would be seen that they were not really statistically valid. But the point with which he was really taking issue was the present-day mania for introducing additives into every things.” (OffIcial Records of the WHO No. 177, Dec. 1969, p. 305)
The Norwegian mathematician and statistician, Professor PER OTTESTAD, Department of Mathematics, Agricultural College of Norway, NORGES LANDSBRUKHØGSKOLE, Vollebek, submitted a letter "ReFluoridation of Drinking Water in Norway” to the Ministry of Social Welfare, September 1969, and stated in his Preface of his publication: "No one who is in close contact with sound research and who has seriously considered the question of research method, would accept the so-called scientific basis that is advanced to promotion of fluoridation.” (published in the International Journal VITALSTOFFE - Zivilisationskrankheiten 15: 4(78) , Sept. 1970, p. 145-149, Official Journal of the International Society for Research on Civilisation Diseases and Vital Substances)
The American mathematician and statistician, Professor HUBERT ANDREW ARNOLD, Univerity of California, Davis, Department of Mathematics, wrote in a letter to me on 29 Oct. 1971: "For a good many years I have the US PHS papers on fluoridation to my classes in elementary statistics to analyze for bad design & erroneous conclusions.”
Rudolf Ziegelbecker, A-8042 Graz
See also related articlesUK - Anti-fluoride MPs may go to court
Fluoride and the Thyroid Gland
Paul Barltrop - BBC on fluoridation
International Fluoride Information Network
Health fear for children sparks fury over fluoride UK - The Guardian
Fluoridation for all of England and Wales
The "mass medication" of UK's drinking water with a listed poison will cost London's health authorities alone more than £21 million. Sam Burcher reportsBehavioral Effects of Fluorides
The absurdities of water fluoridation
Think Fluoride is Healthy? Find Out the Shocking Truth in "The Fluoride Deception"
Fluorides: Their Effect on the Thyroid, Alzheimers and CFS
US fluoridation witness lashes Dept
A leading US scientist has written to the Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Health expressing his frustration at what he sees as a failure to take action on water fluoridation. Dr Paul Connett previously travelled to Ireland on two occasions to testify against the practice and appeared before the Oireachtas Committee in 2004. Since then, he claims, nothing has been done, and he feels he has been abused by those charged with assessing the merits of water fluoridation in Ireland.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Friday November 14 2003
updated on Tuesday December 21 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/14/irish_ask_eu_to_help_rid_drinking_water_of_toxic_fluoride.htm
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