A defense of the Wellington Village Council members who voted to stop injecting poisonous fluoride into the potable water supply is in order. Wellington was the first in the county to do so, but only eight of Palm Beach County’s 38 municipalities fluoridate (though they make up 61 percent of the population).
Has anyone found higher incidences of tooth decay in those 30 cities than in the eight that fluoridate? Most European countries have not fluoridated their water, but have experienced substantial declines in tooth decay since the 1970s, when fluoride toothpaste was introduced.
A former Wellington councilman, a retired dentist, foolishly wrote a letter to the Palm Beach Post that no one has said fluoridation was a problem. That proves nothing. How would lay persons with any of the several diseases said by opponents to result from fluoridation know if it was the cause? How would their doctors know?
The Centers for Disease Control said no credible evidence pointed to a link between these maladies and fluoridation. Really?
Three years ago, I wrote a magazine article on the subject. I discovered that, on the same day in 2011 when the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services recommended lowering fluoride levels, the Environmental Protection Agency released two new studies, one finding that prolonged, high intake of fluoride can increase the risk of brittle bones, fractures and crippling bone abnormalities. In 2005, the heads of 11 EPA unions, including one for the agency’s scientists, pleaded with the EPA to reduce the permissible level of fluoride in water to zero. They cited research showing it could cause cancer.
This nation doesn’t even forbid people from smoking, or consuming trans fats or inordinate amounts of sugar, though there is no disagreement that all three are highly detrimental to health. Our laws allow freedom of choice. Yet government bodies require people to consume a substance about which there is abundant controversy over its possible harm. That requirement denies freedom of choice, even though fluoridation apparently is opposed by many people. In a 2011 poll, 85 percent of the respondents thought cities should stop fluoridating and only 19 percent favored the practice.
William Campbell Douglas, M.D., a maverick physician who did research at Russia’s Pasteur Institute, said water fluoridation delivered a drug at levels that were officially malpractice if prescribed by a doctor to children up to age 3. He said one-half the fluoride entering one’s body was deposited in the bony skeleton for life.
Paul Connett, chemistry professor at New York’s St. Lawrence University, said half the fluoride we ingest accumulates in the bones, the pineal gland and other tissues. Studies by Jennifer Luke showed very high levels of fluoride accumulation in the pineal gland.
Connett wrote, “Some of the earliest opponents of fluoridation were biochemists, and at least 14 Nobel Prize winners are among numerous scientists who have expressed their reservations …”
Dr. Hardy Limeback, a high-profile Canadian dental professor, reversed his position, saying he thought ingested fluoride was not greatly effective and personal treatment was a better way to use fluoride.
Two investigative journalists reported in 1997 that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission censored evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride during World War II, citing national security. Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, and it caused damage to humans, animals and crops in areas where it was used, leading to lawsuits, the journalists reported.
Connett said the U.S. Public Health Service first endorsed fluoridation in 1950, before completion of a single trial. He questioned the coincidence of the Sugar Research Foundation Inc.’s announced aim that year to research “effective means of controlling tooth decay by methods other than restricting carbohydrate (sugar) intake.”
The professor said in European countries banning fluoridation, “their children’s teeth have not suffered.”
The best policy, he said, is: “If in doubt, leave it out.”
Bob Brink, Boynton Beach
It’s laughable how some Wellington Village Council members will listen to people who live outside of Wellington (e,Broward County residents and Loxahatchee residents during the flouride, puppy mills and KPark Horse Park concerns) when they are sympathetic to an issue; and then at other times lamblast other outside of Wellington speakers (dental students and supporters of fluoride) saying to them: you don’t live in Wellington, I do not need to be concerned with what you have to say.
Certain Council members speak out of both sides of their mouths.
Actually, hundreds of communities have stopped or rejected fluoridation http://fluoridealert.org/content/communities/
The two non-fluoridated counties of Nassau and Suffolk (Long Island) have lower tooth decay rates and hospital admissions for children’s dental care than most of the more highly fluoridated counties in New York State.
In fact, according to NYS Department of Health statistics, fluoridation has not leveled out tooth decay between the poor and non-poor within a county. And, the most highly fluoridated counties do not have the least tooth decay.
Science does not support fluoridation – only politics does. People have to stand up to special interest groups, especially active in Florida, and demand their water supply be fluoride-free