Fluoride and Water Safety |
Is fluoridated water safe?
BFS suggested answer
Yes. Every reputable scientific body which has ever considered the issue, including the World Health Organization, the British Medical Association, the British Dental Association and the Health Education Authority, has concluded that water fluoridation is safe.
The World Health Organization recommends that ‘water fluoridation is safe and cost-effective and should be introduced and maintained wherever it is socially acceptable and feasible’.
BFS suggested answer refuted
As a toxicologist involved in fluoride research for over ten years, I was stunned by the Calgary Regional Health Authority’s glib comments proclaiming water fluoridation safe. The ‘fifty years’ of studies about fluoride safety do not exist. The ‘ongoing intensive research on fluorides and fluoridation’ does not exist, certainly none investigating safety.
Professor Phyllis Mullenix, 1997
This question, like the previous one, is fundamental to fluoridation. Even if adding fluoride to drinking water did benefit teeth, those who advocate it would, clearly, have to reconsider its addition if it were shown that in benefitting some, they harmed others.
Calcium fluoride (CaF)
The fluoride which occurs naturally in drinking water all over the world is calcium fluoride (i.e. fluorine + calcium), or sometimes magnesium fluoride (fluorine + magnesium). In Britain, calcium fluoride is usually found at low levels of around 0.01–0.1 ppm. At these low levels, calcium fluoride is relatively insoluble and passes relatively harmlessly through the body. Nevertheless, calcium fluoride can accumulate in bone, teeth and other body tissues. In some areas of the world, calcium fluoride levels are of great public health concern. In sixteen states in India, for example, with calcium fluoride levels between 5 and 13 ppm, chronic skeletal fluorosis is endemic, and 6 million children are so crippled that they cannot walk to school. Although that is not the situation in Europe, dental fluorosis, acknowledged by Baroness Hayman to be a sign of systemic toxicity, has been observed and documented at levels in water as low as 0.34 ppm.1 That is only one-third the amount recommended for water fluoridation here.
The original studies of fluoridation were done in areas with ‘high’ (up to 1 ppm) levels of naturally occurring calcium fluoride. But calcium fluoride has never been used for artificial fluoridation of drinking water.
Sodium fluoride (NaF)
All clinical laboratory testing of fluoride has been conducted using rats as the subjects – despite the fact that rats rarely suffer from tooth decay. As contaminated materials could compromise the results of the trials, animal trials were conducted using a pharmaceutical grade of sodium fluoride (fluorine + sodium), with purified water and high-grade feed. When the rats did not develop tooth decay (although they did develop dental fluorosis), it was said that this is proof that ‘fluoride reduces tooth decay’. This pure grade of sodium fluoride is ‘deemed’ to be a suitable surrogate for naturally occurring calcium fluoride. It is also ‘deemed’ to be a suitable surrogate for water artificially fluoridated with hexafluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6).
Sodium fluoride is not used for the artificial fluoridation of drinking water in Britain or Ireland, but it is used in toothpastes and other fluoridated dental preparations.
Fluorosilicates
The only ‘fluorides’ that the law in Britain and Ireland allows to be used for water fluoridation are the fluorosilicates, hexafluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6) and its sodium salt, disodium hexafluorosilicate (Na2SiF6).2 These ‘fluorosilicates’, as their name implies, contain silicon, but it is not listed. This omission is significant, because if it were listed, it would have to be labelled and subjected to toxicological studies, as silicon is known to cause cancer. If that weren’t bad enough, these fluorosilicates, in the form in which they are added to drinking water, are not pure. As will be discussed in Chapter 25, they are classified as ‘hazardous air pollutants’.
In order to minimise emissions to air of hazardous air pollutants, the gases produced in the phosphate fertiliser manufacturing process are ‘washed’ in ‘pollution scrubbers’, and the resulting ‘gravy’, as it is called, is collected for disposal or sale. As such, the product is not a pure chemical. Approximately 19 per cent is fluorine; the rest is a toxic soup containing lead, arsenic, beryllium, vanadium, cadmium, mercury, radionuclides and, of course, silicon.
The presence of these contaminants is of great concern. Arsenic is classified as a Group 1 known human carcinogen; beryllium is also classified as a known human carcinogen; lead is a known neurotoxicant; arsenic, lead and fluoride are cumulative toxins.
Chromium is another known carcinogen. John Gormley, TD, asked the Irish Minister for Health whether chromium was present in the hydrofluorosilicic acid imported from Holland to fluoridate Irish drinking water. The Minister said categorically that it was not. However, the Irish organisation Fluoride Free Water had an independent chemical analysis done on the chemical cocktail. It showed that chromium levels were 3.763 ppm and that levels of arsenic were even higher at 4.829 ppm. On 7 November 2000, the Minister apologised for misleading the Dáil.3 ‘According to the Irish Medicines Board, this hydrofluosilicic [hydrofluorosilicic] acid has never been proven safe or effective’, said dental surgeon Dr Don MacAuley. ‘Not surprisingly it is unregistered, unlicensed and not considered to be a medicine.’4
Conclusion
No safety tests have ever been done on silicofluorides. There are no proper studies on the effectiveness of hexafluorosilicic acid in reducing dental caries either. Many of the components of the ‘product’ that is used for water fluoridation are known to be extremely harmful, yet no safety testing data are available for it anywhere in the world.
Any claim that ‘water fluoridation is safe’ is at best wishful thinking and at worst a lie.
1.Lin F-F, Aihaiti, Zhao HX et al. The relationship of a low-iodine and high-fluoride environment to subclinical cretinism in Xinjiang. IDD Newsletter vol. 7, no. 3, August 1991.
2.Water (Fluoridation) Act, Chapter 63. London: HMSO, 1985: 1–4.
3.Written answer to Dáil question no. 598, 7 November 2000.
4.Troubled water: Minister accused of lying over tap water chemicals. Evening Herald (Ireland), 8 September 2000.