The Dose Makes the Poison |
How do you know how much fluoride we are ingesting?
BFS suggested answer
We do not need to know how much fluoride we are ingesting as individuals. There is no evidence that any community in the UK is ingesting too much fluoride.
BFS suggested answer refuted
Investigators seeking to examine the possible relation between fluoride intake and health outcomes, such as dental caries, fluorosis, or quality of bone, need to be aware of the complex situation that exists today. It is no longer feasible to estimate with reasonable accuracy the level of fluoride exposure simply on the basis of concentration in drinking water supply.
US National Research Council, 1993
The US Department of Health and Human Services stated in 1991: ‘The total quantity of fluoride ingested is the single most important factor in determining the clinical course of skeletal fluorosis; the severity of symptoms correlates directly with the level and duration of exposure.’1 This reiterated the World Health Organization’s exhortations for nearly thirty years that the total amount of fluoride must be taken into account before adding yet more.
When fluoridation was first mooted, the amount to be added to water was determined by the belief that ‘a person drinking fluoridated water may be assumed to ingest only about 1 milligram per day from this source . . . the development of mottled enamel is, however, a potential hazard of adding fluorides to food. The total daily intake of fluoride is the critical quantity.’2
Today, a person’s total intake in ‘optimally fluoridated’ areas is estimated to be between 5 and 7 mg/day. It is not just from water: intake is divided between drinking water (in fluoridated areas), food, other beverages, and dental products. This means that even if you do not live in a fluoridated area, any processed food or drink that is produced outside your area may contain fluoride. Some idea of the widespread nature of the problem is given below:
•Average fluoride content in juices is 0.02–2.80 ppm, in part because of variations in fluoride concentrations in water used in production. Grape juice has been found to contain up to 6.8 mg fluoride per litre, a can of chicken soup up to 4 mg fluoride.
•British toothpastes contain 1,000–1,500 ppm sodium fluoride – you can see the amounts on the packets. Since April 1997, all toothpastes in the USA have carried a poison warning label.
•Fluoride dental treatments can contain between 10,000 and 20,000 ppm fluoride. There is no regulated dose requirement.
•Commercial fresh fruit and vegetables may have been sprayed with a cryolite pesticide.
•Teflon- and Tefal-coated, non-stick cookware releases fluoride into food cooked in them.
The amount of fluoride around today is far greater than it was half a century ago. There is now so much that Dr Hardy Limeback, biochemist and professor of preventive dentistry, University of Toronto, and former consultant to the Canadian Dental Association, said recently: ‘Children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste. Or drink fluoridated water. And baby formula must never be made up using [fluoridated] tap water. Never. In fluoridated areas, people should never use fluoride supplements. We tried to get them banned for children but [the dentists] wouldn’t even look at the evidence we presented.’3
How much is too much?
All sides agree that healthy kidneys can eliminate only about half of daily fluoride intake. The other half will be retained in the body and will build up over a lifetime in calcified tissues, like bones and teeth. This is what makes it so dangerous.
As little as 0.04 mg/kg body weight per day has been proven to cause adverse health effects. The US National Academy of Sciences stated in 1977 that, for the average individual, a retention of 2 mg/day would result in crippling skeletal fluorosis after forty years. Considering the amount we are ingesting now, it is likely that skeletal fluorosis already affects a significant portion of the population.
Children, the elderly, and any person with impaired kidney function – a category that includes many AIDS and diabetic patients – are in the high-risk group for fluoride poisoning and should be warned to monitor their fluoride intake. Also at high risk are people with immunodeficiencies, diabetes and heart ailments, as well as anyone with calcium, magnesium and Vitamin C deficiencies. At the level of 0.4 ppm fluoride in water, renal (kidney) impairment has been shown.4
The BFS is correct that there is a lack of evidence of harm in Britain – but only because no official government or medical authority has ever bothered to look for such evidence. As Professor Susheela said to Mrs Tessa Jowell, British Minister of Health, on 26 October 1998:
You [the Department of Health] don’t even have a government laboratory to test fluoride levels in blood and urine. If you don’t look for the problems, how can you hope to find them?5
The suggested answer by the BFS is again disingenuous. It shows a contempt for WHO and Department of Health guidelines and warnings.
1.Review of fluoride: Benefits and risks. US Department of Health and Human Services, February 1991: 45.
2.The problem of providing optimum fluoride intake for prevention of dental caries. Food and Nutrition Board, Division of Biology and Agriculture. Publication No. 294, National Academy of Sciences/US National Research Council, November 1953.
3.Limeback H. Sunday Star, Toronto, 25 April 1999.
4.Juncos LI, Donadio JV. Renal failure and fluorosis, fluorine and dental health. J Am Med Assoc 1972; 222 (7): 783–5.
5.Susheela AK. Fluoridation of water. Meeting between Prof. Susheela and Tess Jowek at Richmond House, London, 26 October 1998, arranged by NPWA. Quote published in Fluoride Watershed, vol. 4, no. 3, November 1998 by NPWA.