Dentifrice – or Rodenticide? |
Is it the same fluoride that is used as rat poison?
BFS suggested answer
No. Fluoride in water is not a poison, it is safe and beneficial.
BFS suggested answer refuted
Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.
The Hippocratic Oath
Sodium fluoride was the first compound used to fluoridate public water systems artificially. It caused an uproar because sodium fluoride was a poison used commercially as an insecticide, rodenticide, wood preservative and fungicide.1 The US federal government clearly recognised the toxicity of sodium fluoride: as an active ingredient in pesticides, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act2 required the prominent display on the container of a skull-and-crossbones symbol and the word ‘Poison’.3
Government promoters seeking to add fluoride to the public water systems back in the 1950s held a conference and attempted to defuse this issue by instructing those in attendance not to use the word ‘artificial’ in conjunction with fluoridation, and not to tell the public that sodium fluoride was being used, because ‘that is rat poison’.4 Instead, the public should be told only that ‘fluorides’ are added to the water.
Sodium fluoride is not used in Britain or Ireland for the fluoridation of tap water. But it is still used extensively in toothpastes, gels, mouthwashes and other dental products – check the labels!
Sodium fluoride and stomach haemorrhages
Sodium fluoride (NaF) or sodium monofluorophosphate (MFP) is put in toothpaste and other dental preparations. In 1992 a randomised double-blind study was published in which healthy male volunteers were given either sodium fluoride or sodium monofluorophosphate tablets for just seven days. Before the trial began, the linings of their stomachs were evaluated. On the first day of the trial and at the end of the week, the linings of their stomachs were examined again and compared. At the same times, blood fluoride values were measured. Throughout the trial, blood fluoride levels were similar in both treatment groups, but this was not the case with their stomachs. Examination of these disclosed significant differences between the two groups. In the MFP group, the researchers found nothing out of the ordinary, but in the NaF group seven of the ten subjects had significant stomach lesions, including acute haemorrhages and free blood in their stomachs. There were also four times as many possible adverse drug reactions in the NaF group compared with the MFP group. Summing up, the study’s authors, Dr P. Muller and colleagues, say: ‘[U]nder the experimental conditions used MFP is well tolerated by the stomach while NaF produces significant gastric mucosal lesions.’5
Fluoride supplements aren’t safe either
In 1992, New Jersey assemblyman, John V. Kelly, was concerned when he read of Cohn’s cancer studies in that state. He immediately contacted the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry and asked them to send him studies supporting the safety and effectiveness of fluoride supplements that also contain sodium fluoride.
The Academy promised to send them, but, he says, they never came. When he pressed the Academy members, they admitted that they had no such studies but informed him the studies could be obtained from the National Institute of Dental Research. Again, no studies were forthcoming, and the NIDR respondents admitted that they had no studies. They suggested that Kelly go straight to the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), since that agency was responsible for approving these products. He waited six months and was ‘stunned when I was advised by the FDA that fluoride supplements were not approved by the FDA [emphasis in original]. Incredibly, in fifty years, no one has ever bothered submitting a petition to the FDA to have these products approved!’ He continued:
It is my understanding that in 1975, the FDA issued a regulatory letter asking manufacturers to remove fluoride supplements from the market. To date, the FDA has not responded to my inquiry asking for clarification of their actions in 1975. Also, in 1993 I petitioned the FDA to enforce the law and remove children’s fluoride supplements from the market. The FDA has ignored my repeated requests.
On 14 August 2000, Kelly wrote to Senator Robert Smith, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Washington, DC, telling him of his findings on the lack of safety studies for dental supplements.6 ‘At best,’ he wrote,
fluoride supplements are a waste of precious health care dollars. At worst, they are causing real harm to our infants and children.
I urge you to hold hearings on this issue. I also urge you to demand that the FDA enforce the law and remove these unapproved products from the market.
The duplicity of the BFS’s answer is exposed if we compare it to the answer in Chapter 24. In that, the BFS avers that fluoride is the same no matter what it is compounded with, yet in answer to this question says that this fluoride is not the same.
1.Safe Water Association, Inc. v. City of Fond Du Lac, 516 N.W.2d 13, 17 (Wis. Ct. App. 1994), review dismissed, 520 N.W.2d 91, Wisconsin, 1994.
2.FIFRA requires the registration of all new pesticides, as well as the reregistration of pesticides first registered before 1 November 1984. See Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, 7 USC §§ 136a, 136a-1 (1991) (exceptions omitted). The Special Review and Reregistration Division in the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs publishes a document called the Rainbow report (Status of Pesticides in Reregistration and Special Review), which lists sodium fluoride as an active ingredient in pesticides. See Environmental Protection Agency, Pesticide active ingredients index. Sodium fluoride was originally labelled as an ‘economic poison’ under FIFRA. See 7 USC § 135a(a)(4) (1981). ‘The term “economic poison” means (1) any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any insects, rodents, nematodes, fungi, weeds, and other forms of plant or animal life or viruses, except viruses on or in living man or other animals, which the Administrator shall declare to be a pest . . .’ 7 USC § 135(a).
3.See 7 USC § 136(q)(2)(D), 1991.
4.Statement of Dr John W. Knutson, chief, Division of Dental Public Health, at the Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference of State Dental Directors with the Public Health Service and the Children’s Bureau, Federal Security Building, Washington, DC, USA, 6–8 June 1951. See also: Promotion and application of water fluoridation: Hearings before the Dept of Labor and Health, Education and Welfare Appropriations, 89th Congress, Vol. 5, 1967.
5.Muller P, Schmid K, Warnecke G, Setniker I, Simon B. Sodium fluoride-induced gastric mucosal lesions: comparison with sodium monofluorophosphate. Gastroenterology 1992; 30: 252–4.
6.Kelly JV. Letter to Senator Robert Smith, chairman, Environment and Public Works Committee, Washington, DC, 14 August 2000.