Europe Against Fluoride |
Why has fluoridation been banned in several European countries?
BFS suggested answer
Fluoridation has not been banned anywhere. Over 300 million people world-wide drink fluoridated water – including over half the population of the USA.
Some European countries which have discontinued water fluoridation, such as the Netherlands and Finland, have done so for political reasons, NOT BECAUSE OF FEAR OF ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS.
Fluoride toothpastes are widely used throughout Europe, and most countries use other forms of fluoride delivery to prevent tooth decay. For example, Ireland, the UK and Spain have extensive water fluoridation. Elsewhere, salt is fluoridated, e.g. France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.
BFS suggested answer refuted
Most of the world has rejected fluoridation. Only America where it originated, and countries under strong American influence persist in the practice.
Dr John Colquhoun, former chief dental officer, Auckland, NZ
Fluoridation is far less widely accepted than its proponents would have us believe. Fluoridation has been strongly opposed throughout the world. Today, only five countries worldwide – all English-speaking – fluoridate to any large extent. At the top of the fluoridation league are Ireland at about 75 per cent and Australia at 66 per cent fluoridated; the USA, Canada and New Zealand tie for third place on 50 percent. England is a lowly sixth at less than 10 per cent – which is hardly ‘extensive’. This is because the dangers of fluoridation have not gone unnoticed. In western continental Europe, fluoridation has been a total flop. The fact is that only about 2 per cent of the people of Western Europe today drink fluoridated water, almost all of them within the British Isles.
Austria
According to M. Eisenhut, head of the Water Department, Österreichische Vereinigung für das Gas- und Wasserfach, ‘[T]oxic fluorides have never been added to the public water supplies in Austria.’1
Germany
Fluoridation was introduced experimentally in the West German town of Kassel in 1952. After two years, Germany rejected fluoridation because the recommended dosage of 1 ppm was ‘too close to the dose at which long-term damage to the human body is to be expected’.
Parts of the former East Germany were fluoridated from 1959 until reunification in 1990. Drs W. Künzel and T. Fischer analysed the dental records of more than 286,000 subjects of both sexes (six to fifteen years old) from two industrial towns: Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt), which was fluoridated from 1959 to 1990, with a 22-month interruption around 1971, and Plauen, 75 per cent fluoridated from 1972 to 1984.2 Water fluoridation was followed by a decrease of caries, and interruptions in fluoridation were followed by increasing caries levels. However, after German reunification, a different caries trend was observed. Between the years 1987 and 1995, instead of an expected rise in dental decay, there was a significant decrease down to the lowest DMFT (2.0) since 1959, despite fluoridation having ceased in the two cities. Today, all of Germany is unfluoridated.3
‘Fluoride has never been added to the public water supplies in Luxembourg. In our views, the drinking water isn’t the suitable way for medicinal treatment and that people needing an addition of fluoride can decide by their own to use the most appropriate way, like the intake of fluoride tablets, to cover their daily needs.’4
Denmark
According to the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy, ‘toxic fluorides have never been added to the public water supplies in Denmark. Consequently, no Danish city has ever been fluoridated.’5 After fluoridation of water was first mooted in Denmark, on 3 January 1977, the National Agency of Environmental Protection recommended that the Minister not permit fluoridation. This recommendation was based upon the fact that a number of questions concerning human health and the environment were not and could not be clarified. In his answer to a question from the Committee on Fluoridation of Drinking Water, on 5 January 1977, the Danish Minister for the Environment, Helge Nielsen, stated that in his opinion the power conferred by Section 48 of the Water Supply Act should not be used to allow the addition of fluoride to drinking water. His reasons were that no adequate studies had been carried out on its long-term effects on human organ systems other than teeth, and that not enough studies had been done on the effect of fluoride discharges on freshwater ecosystems. The Ministry of the Interior issued a public announcement: ‘[F]luoridation of public water supplies as well as of all consumables is prohibited.’ Denmark also banned fluoride supplements in January 1964.
Kuopio is a city that features prominently in medical journals and medical trials. Drs Helmer Nordling and Inkeri Tulikoura conducted a study there between 1958, when it was first fluoridated, and 1968, with Jyväskylä as the control city. Their results were published in 1970.6 The study continued until 1984 and showed the importance of continuing studies over a long period of time. By 1968, 7-year-old children in fluoridated Kuopio had 55 per cent fewer cavities than in unfluoridated Jyväskylä. This looked like a good result, but four years later the difference between the two cities was down to 46 percent. By 1975 it had reduced to 19 percent, and by 1976 the cavity rates in both cities were identical. In 1990 fluoridation was stopped in Kuopio because of fears about osteoporosis. In 1998, Dr L. Seppa and colleagues published a study that examined the consequences of this discontinuation on dental health.7 Despite the children not having fluoridated water any more, Seppa and colleagues found no sign of an increasing trend in dental decay. They also found that other fluoride dental treatments were useless; their findings suggested ‘that the decline of caries has little to do with professional preventive measures performed in dental clinics’. There is now no fluoridation in Finland.
Norway
There was a rather intense discussion about fluoridation in Norway around 1980. The conclusion was that drinking water should not be fluoridated. The decision was taken that it was up to each individual to decide whether to use fluoride in tablets, toothpaste or mouthwash to prevent caries. There is now no ongoing political discussion in Norway concerning fluoridation of drinking water. Norway remains unfluoridated.8
In 1961 Sweden’s Supreme Court declared that fluoridation was illegal. Nevertheless, in 1969 Professor Yngve Ericsson, a Swedish dentist, and the senior representative on the World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Fluoridation, strongly advised the Swedes to fluoridate their water supply. It was then found that Professor Ericsson was the holder of two highly profitable patents on fluoride toothpaste; and a subsequent investigation disclosed that the WHO’s numerous so-called ‘objective’ comparative studies on mortality and morbidity for fluoridated vs. unfluoridated areas simply didn’t exist. The investigation stated that the WHO’s report was unacceptable from a scientific point of view; that some of the claims set forth in the WHO report actually lacked any and every basis in fact; and that the details given by WHO on risks and safety margins were grossly defective. Sweden’s Nobel Medical Institute, after conducting a ten-year study, recommended against fluoridation. In 1971 the Swedish parliament repealed the country’s fluoridation law, stating: ‘[V]alid evidence to support the claims widely quoted by fluoridation proponents simply does not exist.’ Fluoridation was banned in 1972.9
The Netherlands
Tiel was the first city to be fluoridated in 1953. It was included in a trial of the effects of fluoridation on dental cavities with Culemborg as the control city. These two cities were not chosen at random. In 1949, a young dentist named Joseph Fick had researched the decay-causing properties of yoghurt. He found that an extracted tooth placed in yoghurt started to decay after two days, and after a week there was a cavity. In his study, he compared the children of Culemborg and Tiel, noting that the children of Culemborg ate twice as much yoghurt as the children of Tiel. They also had twice as much dental decay. As it was known that cavity rates between the two cities were so different, it was not a fair trial.
In 1970, Dr Hans Moolenburgh, a doctor whose practice spanned the Dutch towns of Haarlem and Heemstede, a suburb of Amsterdam, noticed that after Amsterdam was fluoridated, patients from the now-fluoridated Heemstede began to suffer a variety of mysterious diseases, whereas no change was seen in illness patterns in unfluoridated Haarlem. Reasoning that fluoride might be to blame, Moolenburgh carried out the only double-blind trial ever to have been conducted into the effects of fluoride, and proved beyond doubt that fluoride was the cause. Over the next six years he, joined by others, amassed a vast body of evidence against fluoride.10
On 22 June 1973, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that there was no legal basis for fluoridation.11 After that judgement, an amendment to the Water Supply Act was prepared to provide a legal basis for fluoridation, despite the fact that there was a swelling tide of opinion in the Dutch parliament against it.
On 9 March 1976, the Dutch Minister of Health, Irene Vorrink, introduced a bill to fluoridate all of Holland. The next day came confirmation from the American National Cancer Institute that they had observed a rise in cancer deaths. Moolenburgh sent it directly to parliament.
Parliamentary discussions had centred not on the harm that fluoride could do but on the question of personal freedom and how the government could make provision to supply unfluoridated water to those who did not wish to drink fluoridated tap water. On 16 March, Health Minister Vorrink suggested: ‘Let us keep these provisions for those who object outside this bill. There is already one easy solution, namely a filter on your tap. Experts are busy developing such a filter.’ The Dutch parliament was adjourned while someone tried to find out about this filter. But nobody knew anything about such a filter. The Dutch press had a field day.
As the result of Moolenburgh’s work, the Dutch rewrote their constitution to ensure that the practice of fluoridation would never be allowed in that country again.
Switzerland12
Basle was fluoridated in 1962. Children of the city, aged between seven and fifteen, were examined at five-year intervals. There was no attempt to use a control group, thus this could show neither benefit nor harm in any scientifically acceptable way. However, had there been a reduction in caries, a reduction in the number of dentists needed might have demonstrated the fact. But while there were only ten dentists practising in Basle in 1960, eight years later that number had almost doubled. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Swiss Department of Health suggested in 1975 that fluoridation in Basle should cease, as it had failed to reduce tooth decay.
France
France has never fluoridated its populace. France’s universally respected Pasteur Institute and Sweden’s Nobel Institute agree that fluoride has little or no value as a dental cavity deterrent and stress that health risks from using fluoride outweigh any benefits. After consulting with the Pasteur Institute, France’s chief counsel of public health rejected fluoridation in 1980 because of possible harm to human health.
Italy and Belgium
Italy and Belgium, like France, rejected fluoridation outright.
Spain
Parts of Spain may be fluoridated. There appears to be a cover-up there, and nobody seems to know what the true picture is. The last official figure I saw was that 3 per cent of Spanish water supplies were fluoridated, but that figure may be higher now. So far as I can ascertain, Seville, Granada, Murcia and some northern cities are fluoridated, and the provinces of Andalusia, Navarra and the Basque Country have decided to fluoridate their water supplies. There is a factory in Bilbao, apparently state-owned, called Derivados del Fluor, which may be the source of the fluoride.13 But if Spain is fluoridated, it is not helping its children’s teeth, as Spain is well down the WHO cavity league table.
Hungary
In the early 1960s, one city, Szolnok, was fluoridated, but fluoridation was very soon stopped for technical reasons. Since that date, despite significant technological advances that could have allowed fluoridation to recommence, Hungary remains unfluoridated.14
Portugal and Greece
These two countries experimented with fluoride and then abandoned it.
Ireland
Water fluoridation was introduced into Ireland in 1964. Ireland is unique in the world now as the only democratic country where fluoridation is mandatory by law. Even the USA hasn’t dared to go that far. Two-thirds or more of the population have had fluoridated water since its inception, yet as we saw in Chapter 1, WHO figures, showing Ireland lying in a lowly sixth place behind unfluoridated countries, do not support the claim that fluoridation of drinking water helps to preserve Irish children’s teeth.
In May 2000 Irish Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, announced the formation of a Forum on Fluoridation, similar to the UK Review (see Chapter 33), ‘to review the fluoridation of public piped water supplies’, because of the public’s growing concerns about fluoride.15
The Forum was to have had representatives from consumer and environmental groups, but one, Darina Allen, refused to be involved when she saw the pro-fluoridation bias of the panel, and another, Dick Warner, said he had never agreed to have his name put forward in the first place.
Not unreasonably, Éamon Gilmore, TD, Labour Party Environment spokesman, warned the Minister: ‘Pending the outcome of this forum, there should be an embargo on the fluoridation of any new water schemes which may come on stream in the interim.’16 However, like Britain, fluoridation will continue in Ireland while this ‘Forum’ meets, and, moreover, despite the public’s resentment at being forced to drink fluoride-contaminated water, plans are in hand to fluoridate even more areas of the country before the Forum reports.
Fluoride Free Water, an Irish anti-fluoride organisation, says it ‘has no longer any confidence in the “Forum on Fluoridation”’, calling it a ‘Fluoride Fiasco’ and a ‘cynical political ploy’.17
But all that may change. In January 2001, Fine Gael’s Environment spokesman, Ivan Yates, said: ‘Fine Gael believes that there are sufficient grounds to point to serious health risks from the cumulative amount of fluoride in our piped water supply system.’ If elected, he pledged, the party would move both to end fluoridation because of ‘serious health concerns’ and to order every health board to investigate existing levels of fluoride in groundwater supplies.18
Fluoridated salt
As the BFS says, in some countries – France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland – salt is fluoridated instead of water.19 This is more consumer-friendly, as it does at least give consumers the choice of whether they want to ingest fluoride or not. But note that teeth in countries that fluoridate salt, just like those in countries that fluoridate water, are well down the European DMFT league tables.
Other countries
Japan
Influenced by America, Japan fluoridated its water supplies after World War II. But research soon showed the harm that fluoride could do. The Japanese were worried about the impact of fluoridated water on human health. As a consequence, Japan reduced the maximum amount of fluoride allowed in drinking water to one-eighth of that in the USA, and allowed only natural calcium fluoride to be added even then. As individuals differ, the Japanese feel that fluoridation is an inappropriate application that may cause health problems to vulnerable people and that there are better ways of protecting their people’s dental health.20 Japan is not fluoridated.
China
Gao Xishui, in a letter from the Ministry of Health, People’s Republic of China, states: ‘[H]aving consulted with the Ministry of Construction we would like to inform you that it is not allowed to add fluoride into public drinking water in accordance with the regulations of the Hygiene Standards of Public Drinking Water in China.’21
Australia
Some of Australia’s fluoride laws are so draconian that people can be prosecuted for speaking out against water fluoridation.22
There was so much disquiet in Australia about fluoride that in 1989 a law was passed in New South Wales to prohibit town councils from stopping the fluoridation of their water supplies without the permission of the health department.
In November 1994, just as the parliament of Victoria was about to rise for the summer recess, its members passed an amendment to the Fluoridation Act to change the constitution of Victoria in order to stop the Supreme Court of Victoria from hearing any cases or evidence against fluoridation. In support of the change, the Health Minister of Victoria said the alteration to the constitution had been made because ‘fluoridation is important’. Not one member asked: ‘What does the Minister mean by important?’ On 28 December, Dr W.G. Hart, manager of health protection, Public Health Branch, wrote officially in a letter:
With respect to compensation the Department does not accept liability for alleged damage caused by water fluoridation and will not support any claims for compensation.
The following year, the Tasmanian government went one step further by passing a bill through the Lower House to prohibit the holding of meetings on the subject of fluoridation. Called the Consequential Amendments Bill, this prohibited the discussion of fluoridation in private, public, councils, legal parties, schools where education is supposed to be provided, indeed anywhere in Tasmania. This was based on a special clause declaring fluoridation of public drinking water supplies to be an ‘issue of significant interest’.
It certainly is!
Later, the Tasmanian bill was withdrawn to be reworded and reissued at a later date.
Throughout Europe, and in the rest of the world, wherever it is possible to discuss and debate water fluoridation, the process is banned, has been abandoned, or has never been adopted in the first place. It is only in countries in which the law makes fluoridation mandatory, or discussion of fluoridation illegal, that fluoride is widely used.
Fluoridation is the longest, most expensive and most spectacularly unsuccessful marketing campaign ever to come out of the United States.
1.Letter from M. Eisenhut, Österreichische Vereinigung für das Gas- und Wasserfach, Vienna, 17 February 2000.
2.Künzel W, Fischer T. Rise and fall of caries prevalence in German towns with different F concentrations in drinking water. Caries Res 1997; 31: 166–73.
3.Letter from Bundesministerium für Gesundheit, Bonn, 11 February 2000.
4.Ries J-M. Head, Water Department, Administration de L’Environnement, Luxembourg, 3 May 2000.
5.Letter from Royal Danish Embassy, Washington, DC, 22 December 1999.
6.Nordling H, Tulikoura I. Finlands Tandläkartinding 1970; 17 (11): 517.
7.Seppa L, Karkkainen S, Hausen H. Caries frequency in permanent teeth before and after discontinuation of water fluoridation in Kuopio, Finland. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol 1998; 26: 256–62.
8.Letter from National Institute of Public Health, Oslo, 1 March 2000.
9.Gothenburg Post (Sweden), 13 June 1970; News Register (Sweden), 5 Aug 1970; Norsk Folkehelselag (Norway), 1 May 1970; Caldwell G. Fluoridation and truth decay. Top-Ecol Press, Reseda, California. 1974: 287.
10.Moolenburgh H. Fluoride: The freedom fight. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1987.
11.Budding and Co. v. City of Amsterdam. Case No: 10683.
12.For data on most countries see letters to Mr E Albright of New Versailles, PA, USA from various officials in those countries. Can be accessed at http://www.fluoridealert.org or http://www.fluoridation.com.
13.Fluoridation in Spain. International Fluoride Information Network, 14 Feb 2000. http://www.fluoridealert.org/1fin-47.htm.
14.Letter from Ministry for Environment, Department for International Relations, Republic of Hungary, 24 January 2000.
15.Irish Department of Health press release, 29 May 2000.
16.Éamon Gilmore, TD. Statement, Monday, 29 May 2000.
17.http://homepage.eircom.net/~fluoridefree/CampaignUpdate/PressRelease111000.htm. Accessed 21 October 2000.
18.FG election promise to ban fluoride in drinking water. Irish Independent online, 15 January 2001. http://www.independent.ie/2001/14/n03e.shtml. Accessed 15 January 2001.
19.WHO Oral Health Country/Area Profile Programme, Dept. of Noncommunicable Diseases Surveillance/Oral Health. WHO Collaborating Centre, Malmö University, Sweden.
20.Letter from Toru Nagayama, Environment Agency, Tokyo, Japan, 8 March 2000.
21.Letter from Ministry of Health, People’s Republic of China, 1 March 2000.
22.Living in a democratic fluoridated country. Australian Fluoridation News September–October 1995; 31 (5).