Fluoride Not an Essential Nutrient |
Do we need to fluoridate all water supplies?
BFS suggested answer
No. The British Dental Association recommends that coverage should be extended to reach 25% of the population where tooth decay rates are unacceptably high. These areas include: the West of Scotland, the North West and parts of the North East of England, parts of Yorkshire, parts of Wales, and Inner London.
BFS suggested answer refuted
Fluoride does not need to be swallowed to be effective. It is not an essential nutrient. Nor should it be considered a desirable ‘supplement’ for children living in non-fluoridated areas . . . Even if there were a systemic benefit from ingestion of fluoride, it would be minuscule and clinically irrelevant. The notion that systemic fluorides are needed in non-fluoridated areas is an outdated one that should be abandoned altogether.
Hardy Limeback, associate professor and head of preventive dentistry, University of Toronto
A major argument that fluoridationists put forward in favour of fluoridation is that fluoride is essential for the correct formation of dental enamel. In other words, fluorine is an element that the body needs to develop healthily: an essential nutrient, in the same way as other minerals and vitamins.
FDA position on ‘nutrient’ fluoride
New rules for recommended daily allowances (RDAs) for nutrients were proposed by the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) in the early 1970s. In January 1973 the FDA published a list of several nutrients that were termed essential but for which no RDAs had been established. Fluorine was included in this list.1 Later that year, fluoride was officially classified as essential by the FDA.2 Yet, strangely, despite this classification of ‘essential’ given to fluoride, dietary supplements containing fluoride were, and still are, available only on prescription.
The following year, as a result of court action challenging some of the FDA’s policies and regulations, the FDA was ordered to integrate into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) those nutrients, including fluoride, that were classified as essential but that did not have RDAs. These nutrients would then be available for food additives or dietary supplements.3
In 1975, the FDA explicitly designated fluoride as ‘not generally recognized as safe’.4 Any vitamin or mineral that is not generally recognised as safe falls into the ‘food additive’ category under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1945. And so, fluoride was placed in this category. Unlike many other substances, which become food additives only if they exceed a certain level, fluoride is a food additive at any level.
The FDA permits no fluoride whatsoever to be added to food or over-the-counter dietary supplements – it is not designated as safe at any level. Despite this, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare exempted fluoridated water supplies from this FDA ban.5 It also exempted the addition of such fluoridated water in the processing of food.6
By 1976 fluoride’s classification as essential was downgraded to ‘probably essential’, for which no RDA was established.7 And three years later, the FDA deleted the paragraphs of the Federal Register that had classified fluorine as essential or probably essential.8 From March 1979, fluoride ceased to be either an essential or a probably essential nutrient in the USA.
In 1991 the US public health service reported: ‘Although fluoride compounds occur naturally, both in the environment and in most constituents of the body, there is no conclusive evidence that fluorine or any of the fluoride compounds are essential for human homeostasis or growth.’9
The ‘belief’ by fluoride proponents that our bodies need fluoride is just that – a belief. It’s not based on scientific research.
Dietary Reference Values for Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom
The latest edition of this book was published by the UK Department of Health in 1997.10 That was the year in which the Department of Health increased its funding of the British Fluoridation Society from £74,000 to £117,000 a year.
The chapter on fluoride is the only one that has a heading announcing: ‘This chapter and the safe intake levels have been revised to take account of some inconsistencies within the previous chapter.’ One of the ‘inconsistencies’ was a reference in the previous edition to the fact that ‘[w]here the water supply naturally contains 1 mg/kg (1 ppm), early radiographic evidence of skeletal fluorosis has been reported in adult populations’. It was removed.
The Panel on the Dietary Reference Values quotes the British Dental Association’s 1981 recommendation that fluoride supplements were necessary in unfluoridated areas. It missed the British Dental Journal’s explicit statement of 11 January 1997: ‘Fluoride supplements are no longer generally seen as a public health measure where water fluoridation has not been introduced.’
The Panel omitted another ‘inconsistent’ scientific reference in the previous edition: ‘In the USA infants and children who received fluoride supplements of 0.5 mg/day until 3 years of age and 1.0 mg/day thereafter had a 63% incidence of dental fluorosis by the age of 12 years.’ These supplement dosages are essentially the same as those recommended by the British Dental Association in 1981.
Nowhere does the Panel refer to the fact that 50 per cent of all fluoride ingested will accumulate in the skeleton and that this continues throughout life into old age. The Panel has ducked the consideration of any aspect of this accumulation in bone in British fluoridated areas by quoting American research in Texas in 1950 and the results of an Australian enquiry in 1980.11
As in previous editions, the publication had to admit: ‘No essential function for fluoride has been proven in humans.’ It states: ‘As there does not appear to be a physiological requirement for fluoride the Panel set no Reference Nutritional Intake.’ But that didn’t stop the Panel endorsing water fluoridation.
This latest publication includes a chapter on sugars. The Panel accepts the conclusions of COMA’s 1989 report, which stated that ‘sugars were a major cause of dental caries in the UK and that their consumption by the population should be decreased’.12
Despite the fact that medical experts in the UK Department of Health are obviously aware of the pre-eminent role of sugar in causing dental decay, the Welsh and English Green Papers, which purport to consider all aspects of health, make no mention of sugar at all, preferring instead to concentrate solely on fluoridation as the ideal remedy for tooth decay.
Conclusion
Dentists invariably misguide the public by designating dental caries as a fluoride deficiency disorder. But this is a gross scientific error. We know from Chapter 1 that you can have perfectly good teeth without fluoride. Our bodies have no need of it.
There can be no such thing as a fluoride deficiency, as fluorine is such a ubiquitous element. Fluoride is not a nutrient: it is used only as a medication, with the supposed therapeutic effects of strengthening the tooth enamel and killing off the oral bacteria that cause tooth decay.
There are more sensible ways of giving fluoride to those who want it. If we choose to ignore the risks of fluoride and set as our goal the adequate provision of fluoride for children’s teeth, the most sensible way to reach that goal is to use toothpaste and the numerous fluoride-containing dental products.
So the truthful answer to this question is: No. Britain doesn’t need to fluoridate any water supplies.
1.Vol 38, Fed Reg 2149 (19 January 1973).
2.Vol 38, Fed Reg 20717 (2 August 1973).
3.National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) v. FDA, 504 Federal Reporter 2d, p. 786; Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, decided 15 August 1974.
4.Vol 40, Fed Reg 23248 (28 May 1975).
5.CFR, Title 21, 1979, Par. 170.45: ‘Fluorine-containing compounds’.
6.CFR, Title 21, 1979, Par. 250.203: ‘Status of fluoridated water and food prepared with fluoridated water’.
7.Vol 41, Fed Reg 46175 (19 October 1976).
8.Vol 44, Fed Reg 16006 (16 March 1979).
9.Review of fluoride: Benefits and risks. US Department of Health and Human Services, 1991.
10.UK Department of Health. Report on health and social subjects. 41: Dietary reference values for food energy and nutrients for the United Kingdom. 8th impression. London: HMSO, 1997.
11.Victoria Committee report of fluoridation of Victorian water supplies. Melbourne: FD Atkinson, Government printer, 1980: 278.
12.UK Department of Health. Report on health and social subjects. 37: Dietary sugars and human disease. London: HMSO, 1989.