Is there a better way?

After much thought, I have come up with the conclusion that the Department of Health and Human services  really has a strange philosophy of health care.For example. Imagine there is a cure for cancer, but in order for some people to gain benefit and be healed, the medicine has to be put in the water supply, and it would mean a certain number of non-cancer sufferers would die from side effects. What figures would be an acceptable sacrifice?  What about 1000 innocent children die, in order that 100,000 cancer sufferers can be cured? Doesn’t seem right does it? Ok, what about 10 innocent children die, in order that 100,000 cancer sufferers can be cured? Still doesn’t seem right? 
Well, our Government actually subscribes to this ‘sacrifice of the innocent’   health care philosophy. They quite happily offer up thousands of innocent children to suffer in their health, in order that others might have a few less cavities in their teeth. According to the most recent Australian data from the National Child Oral Health Study 2012-14 , 0.1% of children will have moderate to severe dental fluorosis, which is caused by over exposure to fluoride. Putting fluoride in the water is greatly contributing to this overexposure.  Now 0.1% doesn’t seem like a big number but out of a population of 1 million, it is a thousand. When you think that those thousand children are someone’s cherished child, the number actually seems to be quite big. Would you be happy if your child had severe dental fluorosis, knowing the trade off was that someone else’s child, might have slightly less cavities.Consider also, that over 16% will have very mild to mild dental fluorosis. Refer to attached picture to see what severe dental fluorosis looks like. 

Something else to consider is that the highly esteemed medical journal the Lancet, published an article  by Dr Grandjean, and Dr Landrigan  in their 2014 paper 'Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity’, in which they include fluoride in a list of known developmental neurotoxins.  
They write "These new approaches must reverse the dangerous presumption that new chemicals and technologies are safe until proven otherwise. They must also overcome the existing requirement to produce absolute proof of toxicity before action can be started to protect children against neurotoxic substances. Precautionary interpretation of data about developmental neurotoxicity should take into account the very large individual and societal costs that result from failure to act on available documentation to prevent disease in children. Academic research has often favoured scepticism and required extensive replication before acceptance of a hypothesis, thereby adding to the intertia in toxicology and environmental health research and the consequent disregard of many other potential neurotoxicants. Additionally, the strength of evidence that is needed to constitute 'proof' should be analysed in a societal perspective, so that the implications of ignoring a developmental neurotixicant and of failing to act on the basis of available data are also taken into account. 

The Department of health and Human Services Victoria has read this and chosen to ignore the advice from the peer reviewed publication. 
I think it is time we re-examined the whole idea of mass medication across an entire population that has not given their informed consent, and time to put water fluoridation on hold. 
Water fluoridation was enforced upon us without any trials taking place. We kind of jumped straight into it, before the jury was out. 
What if we started a trial now? The trial would be to put water fluoridation on hold for a year, and use all the money saved from the costly practice, and put it into dental health education across all schools.  Then evaluate any difference in dental health with carefully constructed studies. Then we might decide that rather than mass medicate the whole population, and sacrificing the health of thousands of innocent children, we are better off mass educating the population. This seems so much more civilised. 

Four facts about Fluoride

1. Fluoride in most drinking water isn’t natural  - it is toxic waste from the fertiliser industry.

Proponents of water fluoridation like to point out that fluoride does occur naturally in some water. 

What they don’t like to disclose is that over 90% of the fluoride that is put into the public water system is actually toxic waste from the fertiliser industry known as hydro-fluorosilicic acid. 

The Governments that insist that force medicating a population can only be a good thing, go out of their way to hide and distort the facts about the nature of the water fluoridation process.

The Victorian Government, Department of Health blatantly lie on their  publication ‘Water Fluoridation questions and answers’ which is downloadable at their website. 

Under section 3.3 ‘Does fluoride come from the fertiliser industry?’

It says in the answer  ‘ Scrubbers can also be used to reduce atmospheric pollution by gases, leading some people to conclude that because a scrubber is used to extract fluoride from rocks, fluoride must be a pollutant, but this is not the case.’ 

I don’t understand how they can say that fluoride is not a pollutant? There is not one source in any literature that would indicate that it is anything but a pollutant. 

For example in the book  'Fluorides in the environment : Effects on Plants and Animals'   By  Leonard H Weinstein, A Davison  2004

It says    ….In addition to these natural sources, the use of fluoride as a flux, as a feed material in the chemical industry, its occurrence as a contaminant in phosphates and coal, and its use in a myriad of organic compound have let to widespread air pollution and environmental damage. For over a century inorganic fluoride emissions damaged crops, forests and natural vegetation, and they caused fluorosis in factory workers, livestock and wild mammals. There is no doubt that inorganic fluoride was one of the major air pollutants of the 20th century but in the last 40 years there have been enormous improvements in the containment and scrubbing of emissions…… 

Page 12   ‘  The processing of rock phosphate  also results in the emission of large amounts of silicon tetrafluoride because, in addition to apatite, the rock contains silica in the form of SiO2 .  During the evaporation step, much of the fluoride is the rock is volatilized and the fluorides produced are wet-scrubbed, often resulting in the production of commercial products, such as fluorosilicic acid, fluorosilicates….."

Also  in the book  'Pollution control in fertilizer production'     1994

Edited by Charles A. Hodge and Neculai N Popovici

Page 11  ‘Pollutants resulting from the processing of phosphates in wastewaters include PO, SO and F- ions. In addition to the fact that their degree is somewhat lower,  with the exception of fluorine compounds….’ 

Also in  'Air Pollution' Second Edition  

Volume lll

Sources of Air Pollution and their Control  Edited by Arthur C. Stern   1968

page 514

Phosphate Fertilizer Production

A triple superphosphate fertilizer plant at Brewster, Florida, employs a battery of neoprene-lined scrubbers for control of fluoride and sulfer dioxide emissions to the atmosphere. The liquid from the scrubber is treated by chemical and physical means to reduce the concentration of fluoride to below 5ppm before it is discharged to the Alafia River. This conforms to the stream pollution control requirements of the state…’ 

Also on in 'Manual of Fertilizer Processing'  edited by Francis T. Nielsson  1987

page 474

‘Under Subpart B of title 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 60, the U.S.  EPA was then required to publish a guideline document for the development of state emission standards for the control of fluoride emissions from existing phosphate fertilizer plants……

Why would the EPA develop state emission standards for the control of fluoride emissions if it wasn’t a pollutant as they claim in their Q & A document?  

The ‘Water Fluoridation question and answers’  document also makes the claim that the only reason fluoride is collected during the refining process, is for water fluoridation purposes, and that it could just as easily be left in the phosphate fertiliser if there was no market for it  (eg water fluoridation) 

This does not seem like it is true when you look into the whole process. 

According to Pollution control in fertilizer production     1994

Edited by Charles A. Hodge and Neculai N Popovici 

Page 444  ‘ It is obvious it is very costly to handle the liquid effluents problem in a nitrophosphate plant, as environment-protection factors are generally involved………To minimize these costs, several factors should be considered :  ……Developing markets for a variety of by-products………’ 

It seems that the industry has always been looking for ways it can off sell its waste products, and water fluoridation conveniently opened up this opportunity. 

In 1983, Rebecaa Hanmer, the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water at the US Environmental Protection Agency, described the policy of using the phosphate industry’s silicofluorides for fluoridation as follows :  

‘In regard to the use of fluosilicic acid as the source of fluoride for fluoridation, this agency regards such use as an ideal solution to a long standing problem. By recovering by-product fluosilicic acid from fertilizer manufacturing, water and air pollution are minimized, and water authorities have a low-cost source of fluoride available to them’  

So, it seems that hydro-fluorosilicic acid is the dirty little secret the government doesn’t want you to know about. It doesn’t sound good for public relations to openly admit the truth that toxic waste from the fertiliser is being conveniently disposed of in the public drinker water system, into our homes, and into our children’s stomachs. 

The other dirty little secret that the Government attempt to put a spin on to make it sound not so bad, is that the toxic waste that they are putting in the water supply under the guise of water fluoridation is  full of impurities and carcinogenic substances like arsenic. 

The Department of Health Victoria even admit on their website that the Hydro-Fluorosilicic acid they had tested  contained 5.2mg of arsenic per litre. See the document ‘Water Fluoridation questions and answers’ which is downloadable at the department of Health’s Website, under the section 3.11 “Do fluoride compounds contain impurities’. 

It is hard to believe, but according to the figures given, over  35 kgs of arsenic has been added to Melbourne’s current water supply based on the figures supplied by the department of Health. 

Can you imagine if an individual broke into Melbourne water supply, and dumped 35 kg’s of arsenic into it. He would be arrested immediately, labeled a terrorist, and most likely jailed for a very long time. 

Yet here we have the 'Department of health', with a regulation loophole, allowing it to put thousands of litres of toxic industrial waste contaminated with arsenic, into the water supply.  Can you imagine the shock and horror of millions of people in Melbourne if they found out this truth?  It doesn’t matter that it ends up being diluted to a point that it is under the contaminant goal.  The goal for known carcinogens in water supply, is to keep them down as low to zero as possible.

The Department of Health should be aiming to provide the purest form of water to the people it serves, not adding 35kgs of a known carcinogen! This is not even looking at the other impurities found in Fluorosilicic acid such as lead, mercury, uranium and radionuclides.

The basic maths is as follows. 

The publication downloadable on the Department of Health’s website called ‘Water Fluoridation questions and answers’  says that there is 5.2mg/l of Arsenic in the Fluorosilicic acid (FSA) that comes from the pollution scrubbers of the fertiliser industry.

Melbourne currently has 1134 billion litres of water in its water supply.

The FSA is added to the water at 6ml/l  to end up with 1mg/l of fluoride.

This means that there is 6 mls of FSA per 1000 litres, which is 6 litres of FSA per million litres of water, and 6000 litres of FSA per billion litres of water

Since there is 1134 billion litres of water in Melbourne’s water supply, there is 6,800,400 litres of FSA required to be added to get the level of Fluoride up to 1mg/l.   (ie 6000x1134)

Since every litre of FSA has 5.2mg of arsenic, or .0052 grams per litre,  there is .0052 x 6,800,400  = 35,362 grams or  35 kgs of arsenic

So when pro fluoridation advocates like Professor Matthew Hopcraft say ‘ regardless of the original compound source, the end result is the same – fluoride ions in the water.’ It couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that it does matter where the fluoride comes from, and toxic waste from the fertiliser industry is not what any sane person would  want in their water supply. 

2. Fluoridated water doesn’t work - There is no good evidence that fluoridation works. 

According to the World Health organisation statistics, the tooth decay rates from both fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries have decreased at the same rates since water fluoridation began. It appears that better oral health has lowered the cavity rates, and water fluoridation has had little, if any impact.

Since over 60 years of water fluoridation there has yet to be a single randomized controlled trial to demonstrate its benefits. 

There is only sub standard studies done. For example in  'Health effects of Water Fluoridation: Evidence Evaluation Report' by the NHMRC in 2016  table 1 on page 8,  Titled  -  ‘Summary of findings for dental caries in deciduous teeth’  the quality of evidence ranges from ‘We are not confident about the reported associations’ to ‘Our confidence in the reported associations is limited.’  There is not a single study classified as being 'very confident in the reported associations’  or not even a  single ‘moderately confident’ report. 
The same is for table 2  called ‘Summary of findings for dental caries in permanent teeth'.  

On page 20 of the NHMRC Evidence Evaluation Report they say regarding the quality of evidence:

"QUALITY OF THE EVIDENCE

Overall, the quality of the evidence for dental outcomes was low or very low. This was largely due to the limitations of observational studies, however restricting the inclusion to studies which adjusted for known confounding factors resulted in most of the included studies for caries being assessed as of acceptable quality. Any individual studies assessed as being of low quality were generally considered to be at risk of selection bias. 

The Cochrane review  in 2015 concluded ' There is very little contemporary evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, evaluating the effectiveness of water fluoridation for the prevention of caries.’ (The Cochrane Review is what the NHMRC based it’s latest review on)

In 2000, a systematic review of the fluoridation literature commissioned by the British Government (“York Review”) found that, under current standards for what constitutes good medical evidence, there has not yet been a single high-quality study demonstrating fluoridation’s benefits. Notably, the York Review found that there was not a single ‘randomized controlled trial’ (RCT) demonstrating water fluoridation’s safety or effectiveness. As the York Review noted, an RCT is ‘the gold standard’ for proving the safety and effectiveness of a medical treatment.  SIr Iain Chalmers, a scientist who served on the advisory board of the York Review, summarized the quality of evidence proving fluoridation’s safety and effectiveness as follows : ‘The quality of evidence for topical fluoride is in a different league from the evidence for water fluoridation. I mean, absolutely no question about that. The evidence on topical fluoride has been generated from randomized controlled trials, many of them, I think it’s well over 50, for example, just for toothpaste, let alone the varnishes and other things which can be used. So, those studies are, as I say, in a different league from the studies on water fluoridation. As far as the York team were able to determine, there are no randomized controlled trials for water fluoridation. It’s not that they couldn’t have been done. Of course they could have been done. But there are none.’

See also http://www.newsweek.com/fluoridation-may-not-prevent-cavities-huge-study-shows-348251

3.Studies show that Fluoridated water causes cancer and other health problems

A significant study in 2006 by Bassin et al linked age related water fluoridation exposure to Osteosarcoma (a type of bone cancer) in boys and young men. As of 2017, no scientist in the world has refuted this study. 

Fluoride is linked to a health problem called ‘severe dental fluorosis’.  

Thousands of people suffer from this horrible condition that is contributed by water fluoridation. 

Over 50 studies on humans and 45 studies on animals show that fluoride harms the brain and lowers IQ. 

The highly esteemed medical journal the Lancet, published an article  by Dr Grandjean, and Dr Landrigan  in their 2014 paper 'Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity’, in which they include fluoride in a list of known developmental neurotoxins.

4. Fluoridated water is not safe for infant formula

 The highly esteemed medical journal the Lancet, published an article  by Dr Grandjean, and Dr Landrigan  in their 2014 paper 'Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity’, in which they include fluoride in a list of known developmental neurotoxins.  They write "These new approaches must reverse the dangerous presumption that new chemicals and technologies are safe until proven otherwise. They must also overcome the existing requirement to produce absolute proof of toxicity before action can be started to protect children against neurotixic substances. Precautionary interpretation of data about developmental neurotoxicity should take into account the very large individual and societal costs that result from failure to act on available documentation to prevent disease in children. Academic research has often favoured scepticism and required extensive replication before acceptance of a hypothesis, thereby adding to the intertia in toxicology and environmental health research and the consequent disregard of many other potential neurotoxicants. Additionally, the strength of evidence that is needed to constitute 'proof' should be analysed in a societal perspective, so that the implications of ignoring a developmental neurotixicant and of failing to act on the basis of available data are also taken into account. 

Based on the advice of Dr Grandjean and Dr Landrigan, why would any parent want to risk the health of their child, by mixing water that has a highly toxic, known developmental neurotoxin in it?

The Victorian Department of health’s strong desire to force medicate the population, means that they are willing to ignore the warning signs from the research and rather than following the precautionary principle, they insist that it is safe to feed your newborn baby with formula reconstituted with fluoridated tap water. They don’t even bother warning parents of the risk of dental fluorosis by giving babies high quantities of fluoride in comparison to their body weight. 

According to the Australian Dental Journal 1996.Feb;41(1):37-42.  by authors  Slivia M, and Reynalds EC, The upper optimal limit for fluoride is .07 mg/kg body mass.   If a 4kg baby has 700 mls of formula using fluoridated water at 1ppm to reconstitute, they will drink  .7 mg of fluoride, when the upper limit based .07 mg/kg body mass is .28 for a 4kg baby. This means they are drinking more than twice the upper level!

Based on the above four facts, we can conclude that fluoride is bad to drink, and we need to get it out of our water supply. 

2017 Chilean review: fluoridation is ineffective & harmful

A team of experts from Chile--including doctors, biologists, a lawyer, a civil engineer, a toxicologist, an environmental expert, and a chemist--have published a damning review of water fluoridation in the Medical Journal of Chile, February 2017.  The review was financed by the Medical College of Chile.  

Chile is considered a pioneer in the fluoridation of drinking water, starting in 1953 when Curico was fluoridated.  By 1958, nearly 60% of the country was fluoridated, and constant expansion has led to a current rate of 82.5%. 

Despite the long history of national support for the practice, the article entitled, "Consequences of Fluoridation of Drinking Water on Human Health," concludes that artificial fluoridation of drinking water and milk has not only been ineffective at reducing dental decay in children, but is likely harmful to health.  According to the researchers:

"A) The effects of fluoride intake pose risks of various diseases in the asthmatic-skeletal, neurological, endocrine and skin systems. Dental and skeletal fluorosis are signs of chronic and excessive ingestion of fluoride.

B) Infants, children and adolescents are at high risk of diseases due to over-intake of fluorides, through drinking water and / or fluoridated milk, as the deterioration of health is proportional to the dose and the time of exposure .

C) The fluoridation of drinking water does not significantly impact on caries prevention. For their effectiveness is rather a topical and non-systemic effect, as demonstrated by countries that do not fluoride drinking water, and do not use milk or fluoride salts, decreasing dental deterioration at the same rate as those that fluoride drinking water."

The research team based their analysis on a review of all available studies that included control of confounding variables.  They discuss fluoride's ability to cause bone, thyroid, neurological, and skin damage.  There is also in indepth analysis of WHO data that shows, "fluoridation of drinking water and salts have no incidence at all in reducing dental [decay]." 

There was also a brief discussion on the legal aspects of water fluoridation, which found the following:

"The fluoridation of drinking water in Chile forces citizens to involuntarly consume a chemical they do not require.  For decade the majority of the Chilean population has been overexposed to this potentially unhealthy element, transgressing constitional guarantees."

In response to their findings the research team made the following recommendations:

" 1. To amend Decree No. 735 of November 7, 1969, updating it with Supreme Decree No. 131 of 2006, and the Regulations for Services for Human Consumption of 2007, to avoid fluoridation of drinking water and avoid fluoridation Of milk, in all regions of the country.

2. Prioritize the use of dental hygiene products containing the necessary, but minimal, amounts of fluoride to maintain dental health, strengthen education for better dental care and better nutrition.

3. Educate health and education professionals about the adverse consequences of fluoride intake.

4. To carry out epidemiological studies in Chile, to evaluate the adverse effects on health, through ingestion and use of fluorides, for decades."

for more information see fluoridealert.org