Is
Fluoride Really As Safe As You Are Told?
Part
1
Part 2
Part 3
Fluoride
is added to the water supply of most American cities for the ostensible
purpose of dental hygiene. The reader will be amazed to find out
that such a thing is not only unlikely, but actually the reverse
of the ongoing reality.
The U.S. has been
fluoridating drinking water for so many decades that we hardly
think about it. Very few articles appear about fluoridation in
newspapers and magazines any more.
At least chlorine
will evaporate from a glass of water if you let it sit for an
hour or so. No such luck with fluoride. Even cooking, food processing,
filtration, or digestion doesn't remove fluoride. Goes right up
the food chain. Accumulates in fat cells.
This Is No
Accident.
What
would you do if you suddenly found out that fluoride was not safe
at all, but was actually a carcinogenic industrial waste?
What would you think
if you suddenly found out that fluoride doesn't stop tooth decay
at all, but actually causes teeth to rot and crumble, and by the
same mechanism also causes osteoporosis?
And after you found
out all this, would it surprise you that all federal health agencies
have known these facts for years, but have been controlled by
the political interests of the nuclear arms, aluminum, and phosphate
manufacturers to keep it a secret?
Why would they do
that? So that, in the total absence of scientific proofs, a toxic
industrial waste could be passed off on the public as a nutrient
with necessary health benefits, to the tune of $10 billion per
year. Or more.
Is a deception of
this magnitude possible for the sophisticated, discerning American
public? Perhaps Lance Ito could answer a question like that.
Let's start at the
beginning.
What Is Fluoride?
Fluorine
is an element. It is a gas, never occurring in its free state.
In microscopic amounts complexed with other minerals, it is often
listed as a trace mineral, a nutrient for human nutrition.
This has nothing to
do with fluoride or fluoridation. The fluoride added to 90% of
drinking water is hydrofluoric acid which is a compound of fluorine
that is a chemical byproduct of aluminum, steel, cement, phosphate,
and nuclear weapons manufacturing.
Such fluoride is manmade.
In this form, fluoride has no nutrient value whatsoever. It is
one of the most caustic of industrial chemicals. Fluoride is the
active toxin in rat poisons and cockroach powder.
Hydrofluoric acid
is used to refine high octane gasoline, to make fluorocarbons
and chlorofluorocarbons for freezers and air conditioners, and
to manufacture computer screens, fluorescent light bulbs, semiconductors,
plastics, herbicides, -- and toothpaste.
It also has the ability
to burn flesh to the bone, destroy eyes, and sear lungs so that
victims drown in their own body fluid.
Once in the body,
fluoride is a destroyer of human enzymes. It does this by changing
their shapes. You'll remember from the Enzymes chapter (www.thedoctorwithin.com)
that in human biochemistry, thousands of enzymes are necessary
for various essential cell reactions that take place every second
we're alive. (Howell) Without enzymes, we'd die instantaneously.
Once in the body,
fluoride is a destroyer of human enzymes. It does this by changing
their shapes. In human biochemistry, thousands of enzymes are
necessary for various essential cell reactions that take place
every second we're alive. Without enzymes, we'd die instantaneously.
Enzymes trigger specific
reactions in the body. One way they do this is by having the exact
shape necessary, like a key in a lock.
Fluoride Changes The
Shape Of The Enzymes So That They No Longer Fit.
Since enzymes are
proteins, once they've been changed, they're now foreign-looking.
The body now treats them as invaders, even though they're part
of that body. This is known as an autoimmune situation - the body
attacks itself.
Another way to look
at it: enzymes are long-chain proteins held in certain shapes.
Hydrogen bonds are the velcro strips that hold the enzyme in a
certain shape. Fluoride comes along and hydrolyzes the enzyme:
cuts the Velcro strips away. The shape collapses. No more enzyme;
now just a foreign protein.
Starting Point
The
most thorough explanation of the origin, action, diseases, and
politics of fluoride was presented in a book called Fluoride the
Aging Factor by John Yiamouyiannis, PhD.
This book is the result
of 25 years of research and working behind the scenes of the fluoride
phenomenon. Big money generally means big monkey business, you
may have noticed by now, and fluoride is right up there.
Dr. Yiamouyiannis
was the science director of the National Health Federation. He
then went on to head the Safe Water Foundation. Dr Y can tell
you all about monkey business.
No one can comment
intelligently about fluoride in the U.S. without dealing with
the issues raised in his pivotal book. It is simply a review of
the literature on fluoride up to 1994.
Dr. Y starts by citing
hundreds of international studies of fluoridation that have been
conducted all over the world since the 1930s. After awhile, there
seem to be just two types:
Studies that were
really looking to find out about fluoride Studies that were trying
to cover up what had already been discovered
Examples Of
The Former:
Taylor
Study, University of Austin: fluoride concentration of 1PPM (parts
per million) increases tumor growth rate by 25%
Fluoride is more poisonous
than lead, and just less poisonous than arsenic - Clinical Toxicology
of Commercial Products -- 1984
"A seven ounce
tube of toothpaste, theoretically at least, contains enough fluoride
to kill a small child." - Procter&Gamble, quoted in Fluoride
the Aging Factor p14
Fluoride supplements
should not be given to children under three years old - 1992 Canadian
Dental Association Proposed Fluoride Guidelines, Dr. Limeback
Fluoride Accelerates
Your Aging Process
Austrian
researchers proved in the 1970s that as little as 1 ppm fluoride
concentration can disrupt DNA repair enzymes by 50%. When DNA
can't repair damaged cells, we get old fast.
Fluoride prematurely
ages the body, mainly by distortion of enzyme shape. Again, when
enzymes get twisted out of shape, they can't do their jobs. This
results in collagen breakdown, eczema, tissue damage, skin wrinkling,
genetic damage, and immune suppression. Practically any disease
you can name may then be caused.
All systems of the
body are dependent upon enzymes. When fluoride changes the enzymes,
this can damage:
- immune system
- digestive system
- respiratory system
- blood circulation
- kidney function
- liver function
- brain function
- thyroid function
Things wear out too
fast - the young body becomes old.
The distorted enzymes
are proteins, but now they have become foreign protein, which
we know is the exact cause of autoimmune diseases, such as lupus,
arthritis,
asthma, and arteriosclerosis
Collagen Is
The Body's Glue and Fluoride Ruins It
That's
not just a metaphor; when collagen breaks down, tissues simply
lose their substance, their framework. Fluoride dissolves the
body's glue simply by preventing new collagen from being formed.
DR Y gives a masterful
explanation of fluoride's disruption of collagen. Not only is
the collagen incorrectly formed, it is wrongly mineralized.
Some collagen, like
bones and teeth, should be mineralized in order to give it hardness.
Other collagen structures, like ligaments, tendons and, and muscles,
should not be mineralized, in order to keep them flexible and
resilient.
Fluoride mineralizes
the tendons, and muscles and ligaments, making them crackly and
painful and inflexible. At the same time fluoride interferes with
mineralization of bones and teeth, causing osteoporosis and mottling
or dental fluorosis.
Fluoride Ruins
Your Teeth
Wait
a second here! I thought that was the whole reason why we fluoridated
water in the first place - to prevent cavities and build strong
teeth, right? Wrong again. And this is where politics and dog-wagging
have eclipsed science. DR Y gives an exhaustive review of the
scientific literature of the past 40 years proving beyond a reasonable
doubt that fluoride interferes with tooth formation, causing permanent
discoloration and actual crumbling.
The process whereby
teeth are discolored and crumble from fluoridation is know as
dental fluorosis.
The US Public Health
service has known since the research of its own Dr. HT Dean in
1937 that as fluoride levels rose, so did the percentage of children
with dental fluorosis, in a study of 15 major American cities.
The same findings
were evident in a University of Texas study comparing dental fluorosis
in children who lived in fluoridated and unfluoridated areas of
Texas.
Dr. Segretto found
a 35% higher incidence of fluorosis in children who drank water
with fluorine concentration of 1-1.4 PPM, compared with those
whose water was in the .3 PPM range. This little study was written
up in the Journal of the American Dental Association.
Yiamouyiannis goes
on and on, citing one peer-reviewed study after another, all coming
to the same inescapable conclusion:
The More Fluoride
In The Water, The More Tooth Malformation And Discoloration.
It's beyond controversy,
when you view these studies from all over the world - New Zealand,
India, Denmark, England, Ireland, Italy, Illinois - same finding.
Even with this consistent finding across the board, the standard
level of fluoridation recommended for dental health in the US
is 1 part per million.
How Is This
Possible?
A major
gain for antifluoridation happened in the past few years, which
most people haven't even noticed. The FDA required all toothpaste
manufacturers to print a warning
on the label that if more than a pea-sized amount of toothpaste
is swallowed, the local Poison Control Center should be notified.
The American Dental
Association and other defenders of fluoride have testified and
continue to insist that dental fluorosis is a "cosmetic condition"
and is not a health issue!
Permanent malformation
of the teeth is a little more serious than cosmetic - but even
if it weren't, how can a additive whose only alleged purpose is
to benefit teeth destroy teeth?? In their current website, the
ADA actually challenges this FDA warning on toothpaste labels,
saying that it is unnecessarily strict.
Paul Connett, PhD
explains that spots on the teeth and dental fluorosis are just
an indication of damage to other parts of the body:
"The teeth are
windows to what's happening in the bones."
Fluoride And
Osteoporosis
Bone
is collagen. We already saw how fluoride disrupts the formation
of enzymes necessary for collagen production. So it's no wonder
then that the thin brittle bones characteristic of osteoporosis
are the result of fluoridation.
This is no false claim.
DR Y cites the 1990
study of 541,000 cases of osteoporosis that found a definite connection
between hip fractures in women over 65 and fluoride levels. The
study was written up in JAMA. Several other major studies are
cited, massive amounts of research, again all reaching the same
conclusion - the undeniable correlation of fluoridation with osteoporosis
and hip fracture in the elderly.
Bone Is Living
Tissue.
It is constantly being
replaced with new cells, and having old cells removed. Bone building
is a finely balanced, complicated process. Fluoride has been known
to disrupt this process since the 1930s. Dr. Alesen, who was the
president of the California Medical Association, clearly explains
what fluoride does to bone formation.
He cites dozens of
international scientific studies proving beyond a shadow of a
doubt that fluoride has caused thousands of cases of osteoporosis,
skeletal thinning, fractures, "rubber bones," anemia,
and rickets.
Fluoride also causes
osteoporosis by creating a calcium deficiency situation. Fluoride
precipitates calcium out of solution, causing low blood calcium,
as well as the buildup of calcium stones and crystals in the joints
and organs.
Dozens of other studies,
like the Riggs study in the 1990 New England Journal of Medicine,
showed that fluoride treatment of osteoporosis in the elderly
actually increases skeletal fragility, i.e., more fractures.
It's the same mechanism
at work: incorrect mineralization, as we saw above. Thin old bones
lose calcium; young bones age too rapidly by over-mineralization.
Using fluoride as
a treatment for diseases like osteoporosis has always been a particularly
dumb idea, because of side effects known beforehand:
- general arthritis
- stomach pain
- nausea
- vomiting
- bone spurs
- bone inflammation
- kidney fibrosis
- dental fluorosis
Other mineral contaminants
like lead and strontium-90 are damaging to human bone just by
means of their occupying space where they don't belong. They are
inert. The difference with fluoride is that it is biochemically
active. With all the diseases caused by fluoride, the common thread
is "…virtually
all these ill effects can be traced to the effect of fluoride
on enzymes or proteins, as well as a possible direct effect on
the DNA molecule itself."
Above we saw how fluoride
changes the all-important shape of enzymes, thereby rendering
them not only useless, but actually foreign antigens.
Cancer And
Fluoride
By now
we all know how cancer begins with one cell whose inner blueprint
- its DNA - has been screwed with.
Remember those Velcro
hydrogen bonds? Guess what other shape they hold together. The
double helix - DNA. This turns out to be the exact mechanism of
fluoride as a carcinogen.
Austrian and Japanese
researchers both found that a concentration of 1 PPM fluoride
causes disruption of the body's ability to repair its own DNA.
Without this most basic cell function, cancer is promoted, and
tumor growth is accelerated.
That's standard fluoride
level in US city water: one part per million.
On p. 65 of his book,
Dr. Yiamouyiannis provides an amazing chart of some 19 major scientific
studies conducted in universities all over the world, together
proving beyond a doubt that fluoride causes genetic damage.
End of story.
Except that on p 68,
there is another list of world studies proving the same thing
with plants and insects - genetic alteration from fluoride.
Chief chemist of the
National Cancer Institute, Dr. Dean Burk when confronted with
mountains of data, stated before Congress:
"In point of
fact, fluoride causes more human cancer death, and causes it faster
than any other chemical."
- Congressional Record
21 July 1976
Can That Be
Misconstrued?
Burk and Yiamouyiannis
completed a monumental research project in 1977 in which they
compared cancer death rates in 10 fluoridated and 10 non-fluoridated
US cities between 1940 and 1970. The results are on p75 of Fluoride
the Aging Factor.
The unmistakable fact
is that the graph shows that for the first ten years (1940-1950),
when none of the 20 cities fluoridated, the average cancer deaths
were virtually identical. But after 1950, there is a major increase
in cancer deaths in every single one of the fluoridated cities,
while the nonfluoridated cities remain clustered together at a
much lower level of death.
They actually put
a number on it:
"…30,000
to 50,000 deaths each year from various causes may now be attributable
to fluoridation. This total includes 10,000 to 20,000 deaths attributable
to fluoride-induced cancer every year."
These findings were
first confirmed, then denied by the National Cancer Institute
(what a surprise). Finally the research was upheld as valid in
two separate state courts, Pennsylvania and Illinois.
Ask yourself, why
are findings of a scientific study being disputed in court? The
usual pattern whenever valid research threatens big money.
Another study by the
New Jersey Health Dept., cited by Dr. Y, found a 50% increase
in bone cancer among young men in fluoridated areas. (Cohn)
Dr. William Hirzy,
an officer in the EPA explains:
"Fluoride is
a broad-spectrum mutagen. It can cause genetic damage in both
plant and animal cells."
Once again, this is
just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of scientific studies conducted
and reported in the most credible universities and agencies throughout
the world for the past 25 years have found an unmistakable correlation
between fluoridation and cancer deaths. Even the professional
opinion makers can't just make all this data vanish.
All they can do is
what they're trained to do: change the subject. And keep repeating
how safe and effective fluoride is.
Brain Damage = Low
IQ
Penetrating observation.
The earliest reference to brain disruption from fluoride exposure
is found in a recently declassified secret Manhattan Project memo
(1944):
"Clinical evidence
suggests that C616 [uranium hydrofluoride] may have a rather marked
central nervous system effect with mental confusion, drowsiness
and lassitude…"
How can all these
studies be dismissed and ignored? Many of them are from the most
prestigious of scientific journals. And the message has been consistent
for the past 40 years - fluoride is a poison.. What kind of power
can contradict such a cogent, overwhelming body of work?
Only one thing -very
good -- $$$$$$$$!
Got it on your first
guess!
So Then Why Are We
Fluoridating, For The Last 60 Years?
Unrestricted research
into almost any area involving health care is really a tiresome
business - it's the same boring story over and over:
A Toxin in
Search of A Market.
First a chemical is
created, then an angle is figured out on how to mass market it.
Then a disinformation program is put into place to create a permanent
smokescreen for the actual scientific data.
As we saw with ADD,
antibiotics, the history of pharmaceuticals, HRT, heart drugs,
chlorination, and now fluoridation - the pattern is consistent.
With billions of dollars
in play, the chemical industry can afford to choreograph its two
most willing marionettes: the media and the medical profession.
I didn't make this
up; I wish it were otherwise. It's embarrassing to be a human
when you find out what's been going on.
But we digress.
Fluoridation. A certified
poison, by all the government agencies and scientific agencies
cited above. Where does the money come in? Toxic disposal. The
rise of the EPA since the 1970s. The increase in environmental
consciousness as a political tool for creating the illusion of
safety in recent decades.
Here's the short version:
fluoride is a toxic byproduct in the manufacture of nuclear arms,
aluminum, cement, steel, and phosphates.
Millions of tons of
this poison are produced every year. Imagine the cost of containing
and disposing of those mountains of waste every year. It's in
the billions.
But what if lobbyists
from these industries could present "scientific studies"
paid for by the industries, and provide for a continual stream
of media presentations about the health benefits of fluoride,
and create unimaginably lucrative positions for "research"
and "education" within the American Dental Association
and the AMA, and do all these things in a consistent and unending
way, year after year?
What are the economic
advantages of that? Simple: instead of paying money to dispose
of toxic waste, money could now be made by selling fluoride to
the water companies of the nation.
They'll use the public
water supply as a sewer for industrial wastes. And now with these
new billions added instead of subtracted, there's plenty to go
around, for everyone involved. Out of the Red, into the Black.
Somewhere Machiavelli
smiles.
Dark Alliance
Up until 1931, the
American Dental Association and the US Public Health Service recognized
that fluoride caused dental problems, and that every effort should
be made to remove such contamination from drinking water. (Fluoride
the Aging Factor, p 140)
By 1980, the ADA's
tune had changed a little:
"…there
is no evidence implicating naturally occurring fluorides as a
health hazard even at eight parts per million."- ADA News
24 Mar 1980
Following this? In
the face of all the decades of our best research, this arrogant
and groundless pronouncement, by the profession to whom we have
entrusted our teeth, is saying that our water could have 8 times
as much fluoride as it has now, and still be perfectly safe!
The Players: ALCOA
Aluminum, mega-giant producer of aluminum, was founded by Andrew
Mellon, who was also appointed Secretary of Treasury, since he
seemed to know something about money.
ALCOA funded a top
research facility known as the Mellon Institute. In 1931, a Mellon
Institute report by Gerald Cox suggested that 1 PPM fluoride added
to drinking water would be good for the teeth. That was it. No
studies, no comparisons, no data. All previous research studies
had shown that fluoride was toxic.
Stay with me now.
The US Public Health Service (USPHS) at that time was under the
jurisdiction of the Secretary of Treasury - Andrew Mellon, who
also owned ALCOA.
The USPHS sponsored
some research put out by their own Dr. HT Dean, manipulating data
so that it "proved" that this same figure of 1 PPM resulted
in reduction of tooth decay. So now there were two studies, one
by Cox and one by Dean, both funded by agencies controlled by
ALCOA, both supporting this arbitrary figure of 1 PPM fluoride
that should be added to the water to lower tooth decay.
Next problem: sell
it to the American Medical Association and the American Dental
Association.
This took years. Even
in 1943, an article in JAMA described fluoride as a poison that
damaged enzyme systems even at a concentration of 1 PPM. The article
showed concern about 25,000 tons of fluorine released into the
atmosphere every year from the phosphate fertilizer industry.
(JAMA, Sept 18, 1943).
The following year
Journal of the American Dental Association ran another article
warning that fluoridated water caused osteoporosis, goiter, and
spinal disease. They stated that "the potentialities for
harm far outweigh those for good." (JADA, 1 Oct 1944)
So how did fluoridation
get started then, with all this information - thousands of negative
scientific papers and only two favorable studies? ALCOA money,
that's how.
In 1944, ALCOA hired
an attorney named Oscar Ewing at a salary of $750,000 per year.
That same year Ewing was appointed to the Federal Security Administration.
The USPHS was a division of the Federal Security Association.
So now ALCOA's boy was in a position to control the policies of
the Public Health Service.
Ewing chose his PR
man for fluoridation: Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
Is Fluoride
Really As Safe As You Are Told?
Part 2
Freud, Fraud,
And Fluoride
Edward L. Bernays,
described by the Washington Post as the 'original spin doctor"
was responsible for evolving the pro-fluoridation propaganda and
disinformation
machine. How anxious he was to put his uncle's ideas and methods
of persuasion into action. (Dr. Y, p143)
"…those
who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an
invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…our
minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely
by men we have never heard of…" - Bernays, (Propaganda)
Using classical Freudian
principles, Bernays maintained that a well-oiled propaganda machine
could make the public believe practically anything, even the exact
opposite of what had been already proven by all existing scientific
research. And this is exactly what Ewing needed in the case of
fluoridation.
With help from "experts"
of the Manhattan Project, like Harold Hodge, New York State politicians
quickly learned which side their bread was buttered on. In May
of 1945, the city of Newburgh, NY was the first to "try"
fluoridation.
The residents were
supposed to be monitored by the state Health Department for ten
years. That became the pattern - fluoride is the first drug in
history to be tested on the general population with no previous
research. Except of course for vaccines.
One of the next cities
to fall was Grand Rapids, Michigan. In July 1945, in the face
of persistent warnings from the AMA, Grand Rapids succumbed to
Bernays' propaganda machine and began a ten year "test period"
of fluoridation in which tooth decay rates would be monitored.
No one asked the question
why the testing was being done on humans in an entire city. The
project was run by HT Dean, using the statistics of Cox's original
1931 paper that arbitrarily claimed that 1 PPM fluoride was a
safe level to prevent tooth decay, with no research to back it
up. Dr. Dean almost single-handedly developed the hypothesis that
fluoride could prevent cavities.
He is "the father
of fluoridation." Dean did no research on his own, and in
later years, twice admitted in court that Cox's original statistics
were incorrect! (Foulkes, 1992 But the entire system of fluoridation
of US city water is based on the admittedly unscientific "findings"
of Dean and Cox.
Bernays' propaganda
machine now went into full swing - ads with smiling children with
beautiful teeth flooded the country's media. All anti-fluoride
studies and articles were systematically suppressed because they
weren't sanctioned by the big lobbyists for the aluminum and fertilizer
industries.
Tons of new literature
written not by doctors and scientists but by PR people and psychologists
portrayed those opposing the sacred fluoridation as right- wing
wackos. Just like in Orwell's book 1984, they tried to re-write
history, to go back and change the findings of valid research,
not by doing new research, but simply by new PR.
"I sometimes
wonder if the Aluminum Co. of America…might not have a deep
interest in getting rid of its waste products from the manufacture
of aluminum because these products contain a large amount of fluoride.
…it is interesting to note that Oscar Ewing who now heads
up the FSA, the parent organization of the US Public Health Service,
and the firm of attorneys he deals with…represents the Aluminum
Co. of America." - Congressman A.L. Miller
Fluoride And
The Atomic Bomb
It gets
darker. You may want to go for popcorn here. Dovetailing contemporaneously
into all the above activity is some mind-blowing information that
was recently uncovered by two reporters commissioned to write
an article for the Christian Science Monitor.
Working from secret
government documents that have just become declassified in the
last three years or so, Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson have illuminated
a very scary liaison: fluoride and the Manhattan Project.
As we all remember,
the Manhattan Project was the WWII secret program which brought
the atomic bomb into existence. Turns out fluoride was a key component
in the production of this bomb, in two main applications: in the
uranium complex itself, and also as a toxic waste material. (Fluoride
& Brain Damage)
There was an accident
in 1943 that had to be covered up, big time. DuPont was the chemical
company charged with producing millions of gallons of fluoride
for the Manhattan Project. A DuPont facility in Deepwater, New
Jersey dumped so much fluoride into the air and water that things
they couldn't hide started happening in the towns downwind:
- poultry died
- horses got sick
and couldn't work
- cows became so crippled
they could only crawl on their bellies to graze
- the peach crop was
destroyed
- fluoride content
of local vegetables was off the charts
- abnormally high
level of fluoride in the blood of the local people
- even the workers
at DuPont began to get sick
Now all this may not
seem like a big deal compared with the development of the most
top secret weapon in history, but the farmers in those towns didn't
know nothing about no atomic bomb. Hiroshima hadn't happened yet.
All these farmers knew was that the chemical company was poisoning
the air and the water.
The chief toxicologist
for the Manhattan Project was a guy named Harold Hodge. Hodge
was the first to notice the horrific effects of fluoride pollution
on the local environment, and alerted his superiors in several
memos, which have now been declassified.
In true military fashion,
Hodges' superiors took the warnings seriously and thought them
worthy of investigation, not because of the dangers to human and
animal life, but because of the legal liability to DuPont and
the government if the farmers were successful in a lawsuit.
So the head of the
Manhattan Project, Gen. Groves, directed Harold Hodge to research
the toxicity of fluoride spills for one reason: their own legal
defense against the farmers.
Why Was This
Never A Movie?
Hodge was granted
funding to study the nerve effects of fluoride way back in 1944.
It is likely that the research was carried out, but it is missing
from the declassified papers.
What a surprise.
Not until 1991 was
the there any published research on the neurological effects of
fluoride, when it was discovered that fluoride was a powerful
neuro-toxin that could affect human brain development and functioning,
even at low levels. Even though Hodge collaborated on Mullenix's
research some 50 years after the Manhattan Project, and it is
almost certain that Hodge was the one who conducted the missing
research in 1944, Hodge maintained a strict silence on the subject.
These guys
knew how to keep a secret.
Here's
just one example of the difference between old published versions
of fluoride research documents and secret versions of those same
documents that have recently been declassified:
Old Version, Published
In Journal Of The American Dental Association, Aug 1948:
The men who used experimental
fluoride had fewer cavities
Secret Version, Recently
De-Classified:
Most of the men had
no teeth left
Remember, this was
the beginning of the Atomic Age. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just
the opening act. The game was not world destruction, but rather
atomic production.
By 1946 the government
and industry were out to arm the world with atomic, and eventually
nuclear, weaponry. The billions of dollars all that represented,
not to mention the balance of world power (America first) - all
this was not going to be derailed just because a few horses died
and the peaches didn't come in one year.
Lawdogs Get
A Bone
So here's
what they did. You've probably guessed it. Whom do you call when
you want to turn water into wine, night into day, black into white?
That's right. Lawyers. But not the local variety. These guys were
from Washington.
They knew that if
the farmers won the lawsuits, it would open the door to a whole
storm of lawsuits, and that could seriously interfere with bomb
production. Fluoride wa essential. Bomb production was essential.
So they did the only thing a red-blooded American could do. They
lied their heads off. They proved that fluoride:
was not the cause
of all this destruction was totally safe, indeed so safe that
- it should be added to the drinking water as a nutrient
This took
some doing.
Not only did they
have the local farmers to bamboozle; the FDA started sniffing
around. After some masterful negotiating by Dupont's FDA lawyers,
everyone came to realize that the tremendous liability to which
DuPont and the government were both open could be swept away,
delayed, and sidetracked by agreeing that the fluoride problem
needed "research."
And who was charged
with doing that research?
The US Army!
That should be an
unbiased scientific outcome, right?
Ultimately DuPont
got away with it. They avoided copping to any serious liability
by claiming that to admit how much fluoride had been released
into the New Jersey environment was a matter of national security!
Without that information, the farmers' case fell apart, and most
of them settled for token sums of a few hundred dollars.
One way the bomb-makers
diverted attention from the lawsuits was to take the hint from
Harold Hodge's memo:
"Would there
be any use in making attempts to counteract the local fear of
fluoride on the part of the residents…through lectures on
F [fluoride] toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of F in tooth
health?"
And this is where
the bomb-makers found willing allies in industry and medicine
who saw an angle in using public drinking water as a dumping ground
for industrial and military toxic waste.
For the whole detonating
story, check out Griffith and Bryson's well-researched "Fluoride,
Teeth, and the A-Bomb."
Fluoride Advocates
Gain Political Momentum
Fluoridation
gathered momentum, supported by the billions that could be made
from selling a toxic waste to city water providers and the untold
billions behind the arms manufacturers outfitting the world with
nuclear weapons.
Gradually, the AMA
and the ADA, began to soften their views toward fluoridation,
until they had made a complete 180-degree shift in their opinion,
as cited above.
By 1952, the American
Dental Association had turned completely, publishing the articles
of radical fluoride advocate Frank Bull in the JADA. Bull's whole
focus was disinformation; avoiding confrontation with actual studies.
As the B in BS, Bull put the propaganda theories of Bernays into
actual practice.
Next, Procter and
Gamble scored big when they got the ADA to endorse fluoride in
toothpaste. Any dentists who spoke out against this ADA decision
were censured, lost grant funding, or were thrown out of the ADA.
By 1960 the
alliance was formed:
ALCOA
the US Public Health Service the Federal Security Administration
the American Dental Association Procter&Gamble.
It was like all the
decades of research showing fluoride as a poison had never existed.
Anyone bringing it up was subject to attack and persecution on
any level possible.
Doesn't The
American Dental Association Know The Truth?
You bet it does. Many
articles in their main journals, JADA and the Journal of Dental
Research, have proven for years that fluoride causes dental fluorosis.
But despite all the
pertinent studies and years of research, the American Dental Association
is formally in favor of fluoridation! This position has never
changed since its 1979 White Paper on Fluoridation. Politics eclipses
science, as we see in excerpts like this:
"…opponents of fluoridation are uninformed or misinformed"
or "self-styled experts whose qualifications for speaking
out on such a scientific issue as fluoridation were practically
non-existent or whose motivations are self-serving.."
or the amazing
"… individual
dentists must be convinced that they need not be familiar with
scientific reports on fluoridation…"
or the old stand-by
"…numerous
studies have shown…" although none are ever named.
Always remember -
the ADA is a trade union, a lobby whose main purpose is furthering
the economic advancement of the dental profession.
The ADA Doesn't
Represent Dental Health.
And in many cases
the ADA doesn't represent the dentists themselves. This is especially
true in the class action suit filed by some 40 dentists against
the ADA in a DC Superior Court. The charges? Ethical breach of
the public trust for recommending fluoridation while failing to
inform its members and the public of the widespread available
literature proving toxicity.
The American Dental
Association has a website which is a masterpiece of disinformation:
www.ada.org.
At the beginning of
the Fluoridation Questions section, we find the standard fluoride
advocate disinfoation posture in which natural fluoride compounds
that exist in many places in nature are presented as the same
fluoride, which is added to municipal water.
This is unmitigated,
deliberate, fraudulent misrepresentation.
The fluoride added
to water is a toxic industrial byproduct in a form nature could
never have come up with. Once you realize this simple fact, you
will be able to see the rest of the Website Whitewash in its proper
light.
While you are reading
the sections of this website, just remember that the ADA is a
trade lobby, whose mission is to assure people of the safety and
efficacy of a drug that is not safe and not effective, so that
the interests of its fellow trade lobbies from the chemical industry
are best served.
The ADA is a mouthpiece
for a huge constituency.
Their website is the
modern manifestation of Edward L. Bernays program of disinformation
and crowd control, carrying the dogma of Cox, Dean, and Bull into
the 21st century
Dr Y gives a good
summary of the liaison between the US Public Health Service and
the American Dental Association, and their control by salaried
employees of the
aluminum and phosphate industries, in his Chapter 17. It's the
predictable unholy alliance between big money, lobbyists, and
government agencies who determine policies. Just a quick glance:
The EPA And
The ADA Sell Out
In 1974, Congress
passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. Political forces cited in
the above paragraph caused safe fluoride levels to be set by the
EPA at 1.4 to 2.4 PPM! This is after decades of research showing
all the above diseases could be caused by less than 1 PPM.
The American Dental
Association's reaction to these new levels? With no new research
whatsoever, the ADA began pressuring the EPA to raise the maximum
level to 8 PPM!
Their reasoning?
For the past 20 years
the ADA had been using 1 PPM as the recommended level. Now they
didn't like the idea of the EPA doubling the ADA's old recommendation
without consulting them. The ADA wanted to be in control, no matter
what the effect on the public health.
The ADA was immediately
backed by the entire Fluoride Advocate Underworld, because higher
levels meant the polluting industries could sell even more toxic
fluoride wastes to municipal water suppliers.
Note that the entire
controversy for setting the levels of toxicity for fluoride in
US drinking water was not based at all on science, but entirely
on politics. The EPA was maneuvered into contracting a "new
study" of fluoride toxicity to a research group called ICAIR
Life Systems in 1985. Dr. Y cites a few of ICAIR's "findings":
dental fluorosis was
not an adverse health effect teeth with fluorosis are desirable
skeletal fluorosis has not been found below 4 PPM there is no
data on fluoride and genetic damage there is no data on fluoride
as a carcinogen
This is the kind of
shenanigans tax dollars are spent on: lies and disregard for decades
of important scientific research. But the waste of time and money
is secondary to the real issue: these lower primates are endangering
public health for their own political advantage and power tripping.
Big news flash,
right?
The result of all
the hearings, fraudulent reports, and maneuvering was that in
1989 the EPA tried to raise the maximum allowable level of fluoride
to 4 PPM!
Today, the recommended
level remains at 1 - 1.2 PPM, with the maximum allowable level
set at 4 PPM by the EPA.
Now check this out:
4 parts per million is 4000 parts per billion, right, math wizards?
OK. 4000 parts per billion of fluoride are allowed in drinking
water, according to the EPA. Compare that with the allowable levels
of Arsenic, Lead, and Mercury:
Maximum Contaminant
Level Allowed In U.S. Drinking Water:
Arsenic -- 50 Parts
Per Billion Lead -- 15 Parts Per Billion
Fluoride -- 4000 Parts Per Billion
Source: EPA National
Primary Drinking Water Standards (July 1987)
Remember this citation:
"Fluoride is more poisonous than lead, and just less poisonous
than arsenic."
- Clinical Toxicology
of Commercial Products - 1984
What's wrong with
this picture?
Delayed Reaction
As California Medical
Association president Dr. Alesen points out, concentration in
parts per million sidesteps the issue, regarding something that
accumulates in the body year after year. The EPA is comparing
fluorine to vitamins, for which there are minimum daily requirements.
But vitamins are completely
used up in a day or less. They don't accumulate. In addition,
setting an arbitrary level of 1 PPM fluoride in the drinking water
provides for a wide variation in toxicity: some people drink half
a glass of water per day, while others drink two liters. This
idea is a very big deal when you're talking about something that
never goes away in the body.
"It is obvious
that the important factor is not the concentration of the fluoride
in the water supply, but the total amount consumed."
That is why fluoride
poisoning can be disguised - diseases like skeletal fluorosis
may take 25 or 30 years to appear, since accumulation of fluoride
in the bones is slow and gradual.
What
Do The Real Experts Say?
"When
historians come to write about this period, they will single out
fluoridation as the single biggest mistake in public policy that
we've ever had."
- Paul Connett,
PhD, Biochemistry
"Water fluoridation
is the single largest case of scientific fraud, promoted by the
government, supported by taxpayer dollars, aided and abetted by
the ADA and the AMA, in the history of the planet."
- David Kennedy,
DDS President International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology
"Sodium fluoride
is a registered rat poison and roach poison. It has been a protected
pollutant for a very long time."
- William Hirzy,
PhD President of the Union of Professional Employees of the EPA
"sodium fluoride
is a very toxic chemical, acting as an enzyme poison, direct irritant
and calcium inactivator….It reacts with growing tooth enamel
and with bones to produce irreversible damage." -
Granville Knight, MD president of the American Academy of Nutrition
Congressional Record, 31 July 56
"I am appalled
at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. Fluoride
is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effects on a long
range basis. Any attempt to use water this way is deplorable."
- Charles Gordon Heyd, MD, president, AMA
"no physician
in his right mind would hand to his patient a bottled filled with
a dangerous drug with instructions to take as much or as little
of it as he wished… And yet, the Public Health Service is
engaged upon a widespread propaganda program to insist that communities
do exactly that…The purpose of administering fluoride is
not to render the water supply pure and potable but to contaminate
it with a dangerous, toxic drug for the purpose of administering
mass medication to the consumer, without regard to age or physical
condition."
- L. Alesen, MD, president of the California Medical Association
Robotry, p14
"Fluoridation
is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated and it has
been perpetrated on more people than any other fraud has."
- Albert Schatz,
PhD Nobel Laureate for discovering streptomycin quoted in Sutton's
Fluoridation:The Greatest Fraud
"More people
have died in the last 30 years from cancer connected with fluoridation
than all the military deaths in the entire history of the United
States."
- Dean Burk,
PhD National Cancer Institute -- Fluoridation:A Burning Controversy
"Fluoridation
is the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century, if not
of all time."
- EPA scientist, Dr. Robert Carton (Downey, 2 May 99)
Why do we
never hear any of this?
It Isn't Just The
Water
Adding fluoride to
the drinking water causes bioaccumulation in our cells, year after
year. If fluoride is in the water, it's everywhere:
- growing vegetables
and fruit
- washing vegetables
and fruit
- in the meat of
animals who have drunk fluoridated water
- in toothpaste
- in canned foods
- in processed foods
- in soft drinks
- in beer
A 1998 laboratory
analysis done at Sequoia Analytical Labs in California showed
very high concentrations of fluoride in the following foods:
- Dole pineapple,
canned
- Snapple
- Coke Classic
- Hansen's soda
- Minute Maid orange
juice
- Gerber strawberry
juice for babies
- Amstel Lite beer
- Rice Dream
- Sunny Delight orange
drink
- Pepsi
These are just a few
examples of fluoride levels in some common grocery store items
consumed by most Americans. The point is that there's an notable
fluoride content in many, if not the majority of processed foods
in our refrigerators and pantries.
That's not mentioning
our fruits and vegetables, even if they're 'organic' but grown
with city water. We're taking in a ton of fluoride from ubiquitous
sources. It accumulates over the years in our collagen, bones,
and teeth.
Is Fluoride
Really As Safe As You Are Told?
Part 3
Backs Down
In 1973, British Columbia
was considering mandatory fluoridation. They gave the job of researching
and reporting the topic to Richard Foulkes, MD. Foulkes then wrote
a 2000 page report and recommended that legislation begin to make
fluoride mandatory in Canada. Based on that work, Canada began
to fluoridate.
Then something happened.
Little by little, Foulkes found out that the statistics that his
researchers had based their findings on were largely falsified.
It took Foulkes years to run down the truth, but by 1992, he shocked
the country by backing down from his original recommendation:
"I now hold a
different view. …the fluoridation of community water supplies
can no longer be held to be either safe or effective in the reduction
of dental caries….Therefore, the practice should be abandoned."-
Foulkes, 1992
Foulkes is not some
tree-hugger from Santa Cruz. He is one of Canada's top scientific
researchers. Many areas of Canada listened and stopped fluoridating.
Want to read a first-hand story about lies and greed and disregard
for human health and crooked deals between government and industry?
Read Dr. Foulkes stuff.
Another pro-fluoride
Canadian scientist, Dr. Hardy Limeback, changed his tune when
he learned that 30-65% of Canadian children now have visible signs
of overexposure to fluoride: dental fluorosis. Limeback:
"Children under
three should never use fluoridated toothpaste. Or drink fluoridated
water."
- Toronto Star
Michael Downey interview with Limeback
Such research also
prompted the Canadian Dental Association in 1992 to keep fluoride
supplements from children of three and under. But attacking fluoride
supplement pills is just a smokescreen to protect fluoridation
of drinking water.
Most research has
found all the above ill effects at concentrations even less than
the standard 1 PPM that is in most city water. It's not the supplements
that are killing us; it's the fluoridated water.
Fluoridation
In Other Countries
If fluoridation is
as safe and effective as the American Dental Association says
it is, why don't other countries do it?
The U.S. is nowhere
near the top of any health list which compares other countries
of the world, as we saw in Chapter One. So what are the healthy
countries doing?
If fluoride is so
great, why have the following countries either never fluoridated
or else stopped when they found out how bad it was?:
West Germany
The Netherlands
France
Belgium
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Japan
Italy
Scotland
Only about 2% of the
population of Europe is subjected to fluoridated water.
Locked In
Three reasons why
we're so far down the road of toxic fluoridation, it's hard to
come back:
1. To reverse the
policy of fluoridation now would be for the ADA, the EPA, the
FDA, and the USPHS, Congress, and all the municipal water polluters
in the US to admit that they made a mistake. Not a good move for
re-election.
2.To criticize fluoridation
as a policy would challenge the billions of tons of fluoride being
released into the air and water by the nuclear, aluminum, phosphate,
steel, glass, cement, and petrochemical industries.
3. If fluoridation
stopped, a multi-million dollar gravy train of research grants,
propaganda contracts, and sweetheart arrangements between government
and industry would vaporize overnight.
Freud And
The Slime Factor
It may not be a good
idea to blind ourselves to the presence of cold-blooded 24-karat
Evil as it exists in the world today. But it's not like some madman
in a James Bond movie with terminal acne, dressed in a metallic
suit, speaking terrible English from his office in a hollowed-out
volcano somewhere, threatening to destroy the world.
No, no. These guys
are polite and well-groomed, and have impeccable credentials.
More like Al Pacino
where he's the devil in that movie with Keanu Reeves - very likable,
well-traveled, appreciates a fine wine, knows when to say that
one perfect remark to make things work…Or even Billy Crystal
where he's the devil in that Woody Allen movie - very charming
and confident. These are not people to be confronted and defeated.
No, these individuals advance.
Their expertise is
in how to get on, pageantry, presentation.
Beneath them, are
the ones who do the work. Dr. Y chronicles a group of low-level
bureaucrats and opinion makers whose unsupported, semi-literate
propaganda gets constant media play.
Propaganda
Can't Be Brilliant, And Doesn't Have To Be True Or Make Sense.
It just has to be
simple and be repeated over and over every day. These same pretenders
and "social scientists" are coincidentally the stable
of "experts" who are continually given extensive media
space to criticize anything alternative or holistic that threatens
organized medicine. Doctors of the evening. Flaccid guns for hire.
Their tactics are low-level and powerful, according to the Bernays
formula:
conduct no research
avoid the real issues when possible never engage in any debate
where actual research data will be used attack the opponent, not
the issue
Don't try to instruct,
or lead through a process of step-by-step education persuade;
do not inform use emotional phrases to distract people from the
real issues when confronted, change the subject cover up the real
studies; never refer to them.
Pretend there is some
favorable research by using phrases like "Numerous studies
have shown…" or "Research has proven..."
or "Scientific investigators have found…." but
then never cite anything.
Always harp on the
"superior education and training" of the fluoridation
people, pretending that the most educated doctors and professionals
favor fluoridation, even though Dr Y thoroughly proves that most
of the propaganda has been written by non-science people, generally
with public relations or mass-psychology backgrounds.
Keep repeating unfounded
falsehoods about the safety and effectiveness of proven poisons.
Remind people how
many decades fluoridation has been going on.
Favor mandatory fluoridation
legislation, removing all opportunity for free discussion when
possible.
Try to keep all opposing
evidence from being seen or considered by any policy-making agency
Omit pertinent data
from actual studies
Above all, never stop
repeating the same falsehoods, over and over.
Like him or not, we
must respect Freud's grasp of the human mind and what motivates
it. Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, and even though that
profession has largely fallen by the wayside, diluted by a thousand
social servants, his original principles have found a home: the
media. Shaping mass opinion in the "proper" mold - the
PC lemmings can be guided to practically any cliff the controllers
can dream up.
Reality Check
Most
people have no opportunity to have the facts of the issues presented
to them, because of the virtual blackout of information in the
media. That's why all this seems so odd.
With the help of the
colossal disinformation machine in operation, according to the
American Dental Association probably about 62% of the drinking
water in the US is fluoridated. (www.ada.org) But some courts
have shown the other side of the picture, and beginning to see
through the standard shell-games of the pro-fluoridationists.
In a famous legal
battle over fluoridation in the 1950s we find the judge letting
us have it:
"By fluoridating
the water the municipal authorities...arrogate to themselves the
sole right to decide what medicine is good for the health of the
water consumers, and thereby the municipal water system becomes
a direct conduit for the transportation of medicine from the apothecary's
pestle to the patient, without the latter's consent.
Thus will the people
be deprived of a very important part of their constitutional liberty
under our republican form of government and the police state will
be substituted for the police power of the state."
Two decades later
a Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge made a meticulous review of
all available research, both pro and con, before entering his
1979 injunction against fluoridation. His Honor was less than
impressed with the wit of the fluoridationists:
"The proponents
of fluoridation do nothing more than try to impugn the objectivity
of those who oppose fluoridation."- Judge John Flaherty Pennsylvania
Supreme Court
Judge Flaherty wrote
a letter to the Mayor of Auckland, New Zealand stating:
"…In my
view the evidence is quite convincing that the addition of sodium
fluoride to the public water supply at one part per million is
extremely deleterious to the human body, and…there is no
convincing evidence to the contrary."- The Arthritis Trust,
1994
The Legal
Novelty Of Fluoridation
Fluoridation
is a totally new idea, from a Constitutional point of view. It's
nothing like adding chlorine. Although chlorine has toxic side
effects, it actually does something beneficial to the water -
chlorine purifies the water. Fluoride does no such thing. Fluoride
is a drug, a medication that supposedly has beneficial effects
for a small percentage of the population.
"The purpose
of administering fluoride is not to render the water supply pure
and potable but to contaminate it with a dangerous toxic drug
for the purpose of administering mass medication to the consumer
without regard to age or physical condition."
In other words, without
consent. And giving drugs without consent is in direct violation
of international codes of war behavior, like Nuremberg and the
Geneva Accords. Commenting on the famous KAUL case above, Judge
Hamley had this to say:
"What future
proposals may be made to treat noncontagious disease by adding
ingredients to our water supply, or food or air, only time will
tell. When that day arrives, those who treasure their personal
liberty will look in vain for a constitutional safeguard. The
answer will be : 'You gave the Constitution away in the Kaul case."
Conversation
Stopper
Want
to stop a fluoridation advocate in his tracks?
Ask him to cite exact
legitimate studies that prove fluoridation prevents tooth decay.
Then find them. Besides
the few bogus political documents by Dean and Cox, cited above,
there aren't any. Fluoride research is a huge area. The fact that
most studies
have been almost completely suppressed for the past 50 years mars
many illusions about the democratic process.
If people want fluoride
in their drinking water, let them buy supplements. Fluoridation
of municipal water has nothing to do with health. It's just politics.
It floors you to realize
the immense amount of scientific research and legal opinion proving
the toxicity of fluoride since the 1930s, that has been ignored
and suppressed.
Why did
all those people do all that work?
With
every new city that places fluoridation on the ballot, all the
old arguments are dragged out, as if it's from scratch every time,
without the benefit of input from all the other hundreds of communities
that have gone through this same battle. Divide and conquer -
worked for the Romans.
Antifluoridationist
information programs are often privately funded grassroots little
organizations, but their influence is being felt across the nation.
With the rise of the Internet, it is getting harder to keep people
from learning the real effects about fluoride. For these reasons,
clean water is very slowing making progress against the totalitarian
forces of mass medications. But the struggle never ends.
Other Contaminants
Chlorine
and fluoride are added on purpose to the water. We haven't even
mentioned the millions of tons of industrial pollutants that sneak
into the earth's water supply every year.
To give just one small
example, Congress did a study in 1979 of the extent of industrial
pollution between 1950 and 1970. They verified just a part of
what was actually dumped into America's water supply: the top
14% of industrial polluters discharged 1.5 trillion pounds of
industrial wastes into the water supply in that 20 year period.
What about the other
86%?
Think it's improved
since 1970? Consider this:
The only federal agency
for ensuring clean drinking water is the EPA. In 1997, after the
cryptosporidium deaths in Milwaukee and Las Vegas, Clinton tried
to upgrade the provisions of the 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act.
But the EPA only regulates
some 60 chemicals-there are thousands of chemical pollutants in
the water! And the states are individually claiming that complying
with the restrictions on just those 60 are "too expensive"
because they just don't have the money. Most water systems are
operating on very old designs with inadequate capacity. (Kupua
A'o, p16)
As a result, in 1991-1992
alone, the EPA reported over 250,000 violations of the Safe Drinking
Water Act, affecting more than 100 million Americans. (Natural
Resources
Defense Council) For those 250,000 violations, guess on how many
the EPA took enforcement action. Just guess. About 600.
Looks like we're on
our own out here.
How Can We Get Pure,
Clean Water?
The tap water in this
country seems to have a few problems:
organochlorines
fluoride
PCBs
THMs
heavy metals
resistant biologicals
You'd think that since
we created the problem, we could fix it. But even if Greenpeace
or someone took over the government of the world tomorrow and
stopped all further pollution tonnage, it would be years, decades
before the water would be like it was before the Industrial Revolution.
These contaminants
will be around for centuries.
By now everyone knows
what the concept of half-life means. Different data sources, different
time frames, but one thing is certain: the water cannot be cleaned
up in our lifetime, no matter what is done. Writing a sentence
like that is a shocker. Where is my ninja team?
So What Can
We Do?
Don't
drink the tap water for starters. But does that also mean don't
wash vegetables, make ice cubes, or cook with tap water? Yes,
it does, because heat doesn't destroy fluoride, heavy metals,
or other contaminants. Remember the word bioaccumulative.
So the first step
is:
Bottled Water
That's right - drag
it home from the market every week. Or the 5-gallon bottle from
the water store. Is that safe enough? Maybe. Who knows? You have
to trust two groups of people in order to be sure:
the regulating agencies the sellers.
Water stores sell reverse osmosis water - no minerals. Bottled
water is only as good as the monitoring system in place. Step
right up.
Filters
"Buy
a filter or be a filter." That's one company's slogan.
Today there is enough
grassroots consciousness about the dangers of tap water that cheap
carbon filters are now available in any hardware store which attach
easily to the kitchen faucet. It is likely that such filters get
rid of most of the chlorine - for awhile.
But to really get
the resistant biologicals, the fluoride, heavy metals, and other
contaminants, the customer may consider one of the high-end drinking
water filters. These cost between two and four hundred dollars
and come in models for both over and under the sink.
Names like Alpine,
MultiPure, and Spectrapure are among the dozens of brand names
that have come along during the past 20 years. Multipure seems
to be out front at this time. Everyone claims to be the best,
of course, but we can find some important similarities in their
advertising. When you begin to compare the better water filters,
you notice common concerns:
chlorine
THMs
chloriform
chloramines
cryptosporidium and giardia lamblia cysts
fluoride
pesticides and toxic chemicals
heavy metals
minerals
MTBEs
nitrates
Killing microbials
is not a big deal since most of that's been done by chlorine.
Most contaminants are removed by the better filters. The problem
when choosing a filter seems to come down to four main concerns:
fluoride, minerals, THMs, and nitrates.
Difficult to find one
filter that does everything: many reverse osmosis filters take
out fluoride, but also the healthy minerals. Many of the high-end
carbon filters will not remove fluoride or nitrates, but leave
the healthy minerals.
Fluoride is obviously
a biggie. Find out if the filter you are about to buy removes
fluoride, and what percentage. After what we've learned about
fluoride, we should expect a filter to remove it, wouldn't you
say? Problem is: the demand.
Due to fluoride advocate
propaganda, most Americans don't even realize fluoride is bad,
and therefore don't think about it when considering a water filter.
NSF is a third-party
non-profit testing agency that has been rating water filters for
the past 50 years. Always ask - is it NSF-certified? For what?
Don't be fooled if they say 'NSF-tested.' Big difference.
Minerals is an area
of some controversy. You've got the hard water / soft water debate.
Hard water has more minerals in it, which obviously is better
for the bones and teeth, and probably for the heart as well.
That makes sense, although
as we saw in the Minerals chapter, elemental minerals are the
least absorbed of all types. Elemental means from rocks, and that's
the kind that would be in spring water, and therefore in filtered
water, except for reverse osmosis. In my opinion, hard water is
better than distilled.
Most naturopaths and
holistic nutritionists don't like distilled water because they
say it leaches minerals from the bones and teeth. In general,
that seems logical, although Dr. Y says it doesn't make any difference
unless the person is extremely malnourished.
The truth is, no formal
studies comparing distilled with mineral water have been done,
so it's all pretty theoretical. But thinking about the Hunzas
and their 120-year lifespan that was attributed to the glacial
mineral waters they drank, one can see the value of minerals in
drinking water.
A high-end water filter
should take this discussion into consideration and give reasons
about the importance or unimportance of filtering out certain
minerals.
Comes down to a choice:
reverse osmosis or carbon block. With reverse osmosis you've can
remove fluoride but also remove many minerals, and wasting about
4-9 gallons to get one gallon of pure water. (A'o, p72) With high-end
carbon mesh filters, you can get rid of everything but fluoride,
and you'll still have minerals.
These are questions
for the filter sales force. Make 'em dance for you. Caveat emptor
- only 5 states have any regulations about what water filter manufacturers
can say. On the Internet - it's a total jungle!
The Rest Of
The Iceberg
The
materials cited really only scratch the surface of the research
that has been done in these areas. The purpose of this article
has been to acquaint you with some of the basic issues in regard
to drinking water, issues that are systematically hidden from
the media, for obvious reasons.
Prove them wrong, if
you can; just don't pretend like these problems don't exist. When
you read something that proclaims the purity of tap water
or the importance of fluoride, maybe now you will notice how studies
are claimed but never cited. Look behind what you read and try
to see the persuasive tactics of Freud's nephew. Appreciate the
mastery of an art.
The physiological importance
of hydration has really been glossed over by doctors and nutritionists,
not on purpose, but simply because it's not taught. The ideas
of Dr. Batmanghelidj must be confronted - either he's right or
else there's a major gap in our health information.
It's unfortunate that
the sludge of politics has to be hauled into a discussion of water
purity. But once you discover how and why our water got this way,
the political influences are like an elephant in the living room
- pretty hard to ignore.
Not exactly hot news;
politics has been controlling science ever since they locked Galileo
in that high-rise jail for discovering the earth went around the
sun. Which is why you shouldn't expect much support if you try
to discuss or substantiate what you've just learned in this chapter.
Lemmings know what lemmings are told.
The rest of the iceberg
is left to you. This chapter is just the briefest glimpse of the
top part. With a little follow-up, perhaps you won't make the
same mistake the captain of the Titanic made: thinking that there's
nothing in the water that can hurt you.
Dr. Tim O'Shea
The Doctor Within
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