Page 78 - DemoZone Magazine Issue 003

Why are we exposing children to dangerous levels of fluoride?
It's hard believe, but the Irish government have known definitively since 2001 that Irish infants are dangerously overexposed to fluoride through formula-milk made with our fluoridated tap water.
The ongoing poisoning of countless numbers of babies in Ireland through their formula milk – sanctioned by the State not in ignorance, but in full knowledge – was the aspect of my 2013/14 Hot Press investigation into the Irish fluoride scandal that I personally found the most sinister.
In 2001, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) made a decision to recommend that infant formula milk should not be made up with fluoridated tap water. The recommendation was made during the Irish government's last review of Ireland's mandatory water fluoridation policy.
Various other organization’s internationally, including the American Dental Association and the US Centre for Disease Control, as well as numerous eminent pediatrician’s, have warned through the years that fluoridated tap water should not be used to make formula milk. This warning is highly relevant to a country such as Ireland, where breastfeeding rates are very low. Here 97 per cent of infants drink formula milk by the age of 6 months.
So what's the problem with infants drinking so much fluoridated tap water in their formula milk?
For a start, overexposure to fluoride puts infants at a very high risk of developing dental fluorosis – structural damage to both primary and permanent teeth, which manifests as white or brown mottling on the tooth enamel. It is estimated that at least 45 per cent of the Irish population have dental fluorosis. Fluorosis weakens tooth enamel, and can require expensive treatment in adulthood.
Dental fluorosis is a highly visible effect of fluoride toxicity, and therefore impossible to deny. But the fluoride that we ingest through our water doesn't confine its damaging effects to our teeth. Many other organs in the body are adversely affected by the fluoride we consume.
Most worryingly, researchers have found that fluoride impairs intellectual development and reduces IQ in children. IQ reduction has been associated with fluoride levels in the water of just 0.88ppm amongst children with iodine deficiency. Until 2007, when it was lowered to 0.8ppm, Irish tap
water contained 1ppm of fluoride. And the WHO has warned that the Irish population is iodine deficient, making Irish people more susceptible to fluoride toxicity.
Early exposure to fluoride has also been linked to asthma, for which Ireland has the highest incidence in Europe, with one in five teenagers now being diagnosed with the condition. This is more than twice the asthma prevalence rate for our non- fluoridated European neighbor’s. The highest incidences of asthma globally are all found in fluoridated countries.
The disturbing truth is that at current fluoride levels in Irish drinking water, all bottle-fed infants exceed the maximum upper recommended fluoride level – not for children, but for adults – when fluoridated tap water is used to constitute the formula.
For children aged 6 months to 8 years, more than three large glasses of Irish tap water a day alone – discounting fluoride from other sources, including toothpaste (often swallowed by young kids and children with disabilities), food, juices and soft drinks – may push a young child over the upper safety limit for daily fluoride intake.
Scientists have also warned that pregnant women should not consume fluoridated tap water, as it interferes with fetal development by increasing oxidative burden.
Let’s s go back to the FSAI's 2001 recommendation that bottle-feeds should not be made up with fluoridated tap water. This recommendation came after the agency had conducted a risk assessment on fluoride. In highly controversial circumstances, the FSAI's warning was subsequently retracted.
Opponents of water fluoridation are convinced that the FSAI's about-turn on the safety of fluoridated formula milk was a result of political pressure. Had the FSAI's warning been transmuted, as it should have been, into an official government warning to the public not to use tap water to make their infants' bottle-feeds, this in turn would certainly have led to an effective demand for the end of mandatory water fluoridation. It would be unreasonable to expect hundreds of thousands of parents across the country to go to the expense of buying bottled water, or installing a fluoride-removing filter on their taps at home, in order to feed their infants safely.
By ignoring and suppressing information about the dangerous overexposure to fluoride in the Irish infant population, the Irish authorities have failed, and continue to fail, to alert Irish citizens to a desperately
serious health risk to their children.
We've been brainwashed by the mantra that fluoride is good for your teeth. But the truth is that the science is inconclusive as to whether or not fluoride prevents dental decay.
Last year I interviewed Chris Nidel, the US lawyer spearheading dental fluorosis legal cases in the States. What he's unearthed sheds important light on our situation in Ireland.
"There's a morsel of benefit, if there's any benefit at all," said Nidel. "And there are certainly risks. Fluoride is a chemical that has biological effects, which we're consuming at unregulated unknown dosages, because we're ingesting it through water and food. Who knows how much fluoride any one person is consuming, so it's very difficult to say that it's safe for everyone, even if we assume that there is some benefit."
In a document published by the US Centre for Disease Control, Nidel found evidence about the action of fluoride that entirely dismantles the idea that it's good for young kids' teeth.
"On one page of the document it says fluoride benefits the tooth by reducing dental cavities, and the primary mechanism for this is by topical application to adult teeth. And then a couple of pages later, it says fluoride also causes dental fluorosis, and the way it causes fluorosis is by ingestion of fluoride between the ages of 0 and 8.
"So between the ages of 0 and 8 it makes absolutely no sense to drink fluoride. There is no benefit for kids who don't have adult teeth. There is only harm.
"We know that we're causing kids' fluorosis, because 42 per cent of the US population have dental fluorosis. And on top of that, who knows what we're doing to their kidneys, thyroids, bones, brains etc.? So, what are we doing fluoridating the water?"
Nidel has raised the critical question in this whole debate. You don't have to argue whether or not fluoride prevents dental caries. You don't have to debate whether fluoride has adverse health effects. The simple fact is that it doesn't make sense to spend money forcing all these children who are aged 0-8 – at least 10 per cent of the population – to be exposed to a chemical in the water supply that does them no good, and which can only do them harm.
78 ZONE-MAGAZINE.IE
REAL WORLD
With Adrienne Murphy
Here at Zone we are all firm believer in the "TRUTH". People should know about issues that effect us all. So here in the "REAL WORLD" with Adrienne Murphy, we are gonna do just that! Plain facts, no lies!
ISSUE 002 - The Strange Case of Fluoride