In my view…Courtesy of John Spottiswoode on behalf of South West Hampshire Green Party and Hampshire Against Fluoridation for publication in Hampshire - a good article that is worth a read.
Photo: Recent Safe Water Campaign meeting in Stroud
Fluoridation is harming many millions
Water fluoridation has been called the biggest medical scandal since thalidomide. Millions of people are being fed a toxic chemical through their water supply. This accumulates over the years in bones, brains, thyroid glands and in kidneys leading to a range of major health problems. According to literally hundreds of research studies water fluoridation is leading to cancers, brittle bones, damage to the central nervous system, mental problems, genetic damage, an increase in miscarriages and hypersensitive reactions. Those in favour of water fluoridation seem to deny all this peer reviewed and solid science.
Why does fluoride have so many negative effects on the body? Well a student of GCSE chemistry could well explain this, shaming some so-called professors. Fluorine is the most electronegative and highly reactive element known. In chemical reactions it will displace chlorine and iodine. Whilst chlorine and iodine are essential for the body, there is no known need for fluorine at all (except perhaps as a rat poison, where it works very effectively). Therefore by putting fluoride in our water we should expect a range of serious health effects in the body and, lo and behold, these have been found by research time and time again.
The defenders of fluoridation then point to places that already have water fluoridation and imply that this means it is OK for Southampton too. Again they ignore the masses of research that shows higher levels of health problem. They may even say that there is ‘no evidence of this in fluoridated Birmingham’, but that it because no-one has done a study to look. No-one in authority is willing to look truth in the eye, fund a study, and say ‘yes serious health problems do indeed affect Birmingham’ as research has found in the other fluoridated areas.
Those defending fluoridation (e.g. Professor Damian Walmsley of the British Dental association on the 10th July in the Echo) claim that fluoride is natural and that ‘all water contains the mineral fluoride’. This is far from the case. Fluorine is so reactive that it has for millennia mostly been safely tied up in the rocks, so only in certain places, where the water comes through these rocks, do we get any significant amount of fluoride naturally in water. Where this happens, in places like India and China, they know the terrible health effects all too well. Why do pro-fluoridation scientists in the UK ignore what those in India, China and the rest of Europe have found, that fluoride is a major toxin, and in some countries is banned completely from ever being added to water.
What is planned for Southampton is to dig up rocks from Spain, smash them into a powder, extract hexafluorosilicic acid and add this to our water, along with other pollutants such as arsenic. For the scientists among you, note that hexafluorosilicic acid has six fluorine atoms for every molecule, a very heavy toxic load.
The defenders of fluoride also do not seem to understand human rights. It is a basic human right to have clean water to drink, and much effort is spent trying to provide this across the world. Polluting our water with fluoride means that people here will be forced to drink this pollutant because most filters will not remove it. It is unethical to medicate people forcibly via the water supply. If people really want to damage their health then they can take fluoride tablets.
What will come next? Would there not be less depression, especially amongst the poor, if Prozac were added to our drinking water? Fluoride is no different as it is being added, however mistakenly, to try to produce a medicinal effect. Those favouring water fluoridation are being highly unethical and have forfeited any trust many may have once had in them, both scientifically and personally.
John Spottiswoode
Reference: 1. Professor A Susheela, world expert in fluoride : Water fluoridation “may well dwarf the thalidomide tragedy”
