Green MEP calls for end to fluoride plans

NEWS RELEASE
From the office of South-East England’s Green MEP Caroline Lucas

25 March 2008

GREEN MEP SENDS CLEAR SIGNAL TO SOUTHAMPTON HEALTH CHIEFS OVER FLUORIDE IN DRINKING WATER

Green Euro-MP Dr Caroline Lucas door stopped health staff at the Strategic Health Authority in Southampton demanding that plans to put fluoride in drinking water be dropped.

In an open letter to health chiefs, Dr Lucas said: “I am writing for two reasons. Firstly, to express my concern at the proposal currently being considered to fluoridate the drinking water in Southampton, and possibly elsewhere in Hampshire. And secondly, to ask what levels of exposure are there in the current Southampton population? If this is not known, what steps are being taken to find out?

“Water fluoridation has simply not been proven to be effective for teeth, particularly when the bad effects of dental fluorosis are taken into account. Furthermore, many studies have indicated links between water fluoridation and serious ill health effects, including thyroid problems, skeletal fluorosis, bone cancers and mental problems.

“Finally, putting fluoride in our water amounts to mass medication of the population. This directly contravenes the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, and is contrary to medical ethics. We are seeking a legal opinion on its further contravention of the Medicines Directive.”

Dr Lucas continued: “The concern over current levels of exposure in the population is a serious one, as it is very important to know the total dose that people will be receiving if water fluoridation were to be administered. The World Health Organisation advises that Public Health Administrators should be aware of this before introducing any additional fluoride programme.”

Caroline Lucas is now awaiting a response to her concerns.

In 2007 Caroline Lucas was voted Politician of the Year in the Observer newspaper’s Ethical Awards. She is the Green Party MEP representing the South-East of England and was elected in 1999. She sits on the European Parliament’s Trade, Environment and Climate Change Committees, as well as being Vice President of the Parliament’s Animal Welfare Intergroup. Her work – both within the Parliament and in her constituency – includes peace and human rights, international trade and development, transport and planning, health issues and animal welfare. www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk

Call for research into fluoride and dementia link

Letter to local press:

Readers of Easter Sunday’s Telegraph may have been concerned about an article estimating the risk to 1.2 million of us from the spread of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.

In summarising the findings of the Department of Health’s Horizon Scanning Unit, we should all be alarmed at the prospect of 1 in 4 at risk with a 40 per cent increase in the 65 to 75 age range; 50 per cent for the 75 to 84s and with long-term care costs spiralling to a staggering £17 billion.

Comments by a psychiatric consultant, Professor David Wilkinson of Southampton University, included a plea for more research together with a swinging indictment of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence for withholding the £2.50 a day key drug from patients only on the borderline of dementia.

However, if he’s serious about defeating the disease, he should get together with one of his campus colleagues, Professor Jonathan Montgomery and, armed with a copy of health researcher Barry Groves’ book ‘Fluoride – Drinking Ourselves to Death’ turn to page 62, Chapter 5 ‘Fluoride and the Brain’ to find an introductory paragraph from a report credited to a US scientist Dr J A Varner and co-authors, titled: ‘Toxic-induced blood vessel inclusion caused by the chronic administration of aluminium and sodium fluorides and their implication for dementia’

Dr Varner’s prelim’ reads: “The presence of low levels of fluoride in the drinking water, equal to the amount found in fluoridated water, caused damage to the tissue of the brain similar to Alzheimers and the other forms of dementia, as well as kidney damage.”

One of the arguments put forward in support of the case for artificial fluoridation of drinking water is that the fluoride inhibits the enzyme responsible for tooth decay. Even if that was true, the degradation effect doesn’t stop there.

Acetylcholinesterase is another enzyme involved in the transmission of signals along nerves; and fluoridated water negatively affects its function. Chinese research on the effects of fluorides on health has revealed damage to 66 of the 83 enzymes we all need to maintain good health. Immune systems can be particularly hard hit and state-fluoridated South African water does its Aids victims no favours.

When the Southampton academics have read and digested Chapter 5, Wilkinson may care to ask his colleague how he reached the conclusion that fluoridation poses no evidence of harm.


Professor Montgomery was a team leader in the recent study ‘Bioethics in Health Issues’ conducted by the Nuffield Council.

Despite numerous well-reasoned submissions, verbally and on paper – my own included – highlighting the wide spectrum of health risk associated with fluoridation, not to mention the individual human right not to be compulsorily medicated, Montgomery summed it up as “…No risks, no evidence of harm, therefore no conflict with human rights.”

I attended Nuffield’s London launch meeting in November 2007, representing the Stroud based Safe Water Campaign. At question time I attempted to ask Professor Montgomery about the relationship between the toxic artificial fluoride concentration and water temperature but I was cut off in mid sentence, being shouted down by the distinguished Chairman Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, with the microphone being snatched away from my grasp.

So much for honesty and democracy in health matters.

I appeared to have been identified as a ‘whistle blower’ and censured for knowing more about the subject thanI was supposed to.

What chance for dementia and Alzheimers patients when we have two-faced ‘experts’, however well qualified, pontificating to the press about finding a cure? Their insincerity is palpable and their professionalism questionable.

Bernard J Seward

"Do you know what the Government plans to add to our drinking water?"

"Fluoride - A toxic poisonous by-product of the fertilizer industry"

From Stroud based Scribbler - Russell

The Full Fluoride Monty...........

View the presentation

At the bottom left hand side of the screen are the toggle through the pages buttons, and a click on the mouse gives you the option to see extra notes that accompany each slide.


We are hugely grateful to http://www.foodcures.net/ for the enormous amount of research and sheer volume of work in pulling all this vital evidence together in such a powerful way.

M5 Tanker Accident

Letter To Bristol Evening Post....
Sir; How do we rate the recently reported road traffic accident on the M5?Serious, I would say. Anything causing a nine -hour hold up on one of our commercial routes will have serious economic consequences, not to mention the frustration, misery and despair among private motorists trapped in the queues.
Olive oil from a damaged tanker plus diesel oil on the carriageway must have been a challenge to the emergency teams but today things are, thankfully, back to normal.
Had that tanker been carrying one of the silicofluoride chemicals claimed to be an essential drinking water additive for good dental health in a minority of children, the outcome could have been very different.
An accident of that kind occurred in 1994 in Florida, USA. A vehicle carrying 4500 gallons of Hexafluorosilicic acid spilled its load on to the public highway.87 people including police and emergency workers had to be hospitalised forup to 6 weeks. 300 tons of chemical-contaminated road surface had to be planed off and taken to a controlled chemical waste tip. The total cost of the clean-up was around 4 million dollars; and while those unfortunate victims with their scorched flesh, sinuses, larynx and digestive tracts may have been discharged, the radioactive nature of the chemical vapour could trigger a fatal relapse several years up the line, with no apparent cause.
As to a similar case on our local stretch of the M5, it is doubtful that either north or south bound carriageways would yet be open, while the road repair crews would be subject to a radical risk assessment far out of proportion to that incurred by normal highway maintenance engineering. A spill on either of the Severn Bridges could damage the metal structure itself, after eating through the tarmacadam.
And all because some children have tooth decay; or can’t be persuaded or trainedin simple oral hygiene. Does that read like justifiable proportionality?
Post readers who may doubt the foolhardiness behind this totally unnecessary threat to us as we travel the roads of Britain, may care to inspect the website of the National Pure Water Association
www.npwa under ‘Accidents Happen’ and ‘Toxic Tankers’Evidence like this, deliberately excluded from political debate, has given the lie to the long standing proposition that fluoride is safe.
Recently endorsed by a report given by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in Public Health Issues, “…fluoridation compromises our individual right no to be compulsorily medicated, but in the absence of evidence of harm, this right can be set aside.” Can it really? Do all our MPs go along with this monstrous infringement of our fundamental rights?
Having submitted 10 pages of referenced research material for consideration by the Nuffield team, I felt very disappointed by the ‘whitewash’ treatment being given to the outcome of the fluoridation component of the study.
When, in November 2007, at the London launch of the report, I took the opportunity to ask a whistle-blower-type question, pointing out some of the hazards arising from popular fluoride misconceptions, I was shouted down by the chairman Lord Krebs and other ‘experts’ on the platform, while having the microphone snatched from my grasp.So much for political honesty and democracy in public health.
Bernard J Seward Bristol BS9 4QP

Letter to The Spark

Sir,
£42 million to launch a 20 per cent extension to the nation’s water fluoridation programme? What a sad commentary upon the public health priorities of this bankrupt government; bankrupt of ideas and imagination, that is. It wouldn’t surely take that much; a few thousand perhaps, to persuade the producers of childrens’ TV shows like Blue Peter and Sesame Street to feature kids and muppets, all armed with toothbrushes, going at it like crazy to the sound of rap music or similar.
In no time at all the whole nation would be on to teeth brushing. Sales of toothbrushes and paste would rocket; more jobs would be created; more kids would have cleaner and better teeth with less plaque and decay and, extraordinarily important to the Department of Health, more targets would be achieved.Eureka! Juvenile tooth decay – a problem solved.
Well, not exactly. The practice of fluoridation actually addresses two problems; dental caries reduction for children is the smokescreen for the second one which, for some in the chain of responsible government, is the more important issue. I refer to the problem of waste disposal – getting rid of an environmentally unfriendly chemical waste.
This is how fluoridation came to be launched in the USA in the post-war era where vast quantities of nuclear processing waste had accumulated in holding ponds. It was too dangerous to be dumped, even in the ocean; and too costly to neutralize or re-process. Dripping it into the public water supply was deemed the most economic solution. Putting it bluntly, it was probably the first example of officially authorised fly-tipping, courtesy of the US Defense Department. The Environmental Protection Agency was silenced “in the interests of national security”, with the Food and Drug Administration similarly neutered.The dosage safety margins for public consumption were firstly miscalculated, by an ‘expert’ by as much as 100 per cent, then subsequently revised downwards without reason or consultation.
The same principle endures today as it has in all English-speaking countries having military nuclear interests. The chemical currently in use – a distilled by-product of fertiliser manufacture, was actually used in the US as a source of nuclear fuel.It will, in its raw undiluted state, dissolve glass, steel, copper and concrete, and very quickly too, while giving off superheated Hydrogen fluoride fumes liable to attack the human respiratory system and digestive tract. It is not something that I personally would wish to be obliged to consume at the behest of a misinformed Secretary of State for Health, no matter how many socially deprived children and their parents with defective teeth would seek to claim it as their birthright.
Even at the claimed safe level of one part per million, 60 per cent or more of it will be retained by the renal function most likely spelling a widespread increase in kidney failure. In 1966 four kidney patients in the US died when their dialysis machines became destabilised by an overdosing of fluoride in their water supply; by as much as 600 per cent according to some water engineers. Today, that would be put down to a computer malfunction.
Water companies in the US have had many problems with the fluoride compound corroding their underground supply pipes. The replacement cost of a job like that, divided among the consumers is mind boggling. Our own copper domestic systems would not be immune and dissolved copper in our drinks and food is not a good idea.
The Health Minister says we shouldn’t worry because America has had fluoride for over 60 years. True, but he didn’t say why; he probably didn’t know. Stuart Geddes, of the British Dental Association, a guest of a recent phone-in programme on BBC Radio Wales, said that 67 per cent of America is still receiving it. Why only 67 per cent when it was originally 100 per cent? Because the age of enlightenment dawned earlier across the pond. Communities in state after state have fought the health authorities, often bitterly, to have it stopped because of its deleterious health effects.
The people of Northern Ireland have done the same. They had Mrs Thatcher’s government to thank for their ‘health benefit’. The negative vote on fluoride is endemic throughout mainland Europe. Nowhere now except for Balboa in Spain fluoridates the drinking water. Why that exception?It hosts a fertiliser factory producing the waste product which is centre-stage to the whole issue of fluoridation. It is so corrosive and hot that the tanks in which it is exported and conveyed to points of use have to be lined with rubber and surrounded by a jacket of liquid nitrogen. The handling regulations are on a par with nuclear weapons.In 2001, one of the tanks en-route from Spain to a UK destination, possibly Ellesmere Port, sprang a leak at Avonmouth.
Upon discovery, the port was shut down for 30 hours. Emergency crews were uncertain about the technique for dealing with it. Such details as were available suggested we were only a hair’s breadth away from a very serious life-threatening incident which could have affected the communities of Avonmouth, Portishead and Lawrence Weston, depending on wind direction.
In 1994, a road tanker accident in Florida, resulting in a large spillage, put people in hospital for 6 weeks and longer while the road surface had to be scraped up and taken to a licensed decontamination centre; a big job costing four million dollars.
Does this horror film scenario have to be the hidden penalty for us all because some (only some) children are prone to have poor dental health? There are other solutions to problem number one. Problem number two should be the prerogative of the Health & Safety Executive, not industrial companies seeking a protected profit line out of a hitherto worthless, but environmentally hazardous, waste product.
Our misinformed politicians and health officials, well-meaning though they may be, need to wake up to the realities of fluoridation; and wake up fast!Bernard J Seward
Member: National Pure Water Association Safe Water Campaign for Avon, Glos and Wilts Bristol & S W Socialist Environment & Resources Association Food Standards Agency

Get your teeth into this........

As it keeps on coming up from the pro-fluoridation camp that there is ‘no research’ showing fluoride dangers, Southampton Green party health campaigner John Spottiswoode put this together.
Not all have web links as some predate the Internet.
Some have links to web sites that have much more on the subject in their pages.
www.fluoridation.com/sutton.htm#delayed%20eruption ·
1979, Drs L. Krook and G.A. Maylin stated: "The delay in the eruption of the permanent teeth has also been reported in children in fluoridated communities." "The cause of the delay in eruption was shown in the present material. Fluoride arrests resorption of deciduous tooth roots and of the supporting bone. By inducing one disease [fluorosis], delays the manifestations of another [dental caries]."
Fluoride causes a delay in tooth eruption of roughly a year. Children aged 5 living in fluoridated areas should be compared with children aged 4 living in non-fluoridated areas.
When this is done there is no benefit from water fluoridation. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/316/7126/230/a Weaver R.
The inhibition of dental caries by fluorine. Proc R Soc Med 1948;41:284-90. Tooth decay levels for older children:

• Later on the decay rates are almost identical, with any possible effect disappearing by adulthood:

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fluorideharm.html and Schatz A.
The failure of fluoridation in England. In: Prevention. Rodale Press. Emmaus, Pennsylvania, 1972, pp 64-69).

• Recent Trends in Dental Caries in U.S. Children and the Effect of Water Fluoridation

www.fluoridealert.org/health/teeth/caries/nidr-dmfs.html

• Teeth better in non-fluoridated areas: Colquhoun, J. New evidence on fluoridation. Soc. Sci. Med. 19:1239-1246, 1984. Adult teeth health in fluoridated areas no better than in non-fluoridated:

• Fluoridation creates more harm than good:

www.actionpa.org/fluoride/kingston-newburgh.html ·
U.K. Health Department study, Professor A. Schatz and Dr J.J. Martin stated in 1972: "It is thus clear that fluoridation does not prevent or reduce tooth decay. Instead, it merely postpones the appearance of caries by about 1.2 years.
Fluoridated children develop the same amount of tooth decay as their non fluoridated counterparts. The only difference is that caries starts developing approximately 1.2 years later in the fluoridated group."
• WHY I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT WATER FLUORIDATION by JOHN COLQUHOUN:
www.fluoridation.com/colquhoun.htm

York Study 2000.
Main statement from the Conclusions: “The evidence of a benefit of a reduction in caries should be considered together with the increased prevalence of dental fluorosis. The research evidence is of insufficient quality to allow confident statements about other potential harms or whether there is an impact on social inequalities. This evidence on benefits and harms needs to be considered along with the ethical, environmental, ecological, costs and legal issues that surround any decisions about water fluoridation. All of these issues fell outside the scope of this review”: www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/pdf/fluorid.pdf and www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluoridnew.htm
Fluoride actions are primarily topical for teeth.
• Topical vs. Systemic Effects: www.fluoridealert.org/health/teeth/caries/topical-systemic.html

Dental fluorosis levels in fluoridated areas:

• Dental cost comparisons fluoridated vs non-fluoridated areas: http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/teeth/caries/who-dmft.html

Note that five year olds teeth can be better in fluoridated areas due to the fact that teeth erupt in children some months later than in fluoride free areas, so have less time to decay by the age of five.

• Some in un-fluoridated areas have dental fluorosis – Study showed 23% of 8-9 year olds had DF in non-fluoridatedNorthumberland

• It costs more to repair teeth damaged by fluoride than would have been saved if water fluoridation actually reduced tooth decay. The mottled spots start off white but typically turn brown. It's permanent and recurring, and treating it is very costly:

www.actionpa.org/fluoride/torontostar.html

• York Review estimated the prevalence of fluorosis (all. levels of severity) to be 48% in fluoridated areas and 15% in non-fluoridated areas. www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/pdf/fluorid.pdf

• 1998 survey – Up to48% of people living in fluoridated areas have dental fluorosis, with 12.5% in categories of concern, i.e. 1 in 8 get brown or pitted teeth.

Aluminium + Fluoride = ?

One point I think needs a better understanding is the reaction between the aluminium and fluoride.

When looking into the causes of dementia aluminium comes high on the list of potential causes. However aluminium does not cross the blood/brain barrier, I am told. Aluminium with fluoride does, again needs confirmation.

Therefore when aluminium sulphate is added to the water (as it is, to ‘clean it’) and then silicon hexafluoridealuminium sulphate is added to the water (as it is, to ‘clean it’) and then silicon hexafluoride (or tetrafluoride, which I think is a solid, or liquid hydrofluorosilicic acid, H2SiF6)?) is also added, one may expect a reaction between them, especially if there are free ions of each.

Aluminium tetrafluoride may be produced or aluminum fluosilicate solution. Either seem potential culprits of the brain problems associated with both aluminium and fluoride (i.e. the combination may be much more dangerous than each separately).

Aluminium and Silicon are right next to each other on the Periodic Table of Elements. An expert chemist’s view of this would be useful. Does anyone know a good one?

Letter published in the Morning Star 16th Feb 2008

Let's be clear about Fluoridation;

Lets be clear about its true motive.

Fluoridation; the deliberate contamination of a clean public water supply by a poisonous fluorine-based compound is nothing to do with children and nothing to do with their teeth,or anybody's teeth, except in a most insidious way.

Adding the fluorine compound to our water is the only economic option available for the disposal, at a profit, free from prosecution by the Health & Safety Executive, of a toxic, corrosive and radioactive industrial bi-product, diSodium fluorosilicate (H2SiF6). To cite the naturally occurring insoluble Calcium fluoride as a health benefit is itself questionable. It has never been subject to rigorous scientific proof. By contrast, H2SiF6 contains known carcinogenics, nerve poisons and enzyme destructors which will certainly bring ill health, depression, disturbed behaviour, depressed IQ and a shortened life span for millions of those forced, without choice or signed consent, to consume it.

The chief beneficiaries will be the drug companies pretending to offer relief from the side effects and dentists expensively refurbishing the surfaces of teeth disfigured by dental fluorosis. The environmental price paid for a road traffic accident involving a fluoride tanker could well be equalto a tactical nuclear attack.Whatever happened to 'proportionality' - a favourite buzz word in European politics?

Bernard J Seward

Member : National Pure Water Association: Safe Water Campaign for Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire

Try these links - be well informed!

1. A list of (known) accidents involving fluoride:

Known accidents involving Fluoride

2. A link to the Camelford incident and its relevance to fluoride:

The Camelford Scandal

3. A link on dealing with this highly dangerous substance:

Avoid all contact - Do not transport with food!

Campaign in Southampton

Campaigners are more active than ever in Hampshire as the threat of fluoridation is coming to them faster than elsewhere - their local press is alive with reports and letters - and in a recent conversation with them we learn they hope to attend both their PCT Board on 27th March in Aldershot and their South Central SHA Board which also meets on 27th March but in Newbury.

See one of their campaign websites here and a recent statement to local press below:
http://hampshireagainstfluoridation.blogspot.com/

In my view…

By John Spottiswoode on behalf of South West Hampshire Green Party, Hampshire Against Fluoridation and the National Pure Water Association

Government must tell us the full fluoride truth

I continue to be amazed at the one sided way that those in authority like Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, puts the evidence on water fluoridation. He says that the poorest people suffer the worst tooth decay. Well we know tooth decay is caused by a bad diet and poor cleaning of teeth. So help fix that with targeted education and help for the poorest to put that right. Do not put the class 2 poison fluorine in the drinking water.

In fact the West Midlands are pretty good at dental education, which I suggest is a much more important factor in any improved dental performance. However it does cost money. Wolverhampton’s expenditure on dental health more than doubled in the five years following water fluoridation.

Alan Johnson quotes Birmingham as a good example of the effects of fluoridation. Well he actually knows that the best areas for tooth health in the UK are not fluoridated at all, and this general situation applies in every country around the world. In fact non-fluoridated Hampshire is also one of the best areas in England. OK there are some worse spots in the cities, but use education to deal with it, not mass medication with a highly dangerous product. And he should not misrepresent the findings of the York 2000 review. In fact the review said that there was no reliable proof showing any clear benefits for fluoridation. Some say that the early scientific data on fluoridation was gerrymandered. For instance an early finding that there were fewer tooth cavities in fluoride factory workers ignored the fact that they had significantly fewer teeth – fluoride may have weakened the tooth sockets so their teeth fell out completely.

However this argument is not really about teeth. It is about the effect of fluoride on the rest of the body. It is simply not true to claim that there is no scientific evidence of serious health side effects linked to fluoride as there is a mountain of peer-reviewed evidence of links to cancers, brittle bones, joint stiffness, dementia and hormonal disruption. The National Academy of Sciences in the USA recognised this in 2006.

Also have our officials not read the many European studies? Denmark banned water fluoridation in 1964. Finland and Germany trialled fluoridation and rejected it. The Netherlands, Sweden, and even China have banned water fluoridation. Nearly every other European country refuses to fluoridate their water for very good scientific reasons. 97% of Europeans have fluoride free drinking water (thank goodness). Are the government saying that foreign scientists are wrong?

Even medical experts who initially assumed that fluoride was a ‘good thing’, when they look into it themselves they often become vehement opponents (e.g.Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, Past President of the American Medical Association andDr Hardy Limeback, Biochemist and Professor of Preventative Dentistry, University of Toronto). Opposition to water fluoridation is not a minority opinion worldwide, in fact most countries have a strong scientific majority opposed to it. Over 1400 professionals have signed a call for the immediate stop to water fluoridation.

Even the Dental authorities in the USA say that child feed bottles should not use fluoridated water. Fluoride in water can be devastating for those with kidney problems, hypersensitive or allergic reactions, and for many young children (especially if they have fluoridated toothpaste which they tend to eat). Fluoride also accumulates in the body over the years so the elderly show many signs of related health problems.

Finally it is not true to imply because a few areas (very few) have natural fluoride in their water then it is OK. They may also have arsenic, it is still not safe. Some villages in China have been moved because of fluoride contamination of their natural water supply. Once it is in the water ordinary filters will not remove it, you have to buy very expensive reverse osmosis.

So if fluoride is added to the water, few will be able to remove it. It is forced medication of the population. This is expressly forbidden by the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, so anyone pushing water fluoridation is breaking medical ethics and should not only be ashamed but struck off. Fluoridating with an uncontrolled dosage, ignoring individual health problems, is especially dangerous.

This is the sort of thing that undermines trust in the government and the Health Authorities. When they say that something is safe we should be able to believe them. Well if you study the research you find the truth is the very opposite. Fluoride is NOT safe and should NEVER be added to our drinking water.

John Spottiswoode