En Aqua Sanitas: Clean Water: Healthy, Safe & Effective
The reason why the Latin word for Health is the origin of the word Sanitary is this: Clean Water is Essential for Health. A fetus is about 90% water, an adult, 70%. It is therefore safe to assume that any medical doctor would “recommend” clean water as an “optimal” effective preventative health measure. After taking a fresh look at the chemistry, recent science and ethics of adding fluoridation chemicals to public drinking water as a preventative health policy to reduce tooth decay, what of the public health implications? Why, after 71 years of fluoridation, has the Chair of the National Research Council stated Questions Remain Unsettled?1 Why has the Chair of the “York Review” asserted A Legitimate Scientific Controversy continues to this day?2
Both statements imply a lack of scientific consensus, i.e., disagreement among authorities; but the significant feature is: the Chairmen of systematic reviews on the subject regard the side, which questions safety as legitimate. Consider both sides.
Lack of Scientific Consensus: EPA Toxicologists versus CDC Dentists
The Toxicologists, Biochemists and Statisticians at the Environmental Protection Agency report health risks are imminent: “Our opposition to drinking water fluoridation has grown, based on the scientific literature documenting… chronic toxic hazards of cancer… We looked at the cancer data with alarm… other incriminating cancer data.”3 This position statement is derived from expertise in the field of toxic chemical health risk assessment. On the other hand, Dentists from the Oral Health Division of the CDC, whose expertise pertains to teeth and gums, report: “No credible evidence”4 associates fluoridation with cancer. In addition, the EPA Union of Scientists report on their website, under “Scarcity of Environmental Impact Studies:” “This is of deep concern to us. Studies that do exist indicate damage to salmon and to plant ecosystems.”5 By contrast, under “Health Effects and Environmental Impact,” on the “Fluoridation Safety” page of the CDC’s website: “Scientists have found a lack of evidence to show an association between water fluoridation and a negative impact on people, plants, or animals.”6
This sort of discrepancy between authorities is precisely what happened with DDT, which was then “so universally used that in most minds the product [took] on the harmless aspect of the familiar.”7 As reported by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring:
“The citizen who wishes to make a fair judgment of the question
of wildlife loss is today confronted with a dilemma.
On the one hand, conservationists and many wildlife biologists assert that the losses have been severe and in some cases catastrophic.
On the other hand, the control agencies tend to deny flatly and categorically that such losses have occurred, or that they are of any importance if they have.
Which view are we to accept?”8
“The credibility of the witness is of first importance.
The professional wildlife biologist on the scene is certainly best qualified
to discover and interpret wildlife loss.
The entomologists, whose specialty is insects, is not so qualified by training
and is not psychologically disposed to look for undesirable side effects
of his control programs.”9
“In spite of the assurances of the insecticide people
that their sprays were ‘harmless to birds,’
the robins were really dying of insecticidal poisoning;
they exhibited the well known symptoms of loss of balance,
followed by tremors, convulsions and death.” 10
“From all over the world come echoes of the peril facing birds.
The reports differ in detail, but always repeat the theme of death to wildlife
in the wake of pesticides.”11
“Yet it is the control men in state and federal governments
and of course the chemical manufacturers
who steadfastly deny the facts reported by the biologists
and declare they see little evidence of harm to wildlife.”12
“It is widely believed that since so many people feel no immediate effect, DDT must therefore be harmless. One part per million sounds like a very small amount – and so it is. But such substances are so potent that a minute quantity can bring about vast changes in the body.”13 Since 1945, “1 ppm of fluoride was the optimal concentration in community drinking,” until DHHS, the parent of CDC, reduced the “optimal” down to a new “optimal” of 0.7ppm in 2011.15 0.7ppm is approximately 70 to 160 times greater than the fluoride found in human breast milk: Mother Nature’s “optimal” formula for Life.16 The CDC used to “recommend” up to 1.2ppm of fluoride.17 This is the same 1.2ppm that is up to 273 fold that of breast milk.18 This is the same CDC, which issued a Public Warning solely on their website, prevaricating Against Using Fluoridated Water to Reconstitute Infant Formula, four years after the 2006 NRC data was published:19
“Yes, you can use fluoridated water for preparing infant formula.
However, if your child is exclusively consuming infant formula reconstituted with fluoridated water, there may be an increased chance for mild dental fluorosis. Parents can use low-fluoride bottled water some of the time.”19
Note how the language is evading the fact that zero fluoride – “none” is recommended for infants under six months20 since fluoride is not an essential nutrient.21 This is called circumlocution. George Orwell said: “The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.” Sources of information, which prove to be inaccurate in the past, should generally be regarded with skepticism as sources of accuracy in the future. This comes to show that authorities in one field are not necessarily authorities in another.
Truth & Human Motivation
Sources of information should further be evaluated in terms of human motivation for acquiring and telling truth. The Scientists at EPA, whose job is to protect public health by regulating the chemical industries who pollute our environment for the profit of a few shareholders – is there any benefit to these scientists, if local municipalities cease adding (and hence buying) fluoridation chemicals from an industry who would otherwise be required by law, to pay to properly dispose of this hazardous waste? On the other side, the Dentists at CDC – their job has been the active promotion of water fluoridation for over half a century. We simply cannot expect people, whose entire profession is based on a worldview that water fluoridation is safe, to give us information that would destroy their position, writes the author of a book called Logic & Contemporary Rhetoric.22
“Habit is Stronger than Reason,” says George Santayana, who also famously wrote: “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.” We all know the history and fate of DDT; thanks to Rachel Carson. In 1962, Silent Spring asked us to imagine a silent world devoid of birdsong. When it was published, Time wrote a book review in which Carson’s “emotional and inaccurate outburst” was regarded as “hysterically overempathetic.” The title of the book review: “Pesticides: The Price for Progress.” 23 Apparently, back in the day, “the Department of Agriculture advise[d] us to spray our clothing with DDT…”24 until it was banned in 1972.25 In 2001, DDT was officially banned by international treaty.26 Rachel Carson did not live to see the fruit of her labor, as she died in 1964 from a long battle with breast cancer. And the Bald Eagle, the quintessential symbol of the inter-connection between American Life and Our Environment, etymologically derived from the Sanskrit word “environ,” meaning “Home,” has been recovering ever since.27 This is the price of progress? DDT is why the Precautionary Principle exists; we should prove a synthetic chemical safe, before we exposed it to Life as we know it.
Should fluoridation chemicals prove unsafe, there is reputation at stake, and liability because 200 million people live downstream from fluoridation chemicals. EPA scientists are concerned about public health, and therefore are more motivated to tell the truth and less highly motivated to conceal it. “The vast majority of people see no clear motive for what opposition implies.”28 This is for you to decide as a rational being.
We do have the authority to seek out truth, to set up our own inquiry towards knowledge to inform the Common Good. Become our own expert. Undoubtedly, the most reliable information is gained from science, albeit the caveat is that science is only reliable if the scientific method is successfully applied. The “York Review” reports on its website: “we were unable to find any reliable, good quality evidence in the fluoridation literature worldwide.”29 No Grade A Studies.30 Virtually all artificial fluoridation studies have been conducted by dental researchers.31 None of the 214 studies included in the “York Review” were randomized.32 What is going to happen when children are told a researcher will be periodically checking their teeth for signs of cavities? This bias is controlled with a case-control design. Out of 214 studies, seven were case-controls.32
Scientific Revolution & Science as Tentative
Dr. John Colquhoun, a dental researcher himself and former Principal Dental Officer of Auckland, New Zealand was a former proponent of water fluoridation until he was asked to conduct a systematic review of artificial fluoridation worldwide. Then he wrote: “Why I Changed My Mind on Water Fluoridation.” His PhD dissertation33 about fluoridation was based on Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.34
from the Introduction of Scientific Revolutions:
“History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology
could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science
by which we are now possessed.
That image of science has been previously drawn
by scientists themselves,
mainly from the finished scientific achievements of their predecessors,
as these are recorded in the classics and,
more recently, in the textbooks from which
each new scientific generation learns to practice its trade.
Inevitably however, the aim of such books is persuasive and pedagogic,
a concept of science drawn from them.
The texts have, for example, often seemed to imply that the content of science is uniquely exemplified by the observations, laws, and theories described in their pages.
Almost as regularly, the same books… are simply the ones illustrated by
logical operations together with the manipulative techniques used in gathering data.”
“This essay attempts to show we have been misled by them in fundamental ways.”
“Normal science is predicated on the assumption
that the scientific community knows what the world is like.
Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the communities’ willingness to defend the assumption, if necessary at considerable cost…
Normal science, for example, often suppresses novelties.
Indeed, scientists are often intolerant of new theories that do not fit the box.”35
“In these and other ways besides, normal science repeatedly goes astray.
And when it does – when, that is, the profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice –
then begin the extraordinary investigations
that lead to a new set of commitments,
a new basis for the practice of science…”36
Each scientific revolution was precipitated by a crisis
within the existing paradigm, which
“Necessitated the communities rejection of one time-honored scientific theory, with one incompatible with it.”
“Scientific revolutions are the ‘tradition shattering’ complements
of the ‘tradition bound’ activity of normal science…”
“Such changes, together with the controversies
that almost always accompany them,
are the defining characteristics of scientific revolutions.”
“Science,” therefore, “has included bodies of belief quite incompatible
with the ones we hold today…”37
A core tenet of Science, according to Sir Karl Popper is that it is Tentative. At one point in time, virtually all of academia asserted the universe revolved around the Earth – this was the Truth because the Ptolemaic geocentric model was consistent with “scientific” empirical observation. When Copernicus proved the universe heliocentric, revolving around the Sun, Galileo publicly embraced this theory. Ultimately, a trial of the educated elite found Galileo guilty of Heresy. Today, we all know the Truth: the universe does not revolve around us. Historically, “Truth,” according to Schopenhauer, “goes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” Any novel claim of knowledge is initially resisted if it is contrary to the “worldview” of the consensus. “Consensus,” to Einstein, “is abhorred by the genius because when it is reached, thinking stops.” That is, “Historically, the claim of consensus is the first refuge to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled… the work of science has nothing to do whatsoever with consensus… The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”38
Breaking Away from Consensus:
The Paradigm Shift: Why Portland, Oregon Voted NO
Like Copernicus and Galileo, Silent Spring broke the consensus, causing a revolution. When Carson was asked about her position on water fluoridation, she was a precautious skeptic: “Prior to a high level research program into all its potential hazards to people of all ages – and, also into its residual effects, her inclination is to be against it.”39 Carson was quoted in a 1963 article in the Palm Beach Post, which called for volunteers to collect signatures for a referendum, to put the public water, up for a public vote. Evidently, the city council voted fluoridation chemicals into the water. We are left with the question: Should 51% of your neighbors who actually vote decide whether your child consumes a drug, for a lifetime?
In 2013, 61% of Portland, Oregon voted for Clean Water by voting No to Fluoridation Chemicals, for the fourth time in history. With very high voter turnout, Portland broke the consensus of the nation, being the last major city to not fluoridate its public water. The paradigm shift that took place in Portland is what inspired this research thesis. This inquiry attempted to answer the question of public health implications. This is why Portland, Oregon voted No…What we found is that the power and nature of the chemical itself is unlike that of toothpaste. Whereas this topical use of pharmaceutical grade fluoride is an FDA approved drug,40-2 water fluoridation is unapproved42-6 systemic ingestion of industrial waste.47-50 Voters were concerned with the fact that this industrial waste is contaminated50-2 with lead, arsenic, radioactive substances and is regulated as hazardous53-6 for its corrosive53 and toxic properties.54-5 Further along our road of inquiry was the fact that fluoridation chemicals are otherwise air pollution.57-60 We were left with the ultimate realization that water fluoridation could be appropriately termed mass medication, given fluoride is technically a drug.61 Likewise, this renders water fluoridation a violation of the spirit of the Safe Drinking Water Act.62
Why prohibit adding drugs to the public water? Some may wonder. Thus, we walked through this line of reasoning: Basically, since dosage, not concentration, determines safety, we cannot control the safety of water fluoridation; because when a drug is in the public water, natural variation among people ensures dosage will vary, which means safety is essentially beyond our control. Moreover, since some of us are simply more sensitive than others, we realized the effect upon the individual is beyond our knowledge as well. Thus, we examined the margin of safety through the notion of range per concentration level. With our concern focused on the infant who naturally consumes the highest dosage out of the whole population, it was discovered that water fluoridation is not safe for all because infants exceed the minimum dosage associated with a risk of adverse health effects.63-5 Specifically, the maximum of the infant at 0.14mg/kg/day63 is more than double the minimum adverse dosage at 0.05mg/kg/day.64 By extension, this logically proved there is no margin of safety at the “recommended” “optimal” concentration. Perhaps this is why DHHS reduced the “recommended” “optimal” by 40%, down to a new, lower “optimal” concentration.67
With this reduction ever so slight, there was a sense of too-close-for-comfort, given the minimum adverse concentration is still very close in proximity to the new “optimal” concentration. This showed “the range of estimated average intake associated with a number of adverse effects is in the range of intakes expected with fluoridated drinking water.”67 Voters wondered how much space, if any, exists for safety?
Then voters initiated a risk assessment. After reviewing health effects documented by the most recent science published in peer-reviewed journals, a definitive aspect influencing the vote was the 2006 NRC. It was recommended that EPA reduce the 4ppm MCL of fluoride due to several explicitly confirmed adverse health effects, namely, the disease fluorosis, which affects teeth, the skeleton, and increases risk of bone fracture.68 Logically, this meant health risks are associated with concentrations of fluoride lower than 4ppm. Other adverse health effects were also implicitly confirmed as a possible risk, such as cancer: “it is apparent that fluoride has the ability to initiate or promote cancer, particularly of bone.”69 Ultimately, the Harvard IQ Review validated the findings of dozens of IQ studies.70 Portland’s No vote proved wise, when fluoride was named a newly confirmed neurotoxin in a review published in 2014 by the prestigious journal, The Lancet.71 In sum, the impression was: too many recent, credible studies have found too many adverse health risks at concentrations too close to the “optimal” 0.7ppm.
The Science Speaks for Itself: and so with voters entertaining the notion that recent science may support the possibility of Health Risks, we explored Reverence of Life as it relates to the Ethics of Water Fluoridation. Given 41% of youth72 have a disease73 caused by ingesting too much fluoride, it was speculated that public health implications shouldn’t be framed so much in terms of dosage, concentration or science, so much as the fact that children are overexposed to a drug we would otherwise prefer to have a choice to consume topically, with toothpaste or systemically, with a prescription. Water fluoridation was thus regarded as a clear violation of the deontological principle of individual medical consent.74 Many called this freedom of choice, or freedom from the obligation to endure an uncertain risk from exposure to a chemical, whose toxicity is an inherent property of the chemical itself, rather than a property of the relative dose.75
It was further surmised that perhaps it is this epistemic uncertainty, i.e., of the safety of water fluoridation and the risk to Life, combined with Care Duty, which may warrant Precaution. Hence, the lack of scientific consensus. With many reputable names signing Fluoride Action Network’s “Professional Statement to End Water Fluoridation,”76 perhaps it may be safer and healthier to simply drink clean water? Portland voters were left to contemplate the Ethics debate in one question: can we balance Risk with Reverence of Life? Or does this beg the question, presuming a balance can be achieved?
Conclusively, Portland realized “The Balance of Nature is Not a Status Quo”77 – this is one of the conclusions put forth by Rachel Carson after presenting the recent science on DDT, in Silent Spring. “We have gone with the status quo for too long” 78 – this is the conclusion of the Chair of the 2006 NRC’s systematic review of the recent science on “Fluoride in Drinking Water.”
Ponder how we apply the Scientific Method to discern Nature’s laws and systems.
The word physics, comes from the ancient Greek word for nature, physis.
Is Fluorosis Natural? Is it natural for 41% of children to have a disease caused by ingesting too much of a chemical we intentionally add to the public drinking water?
Living Downstream: “The Solution is Biological, Not Chemical”82
Children are clearly enduring too much fluoride. “In having endured much, we have at least asserted ‘our right to know,’ and if in knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals; we should look about and see what other course is open to us.”79 Like mass applications of DDT insecticide, with “no oasis of safety” for wildlife, the mass medication that is water fluoridation flows through our public waterways directly into our private homes, and thus, into our bodies to permanently take its place within our bones,80 and brain,81 without the consent of all, and for far too many of us, without our knowledge.
In conclusion, this essay demonstrated firstly, that violating individual consent in the name of the greater good is debased by the pattern of results: credible studies support health risks to the greater population. Second, these risks warrant precaution. Third, the presence of lead, arsenic and other contaminants inherently precludes safety. And lastly, “laboratory and epidemiological research has led to a better understanding” of how fluoride prevents cavities or caries, as stated on the CDC’s website: “fluoride prevents dental caries predominately after eruption of the tooth, and its action primarily topical.”83 Therefore, with topical fluoridated toothpaste and dental treatments being more effective than water fluoridation. Dental health is about nutrition, access to dental care, and educating youth to cultivate healthy hygiene habits.
∞
Recent Science, Chemistry & Ethics of Water Fluoridation 