Fluoride Classified as a Drug: Pharmaceutical Grade Fluoride in Toothpaste
For most of us, when we hear fluoride, we think of toothpaste. This fluoride is distinct from water fluoridation in three aspects: Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approval, purity of product, and means of consumption. Toothpaste and dentistry use FDA approved pharmaceutical grade sodium or stannous fluoride, which is regulated as a drug for topical use, meaning it works on the surface of the teeth.1-3 On the back of all fluoride toothpaste, one will see words mandated by a federal labeling law: “Warning… if more than is used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, call a poison control center right away.”4 Simple arithmetic demonstrates a “pea-size” amount of toothpaste and a glass of “optimally” fluoridated water both contain approximately 0.25mg of fluoride.5
FDA Approved Topical Use versus Non-Approved Systemic Ingestion
Drinking a glass of fluoridated water and swallowing toothpaste are similar, in that both are systemic ingestion, however, systemic ingestion of fluoride is not FDA approved.6-8 When one uses fluoride toothpaste or when a dentist applies it to the surface of teeth, one is instructed to spit it out after use. This is FDA approved. On the other hand, fluoride intended for ingestion in the form of tablets prescribed by that dentist and those often distributed to children in public schools – this is not FDA approved.6-8 Nor have the main fluoridation chemicals – silicofluorides, ever been submitted for approval.9
Fluoridation with Industrial By-Products
Water fluoridation also does not involve pharmaceutical grade fluoride; the source of the fluoride that is added to the public drinking water is an unpurified industrial by-product of the phosphate fertilizer industry.10-13 All of the fluorides used in water fluoridation: Sodium Fluoride as well as Silicofluorides like Fluorosilicic Acid or Sodium Fluorosilicate – all industrial by-products, however predominately Silicofluorides are added to our water, as only 9% of fluoridated communities ingest sodium fluoride.14
Air Pollution Known to Cause Human Illness
Fluorides are otherwise Fluorine Air Pollution.15 Specifically, fluorine gases emitted from smokestacks, captured via water spray.16 Federal law requires mandatory reclamation17 because fluorine gases are known to harm ecosystems,18 farmers’ crops,19 the health of animals,20-1 and pose health risks to humans22 “in low ambient concentrations.”23 During the Cold War, fluorine emissions were responsible for more litigation claims against uranium, phosphate, aluminum and other metal industries24 than all other regulated air pollutants combined.25-6 At the same time, in 1955, a US district court in Oregon ruled for the first time in US history that fluorine emissions from an aluminum plant caused illness to a farmer’s family.27. In 2013, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality fined Intel for emitting fluorine air pollution without reporting.28
Regulated as Hazardous Waste
Fluorine-emitting industrial plants have also been identified by published case studies as the cause of hundreds of cases of illness and dozens of deaths during “temperature inversions” in two valleys, in Donora, Pennsylvania, 1948,29 and in the Meuse Valley, Belgium, 1930.30 Common dictionaries define fluorine as a “highly corrosive poisonous gas, the most reactive of all elements.”31 Hence, regulation and mandatory reclamation of fluorine as air pollution. When this air pollution is captured in an aqueous solution, it is then regulated as hazardous waste by the United Nation’s International Programme on Chemical Safety,32-4 the European Union,35-7 as well as the US EPA.38 Sodium Fluoride and Sodium Fluorosilicate are both classified as “Toxic,” while Fluorosilicic Acid is classified as “Corrosive.”32-34
Contaminated Fluoridation Chemicals & Fluoride as a Water Contaminant
Fluoride Hazardous Waste is also known to contain “impurities” as Contaminants.39-41 Fluoride is thus more appropriately termed fluoridation chemicals. The CDC,39 National Sanitation Foundation40 and EPA41 cite traces of arsenic and lead as the primary contaminants. It should be noted that EPA has determined zero to be the maximum safe level of arsenic and lead in drinking water.42 According to the research of two former EPA Risk Assessment Toxicologists, the arsenic that we add to our drinking water from fluoridation chemicals could potentially cause up to 4,100 cases of cancer per year.43 In addition to lead and arsenic, there are a plethora44 of other contaminants in fluoridation chemicals; noteworthy are mercury, and radio-active substances like chromium-6. In fact, Fluoride Itself is regulated by EPA as a Water Contaminant.45
Violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act
Community Water Fluoridation is therefore the addition of a chemical that is classified as toxic, corrosive, contaminated hazardous industrial waste to our public drinking water. Technically, this is what the Oral Health Division of the Center for Disease Control “recommends” as a “safe and effective” preventative health policy to reduce tooth decay.46 Moreover, since water fluoridation is also, technically, the addition of a drug to the public drinking water, we can clearly see this policy violates the spirit of the Safe Drinking Water Act: “No national primary drinking water regulation may require the addition of any substance for preventative health care purposes.”47 For this reason, water fluoridation may also be appropriately termed mass medication.
Recent Science, Chemistry & Ethics of Water Fluoridation 