Feds Fail to Inform African-Americans of Heightened Fluoride Risk

African-Americans are among the most fluoride-overdosed populations, afflicted with dental fluorosis (discolored teeth), but who still suffer with higher tooth decay rates. Civil Rights leaders are calling for an end to fluoridation. And high level government officials working with Organized Dentistry try but fail to convince these leaders' to ignore the evidence apparently protecting fluoridation instead.

Fluoridation was launched in the 1940’s with the mistaken belief that fluoride was an essential nutrient required to be ingested for healthy teeth. Modern science disproves all that. Fluoride’s benefits are topical; but risks are systemic. Fluoride is a drug with side effects, contraindications and overdose fears.

After 70 years of fluoridation, 60 years of fluoridated toothpaste, a glut of fluoridated dental products (and in higher concentrations) and a fluoride-saturated food supply, Illinois Congresswoman Robin Kelly reports (2015 Kelly Report: Health Disparities in America) that:

• African Americans suffer from disproportionate rates of tooth loss and untreated dental caries.
• 42% of African American adults have untreated dental disease, compared to 22% of White Americans. 
• Untreated tooth decay among children ages two-eight is twice as high for Hispanic and African American children, compared to White children. 

No valid evidence proves fluoridation changes the “existing differences in tooth decay across socioeconomic groups,” reports the trusted and objective UK-based research Group, the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane also reports that fluoridation’s claimed reductions in tooth decay were based on biased and scientifically invalid research.

Presidential Executive Order 12898 (2/11/1994) “directs federal agencies to identify and address the disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their actions on minority and low-income populations,” according to the EPA. But federal agencies fail to inform minorities of their heightened risk of fluorosis from government-promoted fluoridation schemes.

In spite of higher decay rates, dental fluorosis – white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted teeth (See pictures: http://fluoridealert.org/issues/fluorosis/), which is  the outward sign of fluoride toxicity, is more prevalent and severe in African-Americans and Hispanics. No research is conducted to learn if fluoride also damaged the bones of those with dental fluorosis.

In 2005, 58% of Blacks had dental fluorosis compared to 32% of Whites, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. FOIA documents

Government health authorities knew over 50 years ago that black Americans suffered disproportionately from dental fluorosis solely from water fluoridation, but chose to keep it confidential. 

In 1945, way before fluoridated toothpaste and dental products were widely used or even invented, Grand Rapids, Michigan, experimentally added fluoride chemicals into the water supply (the first city to do so) anticipating that children’s tooth decay would decline without causing too much dental fluorosis. But, “negroes in Grand Rapids had twice as much fluorosis than others,” according to a January 10, 1962 internal memorandum, from a U.S. Public Health Service official, F.J. Maier. 

Based on this, Maier asked, “In a community with a larger number of negroes (say in Dekalb County, Georgia) would this tend to change our optimum fluoride levels?”

Protecting fluoridation at the expense of African-Americans Maier wrote “Would this observation indicate more studies in case opponents use this finding?”

No change was made. Worse, government officials still have taken no steps to educate the black community about their heightened dental fluorosis risk.

Modern day government officials seem to be just as protective of fluoridation. FOIA-revealed documents show a scramble among top level federal government officials in 2011, including the Surgeon General’s Chief of Staff, working closely with Organized Dentistry to devise strategy and have special meetings to presumably change the opinions of Civil Rights leaders who newly opposed fluoridation and still do.  See documents here:

Even though they are fluoride-overdosed, minority groups have the highest rates of tooth decay, tooth loss, untreated tooth decay and are least able to get dental care. Eighty percent of dentists refuse Medicaid patients.  Medicare doesn’t include dental benefits because the American Dental Association lobbied against its inclusion.  130 million Americans don’t have dental insurance. Many with insurance can’t afford dentistry’s high out-of-pocket expenses.

Fluoridation is newly promoted by to benefit the low-income folks who generally aren’t welcomed into dental offices. As a result, hospital ERs are flooded with victims priced out of dental care.  One hundred and one people died in hospitals as a consequence of untreated tooth decay, according to the Journal of the American Dental Association.

Environmental leaders and Civil rights leaders such as former Atlanta mayor and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young and Reverend Dr. Gerald Durley, former pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Atlanta, both asked Georgia legislators to repeal Georgia’s mandatory water fluoridation law. The Rev. William Owens of the Coalition of African American Pastors, Alveda & Bernice King and the Portland NAACP all oppose fluoridation.

In 2011, the oldest and largest organization representing Hispanics in the US, the League of United Latin Americans Citizens (LULAC), adopted a historic resolution calling for an end to water fluoridation.

From 1 – 5% of the population is allergic to or intolerant of fluoride.  Studies link fluoride to many other health problems. Everyone should have the freedom to choose the chemicals they put in their bodies.

The most used fluoridation chemicals are hydrofluosilicic acid (HFA), waste products of phosphate fertilizer manufacturing never safety-tested in humans or animals. HFA is allowed to contain trace amounts of  lead, arsenic and other toxins which are never purified out before injecting into the public’s water supplies.

Lead is linked to more tooth decay.  In 1995 Stevens reported, “Of impoverished black children aged three to five living in American inner cities, 90% have elevated blood-lead levels.”  Other studies show that fluoridation chemicals enhance blood lead uptake when lead is already in the environment (Masters & Coplan; Macek)

The FDA regulates fluoride as a drug for topical application but considers fluoride for ingestion as an “unapproved drug.” The EPA regulates fluoride as a water contaminant. The US Centers for Disease Control promotes fluoridation, and has hired a PR agency to help them. But CDC says it is not responsible for determining fluoridation’s safety. Actually, no federal agency either oversees fluoridation or  informs sub-populations of their heightened fluorosis risk.

Since no American is fluoride-deficient; but too many are dentist-deficient, a viable solution is to legalize Dental Therapists (DT) in the US who need just two years training to do simple dentistry as they have successfully done in many other developed countries. Minnesota and Alaska have already.  Other states are trying.  But Organized Dentistry in the US lobbies against DTs legalization – some say it’s to preserve dentists’ lucrative monopoly

Jonathan Kozol describes life in the fluoridated Bronx (NYC) in his 1991 book, Amazing Grace (NYC has been fluoridated since 1965) 

“Bleeding gums, impacted teeth and rotting teeth are routine matters for the children I have interviewed in the South Bronx. Children get used to feeling constant pain. They go to sleep with it. They go to school with it. Sometimes their teachers are alarmed and try to get them to a clinic. But it’s all so slow and heavily encumbered with red tape and waiting lists and missing, lost or canceled welfare cards, that dental care is often long delayed. Children live for months with pain that grown-ups would find unendurable. The gradual attrition of accepted pain erodes their energy and aspiration. I have seen children in New York with teeth that look like brownish, broken sticks. I have also seen teen-agers who were missing half their teeth. But, to me, most shocking is to see a child with an abscess that has been inflamed for weeks and that he has simply lived with and accepts as part of the routine of life. Many teachers in the urban schools have seen this. It is almost commonplace.”

Tooth decay crises are occurring in all fluoridated cities and states. Vermont Senator and Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders’ report, Dental Crisis in America, says nearly 9,500 new dental providers are needed to meet the country’s current oral health needs.

In fact, according to an April 2015 Indian Health Services  report, despite wide implementation of fluoridation, topical fluorides, dental sealants and oral health education, three-quarters of American Indian/Alaskan Natives 5-year-olds have tooth decay - the highest level of any population group in the US.

Also little publicized is that routinely mixing infant formula with fluoridated water increases babies risk of developing dental fluorosis, according to many government, health and dental organizations.

When the Public Health Service first endorsed fluoridation in the early 1950s, the National Research Council (NRC) estimated that the “safe level” of fluoride is exceeded when “more than 10 to 15 percent of children” have “the mildest” type of fluorosis. The CDC now reports that up to 60% of US 12-15 year-olds are afflicted with dental fluorosis – up to 3% is moderate/severe.

Black children now far exceed the NRC’s safety threshold. One study from fluoridated Augusta, Georgia found 17% of black children suffering from advanced forms (moderate and severe) of fluorosis, the kind of fluorosis that was once only seen in naturally high-fluoride communities. (Williams 1990).

Communities of color have a greater incidence of kidney disease and diabetes. Because poor kidney function makes it more difficult for the body to get rid of fluoride, kidney patients should avoid as much exposure to fluoride as possible.   

Diabetics often drink a lot of water and therefore consume more fluoride.  Fluoride doesn’t boil out or dissipate like chlorine does.  It condenses in water upon boiling. There is no dispute that too much fluoride is extremely unsafe and unhealthy.

Sugar Causes Cavities – Not Fluoride Deficiency

The single cause of tooth decay is sugar. “Modifying factors such as fluoride and dental hygiene would not be needed if we tackled the single cause—sugars,” report researchers in the Journal of Dental Research

In fact, “Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, and Colgate itself, had long ago launched products with the maximum amount of fluoride allowed by health authorities. Yet caries remaine a significant threat to public health in many countries, both developing and developed,” according to the Harvard Business Review.

Recently uncovered internal documents from 1959 to 1971 show the sugar industry successfully manipulated the National Institute of Dental Research to take the focus off of sugar as a proven decay causer in favor of unproven therapies including fluoride use. (PLOS Medicine)

Heavy consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is almost double among more impoverished children and teens compared to better-off counterparts. African-American youth saw twice as many TV ads for sugar-sweetened beverages than white youth, and that ad spending on Spanish-language TV had increased 44 percent in the last three years, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer

Federal nutrition programs could be a vehicle for improving kids’ dental health, according to Meg Booth of the Children’s Dental Health Project. 

Booth writes, “Researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill are calling for renewed policy efforts to address the long-ignored impact of sugar intake on children’s oral health. Citing the influence of special interest groups such as the sugar, food, and drink industries, experts seem to agree that advocates and policymakers must redouble their efforts aimed at improving diet and restricting sugar intake in accordance with well-established guidelines such as those endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO).”

IT’S NOT KNOWN FOR SURE WHY AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE MORE DENTAL FLUOROSIS PRONE; BUT SOME THOUGHTS:

1) According to the CDC, it may be a result of “biologic susceptibility or greater fluoride intake.” (Beltrán-Aguilar et al., 2005).

2) African Americans consume significantly more total fluids and plain water, and thus receive more fluoride from drinking water, than white children (Sohn et al., 2009). In fluoridated Detroit, studies show that, even when fluoridated water was the most consumed beverage, tooth decay rates were extensive when diets poor

3) According to CDC, “non-Hispanic blacks had a lower prevalence of breastfeeding initiation than nonHispanic whites in all but two states…”  Human milk is very low in fluoride.  Formula made with fluoridated water will have 100 to 200 times more fluoride than a breastfed baby.

4) Leite et al. (2011) report that rats treated with both lead and fluoride had worse dental fluorosis than rats treated with fluoride alone. Thus it is possible that children with lead exposure will be more susceptible to developing dental fluorosis. African-Americans in the inner-city have had more exposure to lead than white children.

5) Fluoride’s toxicity is exacerbated by inadequate nutrition; including lower intakes of iodine and calcium. Certain racial groups are more likely to be lactose intolerant than others and may be indicative of lower rates of calcium-rich milk consumption. Calcium also protects the body from fluoride toxicity and is the antidote for fluoride poisoning.

More information can be obtained from The Fluoride Action Network’s submission on “Water Fluoridation and Environmental Justice,” a report submitted to the Environmental Justice Interagency Working Group September 2015:  

http://fluoridealert.org/wp-content/uploads/ej-report-9-25-15.pdf

Additionally, cryolite is a fluoride containing pesticide which is used on fresh vegetables and fruits, is allowed to leave behind fluoride residues of up to 7 parts per million. Sulfuryl fluoride, a post harvest fumigant, also leave fluoride remains on food.

http://fluoridealert.org/researchers/pesticide/fluoride-residues-food/

The water supply should never be used to deliver drugs or nutrients to the entire population prescribed by legislators, delivered by water engineers (and not side-effect describing pharmacists) and dosed based on thirst and not age, weight health and need. People need the freedom to choose what they put into their bodies and how much.

                                                                         ***

Since fluoride is not essential, instead of an RDI (recommended Daily Intake) an Adequate Intake (AI) was calculated to prevent  moderate dental fluorosis

According to the Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine, National Academies, the AI for:

-- 6-month-olds and younger is only 0.01 milligram per day (mg/d)

-- 6 to 12-month-olds -- 0.05 mg/d

-- 1 to 3-years-old -- 0.7 mg/d

-- 4 to 8-year-olds – 1 mg/d

The American Dental Association describes moderate dental fluorosis as “All tooth surfaces affected; marked wear on biting surfaces; brown stain may be present” (2005 Fluoridation Facts).

 All infant formula contains fluoride at levels that are too high for 6-month-olds  See: http://safbaby.com/images/Posts/fluorideinformulas.png

                                                             END

Fluoridationists Behaving Badly Part 1

I was kicked out of a free pro-fluoridation strategy session funded by my taxes and in my neighborhood.

In return for required continuing education credits, pro-fluoridation spokesperson training was offered for free to dental hygienists, at SUNY Farmingdale which is near  my home. I received a free ticket; but upon arrival  was told to leave by a person who didn't think I was moving fast enough.  She said it was because I wasn't a hygienist.   The below  Freedom of Information obtained emails shows the chatter about me.

To summarize, Meg Atwood, a dental hygienist, and Matt Jacob with a University of Arkansas Bachelor's Degree in Journalism, go around the country training "dentists and others with a vested interest in community water fluoridation how to be effective spokespersons for community water fluoridation...[and] how to respond to tough or hostile questions, from media, the general public, legislators, etc." 

Apparently, the teachers are ill-equipped to respond to their expected tough questions from me. I'm never hostile, By now, they should know that.  I was a member of the Nassau Suffolk Oral Health Coalition until they created a new requirement to pledge to be pro-fluoridation in order to remain a member and in order to get me to leave which I did quietly.

This fluoridation spokesperson meeting was funded by the NYS Department of Health and held in a tax-payer funded institution. The OK to exclude me came from dentist J.V. Kumar who at the time headed the NYS DofH Dental Bureau (He now works in California)


On March 31, 2015, Mercedes Susi, Grant Project Coordinator for the New York State Dental Foundation informed  Erin Knoerl, MPH, NYS Dept of Health's fluoridation coordinator that "FAN Has been signing up for our fluoride events and children's dental health workshop.  It is their media director Carol Kopf. How is she not smart enough to know to use an alias? Anyhow, I will be removing her from the events (I wasn't representing FAN [Fluoride Action Network] and never said I was. I also wasn't representing the NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation which worked diligently to keep Long Island fluoridation-free nor was I representing the Levittown Safe Water Association which stopped 29 years of fluoridation in 1983)  I use my real name because I have nothing to hide but apparently these fluoridationists have something they don't want the public to know about.) 

Erin was glad to be informed and asked Kumar  what to do about me. He said it's OK to exclude me. How is that legal?

On April 22, 2015, Meg Atwood said she knows how to handle me.  Just let her know. Mercedes Susi acknowledged that I may have died out (?)  

I think Atwood was the angry lady who wanted me out faster than I was moving.

Fluoridation 101 (Fluoridation History)

The chemical fluoride (hydrofluosilicic acid), purposely added to most US water supplies, doesn't treat the water but does treat the water drinker who is told fluoride is a safe and effective cavity fighter. But it's neither.

A 1940's concept, water fluoridation's goal was for every faucet in America to dispense one milligram fluoride (sodium fluoride) daily via approximately 1 quart of water for the benefit of children only (up to age nine). It was mistakenly believed that swallowed fluoride incorporated into young children's developing teeth making them decay resistant. However, modern researchers discovered that fluoride ingestion only causes adverse effects (tooth and bone damage, etc) and that fluoride’s perceived benefits are only topical.  So there’s no longer any scientifically valid reason for swallowing fluoride or continuing water fluoridation.

In fact, just this year (2015) one of the most trusted research bodies, the UK-based Cochrane Collaboration, was the latest research body to reveal that no valid evidence exists to prove fluoridation helps the poor, adults or that stopping fluoridation increases decay rates. Cochrane reports that fluoridation may reduce cavities in children (2 primary teeth or 1 permanent tooth) but cautions these studies have “high risk of bias” and were mostly done before preventive measures were widespread, e.g. fluoridated toothpaste and sealants

Fluoridation came at a time when scientists discovered health-requiring nutrients prevented “diseases,” such as Vitamin C deficiency caused scurvy, vitamin D deficiency caused rickets, etc.  So dental researchers thought their magic bullet against tooth decay was fluoride. Many studies, research grants and decades later, we now know that teeth don’t need fluoride at all.  Fluoride-deficiency does not cause tooth decay.  Rotten diets cause rotten teeth and no amount of fluoride changes that.

Public health officials predicted fluoride would eradicate tooth decay like vaccines prevented some diseases but they were wrong. Today, the US is facing a tooth decay epidemic after 70 years of fluoridation, 60 years of fluoridated toothpaste, a glut of fluoridated dental products (and in higher concentrations), a fluoride-saturated food supply and fluoride-containing medicines.  Up to 60% of US adolescents are afflicted with fluoride-overdose symptoms – dental fluorosis (white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted teeth) but 50% of them still have cavities. Tooth decay crises are occurring in all fluoridated cities and states.  See: http://www.FluorideNews.Blogspot.com

Also back in the 1940’s, fluoride tablets were first prescribed to and recommended for children who live in communities that wouldn't or couldn't fluoridate with no or very poor research to back that up.

Fluoride supplements still haven’t been safety tested by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They were "grandfathered" in because sodium fluoride was already being sold pre-1938 when drug testing laws were enacted.  Sodium fluoride was sold as a rat poison.  The FDA says, “We don't have information on the medical uses of fluoride before 1938.”

Many modern reviews conclude that fluoride supplementation is useless and harmful including the Cochrane Collaboration which reported fluoride supplements fail to reduce tooth decay in primary teeth and permanent teeth cavity-reduction is dubious.

Studies now show tooth decay rates are virtually the same in fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities, alike. In fact, some non-fluoridated communities enjoy lower tooth decay rates.

Dental fluorosis has gotten so bad that some dental experts say that it costs more to repair teeth damaged by fluoride than would have been saved had water fluoridation actually reduced tooth decay.

HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS
At the turn of the last century, healthy, wealthier residents of the Southwest US had unusually ugly teeth. They called it "Colorado Brown Stain." Dental researchers sought to discover the source of this disfiguring tooth malformation. The culprit was high levels of natural calcium fluoride in the water. Since these ugly teeth resisted decay, well-meaning but misguided dentists assumed the fluoride also caused the teeth to resist decay. However, they overlooked calcium which we now know is essential for healthy teeth..

Dentists always settle where people can afford them – something that hasn’t changed today.  So what they actually discovered was that a healthy lifestyle creates decay-free teeth and that fluoride discolors teeth. This had already been proven by dentist Weston Price in his 1939 book, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.”

In another highly unbelievable move, the dentists convinced public health people to experiment with this new fluoride discovery. They hypothesized that, if natural fluoride (calcium fluoride) in drinking water makes teeth resist decay, let's see if artificially fluoridating a town's water supply with sodium fluoride makes any difference. (Calcium fluoride is much less toxic than sodium fluoride because calcium binds tightly to fluoride.  Calcium is the antidote for fluoride poisoning)

So they used all the people in a few cities like Grand Rapids Michigan and Newburgh New York as their guinea pigs. In Newburgh, NY, they added sodium fluoride into the water supply in 1945 and left Kingston, NY, unfluoridated to act as the control.

They prematurely declared fluoridation a success after only five years even though the teeth of the children who were born into the experiment hadn’t even erupted yet. They said fluoride was safe because they examined school children who weren't sick two weeks before the examination date - virtually eliminating the very children who may have been made ill by the fluoride. And they never even checked out the adults. Long range and brain effects weren’t even considered.

Ten years later, the State University of New York found that children in fluoridated Newburgh had more cortical bone defects and higher rates of hemoglob anemia. Recent studies show that tooth decay and fluorosis rates are higher in fluoridated Newburgh than never-fluoridation Kingston.

And what's even more perverse is that the chemical used to fluoridate your drinking water is an industrial waste product that, along with fluoride, purposely puts lead, arsenic, and other toxins into the public water supply.

The silicofluorides haven't even been safety tested in animals. With the map of the USA as a laboratory, researchers are finding that silicofluorides increase children's lead absorption, increases women's risk of hip fractures, increases dental fluorosis, can lower IQ and contribute to cancer risk and DNA damage. Fluoridation has provided a lucrative sector for researchers to apply for federal grants to study the after effects of the crazy decision to put fluoride into humans' water supply and then see what happens. 

Over 67% of US communities fluoridate and most foods and beverages sold in the US are made with that water. US children are overdosed with fluoride whether rich or poor, healthy or malnourished from various sources. No human is, or ever was, fluoride deficient. So it's not a surprise that after 55 years of pushing fluoride (now 70) as a panacea to tooth decay, the US Surgeon General reported in 2000 that an oral health epidemic exists among the poor and certain minority groups, who most often already live in fluoridated communities. If their bodies were nourished, their teeth would prosper. But instead dentists are lobbying legislators all over the US to fluoridate water supplies - even when the people have voted against it and even when the studies say fluoride is hurting our children. Meanwhile, the American Dental Association reported to the press on June 16, 2000 that they have a new cavity fighting tool - calcium.