Can Fluoride be Harmful to Health?

Last Revised:May 6, 2013

Books I am aware of concerning Fluoride:

The Fluoride Myth: Debunking the Controversy by Anthony J. Baker (Copyright 2011)

The Devil's Poison: How Fluoride is Killing you by Dean Murphy DDS (Copyright 2008)

The Case Against Fluoride : How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep it There by Paul Connett, PhD, James Beck, MD, PhD, and H S Micklem, DPhil (Copyright 2010)

The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson (Copyright 2004)

There are a couple of websites that are prominant. These should provide additional information.
(http://www.fluoridealert.org/), (http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/fluoride.htm), (http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/fluoride.cfm)

Ten years ago I became employed at the local water treatment plant, up til that time I never thought about fluoride nor any health issues consuming it can cause. Keep in mind that fluoride is toxic! Just because we are putting a very low dose into the water doesn't make it any less toxic.

As a result of my employment at a water treatment plant and having to deal with fluoride, filling hoppers with sodium fluoride, being sent to 'school' to learn about all the benefits as well as learning how to become a good operator I started to do my own research. I have since forgotten a lot of what I learned during those early years but will do my best to make this as informational as I can. Also, there is a lot of documentation about fluoride pros and cons, so much that I'll be able to discuss but a small bit here.

Of the books I listed at the beginning only one talks about the benefits, this is what I was taught when I became a water treatment operator. I won't go into much about any of the books, but want to say that Mr Baker calls fluoride a nutrient that our bodies need for various functions. That is not true! up until about 1900 fluorine (which fluoride is an ion of), a gas, killed everything it came into contact with and is more dangerous than chlorine! It was around the turn of the century that scientists (and dentists) began to think about using fluoride for the benefits of growing teeth. That is also around the time when we had steel mills and manufacturing plants that had a waste product of fluoride. Most, if not all, the fluoride we add to water comes from manufacturing fertilizers, it is their waste.

Initially I did my research online, but then I purchased "the fluoride deception" by Christopher Bryson. Unfortunately, I can't quote much from this book because I seem to have misplaced it or I loaned it to someone and never got it back. I found it to be a very eye opening book! It was a well researched book about the early development of adding fluoride to the public water systems and the individuals involved. We learn that the initial experiement in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Newburg, New York was not long enough to get a reasonable scientific result nor were these fluoridated communities compared to non-fluoridated communities. While researching for this composition, I learned that for each experimental city there was also a control city. That was something not mentioned in much of my previous research, schooling, nor books I read.

One thing I remember most from Bryson's book was the only scientific experiment that he was able to find, the individuals involved with the experiment chose 29 Beagle dogs to perform the experiment on. The dogs were divided up into 3 groups, a control (no fluoride received), low dose (3.5 mg/day), and high dose (350 mg/day). They hypothesised that the 3.5 mg/day dose would be safe and not cause any health issues. Well at the end of the experiment when the dogs were necropsied it was found that all the dogs that received fluoride had lesions from the daily dose, so the experiment was never published.

This paragraph will 'list' as many compounds, materials, food sources and what have you that contain fluoride or take up fluoride as a result of being watered with fluoridated water. Many meds contain fluoride atoms (including: Prozac, Cipro), drinking water of course, toothpaste, food & beverages (tea contains high levels when exposed to fluoride), household products (i.e. Teflon), air pollution from phosphate fertilizer manufacture, atomic weapons (contains 4 fluorine atoms per uranium atom), rat poison before WWII and the Germans gave high doses to prisoners of war to keep them sedated. This is just a short list of compounds or products that contain fluoride or fluorine, in time I may add to this list if can remember or find more.

There is an example I always give to people I talk to about this, Say I plant a garden containing cucumbers and tomatoes, then I water that garden with fluoridated water. When I harvest my cucumbers and tomatoes, that by the way are mostly water, I am consuming high doses of fluoride that my crops have taken up. All along I am consuming my daily dose of water so my consumption of fluoride is now reaching a critical point because I am consuming more than recommended! Over time my bones may become brittle from the high level of fluoride in them.

A couple of years ago, ADA came out and stated that newborn babies should not consume fluorided water. Their concern was for the infants developing teeth, but there are many more concerns than that.

When I started to research more info for this document, I started to read The Devil's Poison. Dr. Murphy provided lots of studies about the effects of fluoride / fluorine done during the early part of the 20th century. This is a very good book, but it is not written for the average individual, even with my degree in Biology some of the material is a bit hard to digest. Of all the books listed above he provides more studies than any of them.

The last thing I am going to include in this is a bit from the book "The Case Against Fluoride" by Paul Connett, PhD, James Beck, MD, PhD, and H.S. Micklem, DPhil. This book is a bit different from Bryson's in the way they looked at fluoride, but the conclusion is basically the same, it is bad science. In this book they talk about fluoride as if it were a medicine, so how do you feel about being given a medicine you do not need or had no say in whether or not you wanted it? In Part 4 of their book they go over the various parts of the body and give evidence as to what harm fluoride does.

After reading The Case Against Fluoride I came to the conclusion that we will never get our government(s) to allow citizens to stop putting fluoride into the water system because there are too many heads that will be disgraced and the public will be up in arms. Watch out! Here Come the Law Suits!!!