Fluoridated Water: The Bone Destroying Daily Drink Fooling Millions of Americans
August 08, 2011
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By The Fluoride Action Network (FAN)
Two new North American studies investigated the impact of low-level fluoride consumption on the strength and density of bone.
While these important (yet largely overlooked) studies are not
slam-dunks, they provide some of the strongest evidence to date that
low-level fluoride exposure alters the quality of bone tissue, and
strengthen concerns that fluoride exposure may increase the rate of bone
fracture in the population.
Skeletal Fluorosis—A Real Danger of Excessive Fluoride Consumption
The harmful effects of chronic fluoride exposure on bone are well
established. Since the 1930s it has been known that fluoride intake
causes excessive bone growth, which can result in joint pain, bone pain,
and stiffness. These symptoms are difficult to distinguish from
arthritis. Other symptoms indicative of early clinical stage skeletal
fluorosis include:
- Burning, prickling, and tingling in your limbs
- Muscle weakness
- Chronic fatigue
- Gastrointestinal disorders
- Reduced appetite and weight loss
The second clinical stage of skeletal fluorosis is characterized by:
- Stiff joints and/or constant pain in your bones; brittle bones; and osteosclerosis
- Anemia
- Calcification of tendons, or ligaments of ribs and pelvis
- Osteoporosis in the long bones
- Bony spurs may also appear on your limb bones, especially around your knee, elbow, and on the surface of tibia and ulna
In advanced skeletal fluorosis (called crippling skeletal fluorosis),
your extremities become weak and moving your joints difficult, and your
vertebrae partially fuse together, effectively crippling you. You have a
heightened risk of developing problems from even mild exposure to
fluoride, such as bone fractures, if you:
- Are elderly
- Are deficient in calcium, magnesium, and/or vitamin C
- Have cardiovascular problems
- Have kidney problems
How Much Fluoride is Too Much?
What is still not clearly established is whether fluoridated water,
consumed over a lifetime, may lead to at least the initial stages of
skeletal fluorosis. A threshold intake amount of 10 milligrams (mg)
fluoride per day for an adult for a decade or two has been suggested as
necessary before skeletal fluorosis is likely to result. Do Americans
get this much fluoride? No sufficiently large study has ever been
conducted in the US to determine the total intake of fluoride. However, a
recent British study
looked at a biomarker for fluoride intake, which is the amount of
fluoride excreted over 24 hours in urine. It found that several percent
of adults were likely already exceeding an intake of 10 mg/day.
The situation may actually be far worse in the US, since in Britain,
only 10 percent of the population has fluoridated water, whereas in the
US over 65 percent does. Fluoridated water was an important contributor
to the high fluoride intake among some individuals in the British study.
Skeletal fluorosis was identified in a 2006 report by the National
Research Council (NRC) as an adverse effect that needed to be considered
by the EPA in establishing maximum safe levels of fluoride in drinking
water. But so far, the EPA has done no serious analysis of the potential
for skeletal fluorosis in the US.
How Fluoride Damages Your Bones
The NRC report had even more concern for another effect of fluoride
on bone, which is the decrease in bone strength that can result in higher risks of fractures,
especially in the elderly. This effect has not been as well studied as
skeletal fluorosis, but since fractures of the hip in the elderly are
such a serious health problem, often sending patients into a spiral of
declining health ending in death, it is crucial to know whether water
fluoridation is contributing to decreased bone strength. Some basic
information about how fluoride acts in your body is helpful to
understanding its health effects.
First, about half of the fluoride you consume is excreted through
your kidneys into your urine, while the other half becomes bound in your
skeleton. The fluoride that enters your bones is eliminated very
slowly. The NRC estimates the biological half-life of fluoride in bone
(the time for half of it to be removed) is as long as 20 years.
Unfortunately, most people—especially if you're drinking fluoridated
water on a daily basis—have constant low level exposures to fluoride,
they are taking more fluoride into their bones than what is being
removed, so the level of fluoride in their bones increase steadily over
time.
Young people generally don't have more than a few hundred parts per
million (ppm) of fluoride in their bones, whereas older people living in
fluoridated areas can have several thousand ppm, which is the level
where skeletal fluorosis begins. Fluoride excretion in urine is reduced
in those with decreased kidney function, which is also very common in
older people. So, the elderly not only have accumulated higher levels,
but they are losing the ability to effectively remove it as well.
An analogy can be made between fluoride accumulating in bone and
persistent chemicals such as dioxin or PCBs, which often accumulate,
because they also have long biological half-lives in human tissues.
Your bone is constantly being "turned over" in a process called
remodeling. The mineral portion of your bone is broken down by one type
of cell and then rebuilt by another. Fluoride appears to interfere with
this essential process. The result is excessive mineralization and
enlargement of your bones, and a disruption of the precise architecture
needed to maintain resistance to fracture.
Ironically, while fluoride often does increase your bone mineral
density, which is a commonly used measure of bone quality, it
simultaneously makes your dense bone more brittle and therefore more subject to fracture. Remember thicker bone does NOT equate to stronger bone…
Can Therapeutic Doses of Fluoride Cause Osteoporosis?
Supporting this are human studies performed, given therapeutic doses
of fluoride to try to prevent fractures from osteoporosis, which causes
low bone density, often have found increases in fracture rates in the treated patients, even though their bone density increased.
So, the important scientific question is whether water fluoridation
can lead to high enough levels of fluoride in your bones to noticeably
weaken them. A dozen or so epidemiological studies have investigated
this, with mixed results. Some of them show that fairly low levels of
fluoride intake can increase the risk of fractures, whereas others have
found no effect.
An important recent study tried a different approach.
Instead of looking at the rate of fractures in people exposed to
varying amounts of fluoride, it used samples of actual bone from people
undergoing hip replacement to see whether the bone fluoride
concentration correlated with the mechanical strength of those samples.
This type of study had been done on laboratory animals, but never in humans. The work was completed in 2001 but was not published until 2010.
The number of subjects in the study was small, with only 92 people, so
the results were not definitive. The authors themselves do not draw any
firm conclusions. Yet when the results are examined carefully, there is
clear evidence that the people with higher bone fluoride levels had
weaker bones, by several different measurements of bone quality.
The most straightforward measurement of bone strength was the amount
of compression force the sample could withstand before breaking, which
is called the Ultimate Compressive Stress. The people with the highest
levels of fluoride in their bone had their sample break under about 50
percent less stress than those with the lowest levels of fluoride. This
result was statistically significant.
A serious limitation of the study was that it failed to control for
age, even though it found that older people tended to have weaker bones.
The problem is that since older people also tend to have higher bone
fluoride, to disentangle the effect of fluoride from that of age, they
should have controlled for age in some manner. For example, they could
have looked at a relatively narrow age range subgroup of their subjects
to see if the relationship between fluoride and bone strength could
still be detected when age was "held constant".
Other, more sophisticated methods of controlling for age are also possible.
Government funding for research on fluoride has a history of granting
money only to researchers who defend fluoridation, so the decision to
leave this study ambiguous may have been to avoid a cut-off in future
research dollars.
Other Evidence of Bone Damage Caused by Fluoride Ingestion
Another 2009 study
suggests that fluoridated water might also be causing bone changes in
young people, long before the bone fluoride concentration reaches the
high levels in later life. Several types of bone mineral density
measurements (BMD) were made in 11 year olds and related to fluoride
intake. Several associations were found. In girls the BMD tended to
decrease with higher fluoride intake, while in boys it tended to
increase.
The number of children in the study was relatively small and the effects were generally weak.
The study didn't try to find out whether these changes in bone had an
effect on fracture rates, however. It is worth noting that the Chachra
study on bones of hip replacement patients also found only weak
associations between fluoride and BMD, yet found a clear association
between fluoride and bone quality. So the fact that Levy's study only
found weak associations between fluoride and BMD doesn't preclude the
possibility that fluoride in children may be more clearly affecting bone
strength.
Simply finding that water fluoridation may be sufficient to cause
changes in bone remodeling at this age is worrying. Dental proponents of
fluoridation typically ignore all effects of fluoride except on the
teeth, or even maintain that there are no such effects.
Clearly, the effect of water fluoridation on bone health cannot be dismissed as non-existent.
When these recent studies are seen in the light of earlier work, the concern is heightened. In one of the best bone fracture studies on adults
to date, it was found that hip fracture rates increased steadily
starting from the lowest fluoride level examined, which was similar to
what many Americans are getting from fluoridated water.
In children, one of the only studies ever conducted looked at fracture rates in relation to dental fluorosis
. Dental fluorosis is disrupted enamel development that occurs in
children exposed to fluoride. This study found that bone fracture rates
rose sharply with increasing severity of dental fluorosis. In the US
today, roughly 40 percent of all children have dental fluorosis, and
several percent have the more severe stages. This biomarker of childhood
fluoride exposure tells us that overexposure and the accompanying risk
to bone health starts early.
How to Reduce Your Exposure to Fluoride
Although not discussed in this article, the health effects of
fluoride ingestion are numerous. For a list of documented health
effects, please see FAN's Health Effects Database.
The science is quite clear: Fluoride should NOT be ingested. So,
first of all, don't drink fluoridated water. You can remove about 80
percent of the fluoride from your drinking water using a reverse osmosis
(RO) filter. It is really hard to remove all of it with virtually any
commercial filter. If you are concerned about fluoride the BEST solution
is to help the Fluoride Action Network in their campaign to remove it from the water supply entirely.
As discussed above, you are exposed to fluoride from many sources
other than the obvious lineup of toothpastes and mouth rinses (which I
recommend using fluoride-free versions of as well). Far less obvious sources of fluoride, which I highly recommend avoiding, include:
Non-organic foods (to avoid pesticide residue) |
Food and beverages processed with fluoridated water, including organic processed foods and beverages |
Mechanically de-boned meat |
Pharmaceutical drugs, especially SSRI antidepressants and fluoroquinolone antibiotics like Cipro |
Soy baby formulas |
Instant tea |
Processed breakfast cereals |
Soda and fruit juices |
You're even exposed to fluoride through air pollution! For more information about airborne fluoride pollution, please review FAN's Fluoride Pollution page.
Important! The producers of this powerful film are allowing a
full and FREE preview through August 13th in celebration of Fluoride
Awareness Week (Aug 7 - 13)! You can support Fluoride Action Network by
purchasing the Professional Perspectives DVD at a special price of $10 during Fluoride Awareness Week.
What You Can Do TODAY!
The Fluoride Action Network
has a game plan to END water fluoridation in both Canada and the United
States, and this Fluoride Awareness Week will hopefully bring us a lot
closer to that goal by spreading mass awareness. Our fluoride initiative
will primarily focus on Canada since 60 percent of Canada is already
non-fluoridated. A few weeks ago the city of Calgary stopped
fluoridating over a million people and last October the citizens of
Waterloo, Ontario voted it out in a referendum. If we can get the rest
of Canada to stop fluoridating their water, we believe the U.S. will be
forced to follow.
Please, join the anti-fluoride movement in Canada, New Zealand and
the United States by contacting the representative for your area below.
Contact Information for Canadian Communities:
- If you live in Ontario, Canada, please join the ongoing effort by contacting Diane Sprules at diane.sprules@cogeco.ca.
- The point-of-contact for Toronto, Canada is Aliss Terpstra. You may email her at aliss@nutrimom.ca.
Contact Information for American Communities:
We're also going to address three US communities: New York City, Austin, and San Diego:
- New York City, NY: With the recent victory in
Calgary, New York City is the next big emphasis. The anti-fluoridation
movement has a great champion in New York City councilor Peter Vallone,
Jr. who introduced legislation on January 18 "prohibiting the addition
of fluoride to the water supply."
A victory there could signal the beginning of the end of fluoridation in the U.S.
If you live in the New York area I beg you to participate in this
effort as your contribution could have a MAJOR difference. Remember that
one person can make a difference.
The point person for this area is Carol Kopf, at the New York Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation (NYSCOF). Email her at NYSCOF@aol.com . Please contact her if you're interested in helping with this effort.
- Austin, Texas: Join the effort by contacting Rae Nadler-Olenick at either: info@fluoridefreeaustin.com or fluoride.info@yahoo.com, or by regular mail or telephone:
POB 7486
Austin, Texas 78713
Phone: (512) 371-3786
- San Diego, California: Contact Patty Ducey-Brooks, publisher of the Presidio Sentinel at pbrooks936@aol.com.
Contact Information for New Zealand Communities:
- New Zealand: Contact Mary Byrne if you would
like to be involved in stopping fluoridation in New Zealand. Mary would
like to hear from you! Email her at: mbyrne64@yahoo.co.nz
In addition, you can:
Join the Fight to Get Fluoride Out of Drinking Water
There's no doubt about it: fluoride should not be ingested.
Even scientists from the EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects
Research Laboratory have classified fluoride as a "chemical having
substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity.” Furthermore,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 41
percent of American adolescents now have dental fluorosis—unattractive
discoloration and mottling of the teeth that indicate overexposure to
fluoride. Clearly, children are being overexposed, and their health and
development put in jeopardy. Why?
At least when it comes to topical application, you have a choice. You
can easily buy fluoride-free toothpaste and mouthwash. But you're stuck
with whatever your community puts in the water, and it's very difficult
to filter out of your water once it's added. Many do not have the
resources or the knowledge to do so.
The only real solution is to stop the archaic practice of water
fluoridation in the first place. Fortunately, the Fluoride Action
Network has a game plan to END water fluoridation, both in the United
States and Canada. Clean pure water is a prerequisite to optimal health.
Industrial chemicals, drugs and other toxic additives really have no
place in our water supplies. So, please, support the anti-fluoride
movement by making a donation to the Fluoride Action Network today.
I dont comprehend why we are adding more fluoride to bottled water for children. This is a toxic chemical.
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