Letter: Elected officials need to address fluoride issue

• 16 hrs ago
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To the editor:
In January, the Alzheimer’s Association quietly demanded its name be removed from the list of fluoridation endorsers used by the American Dental Association (ADA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to bully municipalities into fluoridation schemes.

The Alzheimer’s Association may have been motivated to take action based on the peer-reviewed publication of a half dozen studies in recent months specific to dementia. One found biochemical changes from long-term fluoride consumption results in tissue changes in the parts of the brains having to do with learning and memory. Another found that fluoride interferes with the effectiveness of drugs used to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Or perhaps the Alzheimer’s Association was motivated to take action by the January statement from the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) chaired by human rights activist and environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that called fluoridation a “significant chemical assault on our children’s developing bodies and brains.” The CHD called for an immediate end to fluoridation policy.
We have known since 1995 that fluoride, even in low doses used in Cape Ann water, is particularly dangerous to the brains of certain groups of people including infants in the womb, bottle-fed babies and the elderly. We’ve known for even longer that ‘optimally’ fluoridated water worsens the symptoms in people with inflammatory conditions, diabetes, immune system disease, thyroid disease and kidney disease.
Thousands of Cape Ann residents with these conditions each spend hundreds of dollars a year on bottled water and filters in an attempt to protect their health by minimizing exposure to this city-mandated drug, 99 percent of which goes straight into wastewater where it pollutes the environment. Remember, fluoride is labeled both a neurotoxin and a regulated contaminant by the EPA.
But it gets worse. Fluoridation policy is not just womb-to-tomb poisoning. Recently published science documents that the biochemistry of fluoride in bodies causes epigenetic changes to DNA that can increase the incidence of bone disease and cancer in future generations.
Brush your teeth with it if you want. If you want, buy a gallon of fluoridated water to drink yourself. That’s your choice.
The question is whether our elected officials will protect the individual rights of those of us whose choice is not to have our drinking water dosed with a poison.
The question is whether our elected officials will pay attention to the science that motivated the Children’s Health Defense and Alzheimer’s Association to take action in January 2019.
The question is whether the Gloucester city councilors, Rockport selectmen and Manchester selectmen have the integrity and courage to do the right thing because, in Massachusetts, the only way to end fluoridation once begun is with a legislative request to the Statehouse.
Karen Favazza Spencer
Gloucester