Fluoridated Water: The Bone Destroying Daily Drink Fooling Millions of Americans
August 08, 2011 | 232,267 views
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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 |
|
|
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:
1. If you live in Ontario, Canada, please join the ongoing effort by contacting Diane Sprules at diane.sprules@cogeco.ca.
2. 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:
1. 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.
2. 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
3. San Diego, California: Contact Patty Ducey-Brooks, publisher of the Presidio Sentinel at pbrooks936@aol.com.
Contact Information for New Zealand Communities:
1. 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:
· Tell the EPA you expect them to uphold their duty to protect you and your children from this toxic food fumigant.
· Make a generous tax-deductible donation to the Fluoride Action Network, to help them fight for your rights to fluoride-free food and water.
· Check out FAN's Action Page, as they are working on multiple fronts to rid our food and water supplies of fluoride.
· For timely updates, join the Fluoride Action Network Facebook page.
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.
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