Fluoride, the Silent Killer

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Fluoride, The Silent Killer

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John Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D.

November 03, 2007

 

Dr. Yiamouyiannis received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of

Rhode Island and served his post-doctoral fellowship at the Western Reserve

University School of Medicine. He then became editor at Chemical Abstracts

Service, the world's largest chemical information center, where he first became

aware of the health damaging effects of fluoride. He is the former science

director of the National Health Federation; he is the executive director of

Health Action and president of the Safe Water Foundation. He is a world-leading

authority on the biological effects of fluoride and is responsible for ending

the use of fluoride in many areas of the United States and abroad.

HARMFUL EFFECTS OF FLUORIDE Fluoride is used as an insecticide and a roach

killer. Even at the level they use to fluoridate your public water supply,

usually at the rate of about 1 part fluoride for every million parts of water

(1

ppm) by weight, it causes severe problems. As little as one-tenth of an

ounce of fluoride will cause death. It is more poisonous than lead and just

slightly less poisonous than arsenic. No one will die from drinking one glass

of

fluoridated water, but it is the long term chronic effects of drinking

fluoridated water that affects health. Dental fluorosis is one of the earlier

signs

of fluoride poisoning, appearing in mild cases as a chalky area on the tooth,

and in more advanced cases, teeth become yellow brown or black and the tips

break off. Fluoride in the drinking water leads to fluoride levels in tissues

and organs which damage enzymes. This results in a wide range of chronic

diseases. Fluoride weakens the immune system and may cause allergic type

reactions including dermatitis, eczema and hives. It causes birth defects and

genetic damage. Fluoride is likely to aggravate kidney disease, diabetes and

hypothyroidism. The amount consumed in drinking water has been shown to lower

thyroid activity in humans. It also causes the breakdown of collagen which

results in wrinkling of the skin and the weakening of ligaments, tendons and

muscles. There are a number of ways that fluoride can be administered. The most

insidious way is through the drinking water. Some of you have it in your

mouthwashes, or in your toothpaste, or you may take a fluoride supplement which

is

dispensed in pills or drops.

FLUORIDE A BY-PRODUCT OF INDUSTRY Fluoride is an industrial waste product, a

by-product of the aluminum industry and the phosphate fertilizer companies

who have mountains of fluoride that is polluting the ground water. They have

to get rid of it, and the old solution to pollution is dilution - just put it

in the drinking water. People living in the vicinity of aluminum, phosphate,

steel, clay, glass and enamel plants are exposed to high levels of fluoride

in the air. For instance, the Hamilton area shows extremely high lung cancer

rates that decrease as you get away from the downwind plume of the steel

mills. If fluoride was left with the phosphate and sold to farmers, it would

kill

their crops. That is what originally happened when they used this high

fluoride phosphate, and the farmers said they were going back to manure.

FLUORIDATED TOOTHPASTE Unless it says on the package does not contain

fluoride, you are using fluoridated toothpaste. Fluoridated toothpaste contains

1,000 ppm fluoride. There is enough fluoride at 1,000 to 1,500 parts per

million

to kill a small child if they consume the entire tube. If a child consumes

just part of it, it could result in either acute or chronic toxicity. A four

to six year-old child will swallow 25 to 33% of the toothpaste they put on

their toothbrush. Don't let them put it in their mouth unless when they swallow

it, it is good for them. People ask me where they can get non-fluoridated

toothpaste. They have many brands of non-fluoridated toothpaste in health food

stores, so pick up your toothpaste there, and make sure it doesn't have

fluoride, because some health food stores have a couple of brands of fluoride

toothpaste. Not everything in a health food store is safe. Always read the

labels. Pepsodent toothpaste also doesn't have fluoride. If you want something

inexpensive, use baking soda and sea salt, but make sure you dissolve the salt

crystals in water before you brush your teeth; otherwise the salt crystals

will score the enamel.

GUM DAMAGE Fluoride actually causes gum damage at the concentrations used in

fluoridated toothpaste at 1,000 ppm. Fluoride poisons enzyme activity and

slows down the ability of the gums to repair themselves. If you brush your

teeth with fluoridated toothpaste, you will suffer gum damage.

FLUORIDE GELS AND SOLUTIONS Some schools have weekly fluoride mouth-rinse

programs in which the children swish fluoride solutions around in their mouths.

The fluoride comes in a sugar size packet, and on the outside of the packet

it says fatal if swallowed. If your child is in any of these programs at

school, get them out of it. We have testimonials one after the other of

children

who come home with a stomach ache because they had actually accidentally

swallowed part of it, and children do accidentally swallow. Fluoride treatments

at the dentist's office are equally hazardous. In the typical fluoride

treatment, 10,000 parts per million fluoride, which comes in a flavoured gel to

make it taste good, is left on the teeth for about five minutes. Then the child

spits it out, though invariable he swallows some. The child cannot rinse, eat

or drink for at least half an hour afterward. Children have died after

swallowing fluoride topically applied on their teeth. In one well publicized

case,

the dental hygienist neglected to tell the child to wash his mouth out and

spit out the solution. The child began vomiting and sweating and died the same

day. Over 6% of children receiving fluoride treatments at the dental office

suffer gastrointestinal distress such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and

abdominal pain either immediately or within one hour after treatment. According

to scientists at the U.S. Public Health Service, topical fluoride is

practically ineffective in reducing tooth decay, and damages gum tissue.

According to

the American Association for the Advancement of Science, " the high

concentrations of some products (gels, mouthwash, tablets, toothpaste, etc.)

may be

neither biologically desirable nor clinically necessary " .

FLUORIDE SUPPLEMENTS Tablets and drops are another means of administering

fluoride. The Canadian Dental Association has admitted in the last couple of

years that children under the age of three should not be given fluoride

supplements. And yet dental practitioners and pediatricians who haven't kept up

to

date are still giving fluoride supplements to young children. I advise against

fluoride supplements for anyone.

ADDITION OF FLUORIDE TO PUBLIC WATER SYSTEMS The addition of fluoride to the

public water supply is the most insidious way of chronically poisoning

hundreds of millions of people around the world. Dr. Dean Burk was former chief

chemist of the National Cancer Institute, and has co-authored studies with many

Nobel prize winners including Otto Warburton, and he is the co-author of the

most cited paper in the entire field of biochemistry - the Lineweaver-Burk

Enzyme Kinetics. In the 1970s, Dean Burk and I conducted a number of studies

which linked fluoride and cancer. There was already scientific evidence from

the 1950s that fluoride was causing cancer, and a 1963 study by Driscowitz and

Norton showed that increased fluoride concentrations in the media of

experimental animals increased tumour incidence from 12% at the lowest

concentrations up to 100%. Taylor and Taylor published a study in 1965 at the

University

of Texas in all the mainline medical journals showing that 1 ppm or even 0.5

ppm increased tumour growth rate by 25%. These studies bothered me and around

1975 I found that we had enough data to compare the cancer death rate before

and after fluoridation of fluoridated communities and compare them to

non-fluoridated communities. Based on millions of subjects, the study showed a

5 to

10% increase in cancer death rate within three to five years after

fluoridation was put into the water after correcting for various demographic

factors

like age, race and sex. All the variables were controlled. We followed this by

a series of other studies. In 1977 we had full blown Congressional Hearings,

and Congress stated: " We can no longer assure the American public that

fluoride does not cause cancer " . Dean Burk and other well-known scientists were

there, and on the opposing side was the American Dental Association. Ten years

later, Proctor and Gamble, makers of Crest toothpaste found that fluoride was

causing precarcinogenic changes in cells.

HOW FLUORIDE AFFECTS THE DNA REPAIR MECHANISM Epidemiological evidence shows

that fluoride causes cancer. It does this in several ways. It can actually

cause the original lesion. In each one of our cells we have genetic material

called DNA, and this DNA is double stranded, it has a helix shape and these

two strands of DNA are held together by semi strong bonds called hydrogen

bonds. Hydrogen bonds also hold proteins together. Fluoride goes in and breaks

those hydrogen bonds, and consequently destabilizes DNA. It can't cause a

lesion

in the DNA itself, but if it is in a site of the cell that regulates cell

growth, it will cause uncontrolled cell growth. A few minor modifications will

give you first a tumour, and secondly an invasive tumour or cancer. So

fluoride has the ability to actually cause the cancer. We have a marvelous

system

of repair and rejuvenation. Even if we go out in the sun, even if we have a

lesion by fluoride itself, we have what is called a DNA repair enzyme system.

So any lesion caused by the sun or ultra-violet light will be repaired. The

DNA repair enzyme system will cut off the ends and use the complementary

strand to repair itself and make intact genetic material. The unfortunate thing

is

that one part per million fluoride, the amount of fluoride that they use in

the public water system, depresses the DNA repair system by 50%. So they have

attacked us on the first defense of damage to our genetic material. Since

people can get cancer from so many different causes, fluoride is just

increasing our chances of getting cancer.

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM Even if the cancer cell starts dividing and invading

surrounding tissues, if our immune system is strong enough, it will kill those

cancer cells without any remedies, without chemotherapy, without anything and

will destroy the occasional cancer that maybe all of us have had at one time or

another. Once in a while cancer breaks through when the immune system is low

or the DNA repair enzyme system is down, and we will get cancer. Fluoride

causes the lesion; it inhibits the DNA repair enzyme, and then inhibits our

immune system by 30 to 70%. And that occurs at only one part per million. How

does it do that? Our immune system is composed of white blood cells including

phagocyte cells that are carried in the blood system. If there is an infection

or cancer or some foreign agent, these phagocytes will go to that area and

start engulfing and destroying this bad agent whether it is a cancer cell or

a bacterium or virus. It engulfs it in a little pocket called a lysosome

which squirts enzymes and breaks down the bad agent into little pieces. They

have

other things called peroxisomes which burn that agent with free radicals and

either destroy it or use it for building new and healthy cells. These

phagocytes will actually eat up bacteria or viruses, and toxic substances are

just

thrown off. Studies from the University of Glasgow show that fluoride

inhibits these white blood cells. Fluoride at levels below one part per million

causes a chronic release of these free radicals from the white blood cell out

into the blood stream where it starts slowly damaging your body by increasing

free radicals. This is one of the reasons why we call fluoride the ageing

factor.

NON-FLUORIDATED WATER Industrial quality reverse osmosis water brings the

total dissolved solids down to less that one part per million for all the

pollutants that might be in there. Distilled water will remove 99% of the

fluoride

all of the time. I also recommend a pre-charcoal filter on a distiller to

remove volatiles so that you are not getting noxious gases in your home. These

are worse when you inhale them than when you drink them, because they go

right into your blood stream and into your lungs. You can buy your water at the

supermarket, but quite frankly you don't know what the quality of the water

is. You must take care that the fluoride concentration is less than 0.2 ppm.

Some spring waters like Vichy (which contains 8 ppm) are notoriously high in

fluoride. Avoid beverages such as soft drinks, beer and fruit juices from

concentrate that have been bottled in fluoridated areas. Teas, even brewed in

fluoride-free water will contain about 1.2 to 2.4 ppm fluoride. Some people

drink 8 to 15 cups of tea a day, and these amounts are large enough to cause

dental fluorosis and other harmful effects.

MINERALS IN WATER If you want to get minerals, you must get them in the

proper balanced ratio. Calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and other minerals must

be

in a ratio that is acceptable to a living organism. Get your minerals from

healthy living organisms like vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, and if you

are not a vegetarian, like meats, bones or bonemeal. Beet greens are at the top

of the list as a mineral supplement. I don't recommend milk or dairy as a

calcium source; cow's milk has a very different constitution than human milk.

DETOXIFICATION If you stop taking fluoride, your body will get rid of it

eventually. The fluoride that gets stuck in your bones gets stuck there for

life

pretty much, but that is not necessarily bad. Where fluoride has adverse

effects is in the soft tissues. If you take over 200 mg of vitamin C per day

that is all you really need for removing fluoride. In three to six months you

should have about 99% of it out which is good enough.

GOOD DIET, NOT FLUORIDE, IS NECESSARY FOR HEALTHY TEETH Many primitive

societies whose drinking water contains negligible amounts of fluoride go

through

life without tooth decay because they eat very little sugar and other refined

carbohydrates.

DOES FLUORIDE REDUCE TOOTH DECAY? Numerous attempts have been made to show

that the amount of fluoride used to fluoridate public water systems reduces

tooth decay under laboratory conditions. Still no laboratory study has ever

shown that this amount of fluoride is effective in reducing tooth decay. Furt

her, there are no epidemiological studies on humans showing that fluoridation

reduces tooth decay that meet the minimum requirements of scientific

objectivity such as the double blind design.

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You may contact Dr. Yiamouyiannis at 614-548-5340. His book Fluoride: The

Aging Factor contains references to studies and information cited in this

article. His other book, High Performance Health is also available.

__

 

Source: _Consumer Health Organization of Canada_

(http://www.consumerhealth.org/articles/display.cfm?ID=19990303222823)

 

_http://www.consumerhealth.org/articles/display.cfm?ID=19990303222823_

(http://www.consumerhealth.org/articles/display.cfm?ID=19990303222823)