Water Fluoridation: A Critical Review of the Physiological Effects

[MachineGhost]

Fluorine is the world’s 13th most abundant element and constitutes 0.08% of the Earth crust. It has the highest electronegativity of all elements. Fluoride is widely distributed in the environment, occurring in the air, soils, rocks, and water. Although fluoride is used industrially in a fluorine compound, the manufacture of ceramics, pesticides, aerosol propellants, refrigerants, glassware, and Teflon cookware, it is a generally unwanted byproduct of aluminium, fertilizer, and iron ore manufacture. The medicinal use of fluorides for the prevention of dental caries began in January 1945 when community water supplies in Grand Rapids, United States, were fluoridated to a level of 1 ppm as a dental caries prevention measure. However, water fluoridation remains a controversial public health measure. This paper reviews the human health effects of fluoride. The authors conclude that available evidence suggests that fluoride has a potential to cause major adverse human health problems, while having only a modest dental caries prevention effect. As part of efforts to reduce hazardous fluoride ingestion, the practice of artificial water fluoridation should be reconsidered globally, while industrial safety measures need to be tightened in order to reduce unethical discharge of fluoride compounds into the environment. Public health approaches for global dental caries reduction that do not involve systemic ingestion of fluoride are urgently needed.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/293019/

[WildAboutHarry]

Please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like. 

[Mountaineer]

Please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like. 

Rainwater may be harmful. I'm sure MG can find some paper that deals with thorium or strontium 90 remaining from the nuke tests of the 50s and 60s. Perhaps the National Inquirer has some relevant material. I think that was the source the Men in Black used to track aliens. 

... Mountaineer

[MachineGhost]

Make fun all you want, but we're not specifically adding strontium, thorium or grain alcohol to the water supply.  The point, ladies and gentleman, is that crony capitalism is evil.

[WildAboutHarry]

I guess neither of you have seen Dr. Strangelove

I stole a line from Colonel Jack Ripper to Major Lionel Mandrake.  Some other "fluoridation" great ones:

Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.

Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.

General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

[Mountaineer]

Make fun all you want, but we're not specifically adding strontium, thorium or grain alcohol to the water supply.  The point, ladies and gentleman, is that crony capitalism is evil.

That, my friend, is some mighty slim pickins. 

I don't give a hoot in Hell how you do it, you just get me to the Primary, ya hear!

... Mountaineer

[MachineGhost]

I guess neither of you have seen Dr. Strangelove

I love that movie, but did not remember that part!  I'll have to watch it again.

Speaking of radiation in water, I found this rather luridly fascinating:

In 1927, while returning via chartered train from the annual Harvard-Yale football game, Byers fell from his berth and injured his arm. He complained of persistent pain and a doctor suggested that he take Radithor, a patent medicine manufactured by William J. A. Bailey. Bailey was a Harvard University dropout who falsely claimed to be a doctor of medicine and became rich from the sale of Radithor. Bailey created Radithor by dissolving radium in water to high concentrations, claiming it could cure many ailments by stimulating the endocrine system. He offered physicians a 17% rebate on the prescription of each dose of Radithor.

Byers began taking enormous doses of Radithor, which he believed had greatly improved his health, drinking 3 bottles a day – nearly 1400 bottles total. In the process, he subjected himself to more than three times the acute lethal radiation dose. By 1930, when Byers stopped taking the remedy, he had accumulated significant amounts of radium in his bones resulting in the loss of most of his jaw. Byers’ brain was also abscessed and holes were forming in his skull. He died from radium poisoning on March 31, 1932. He is buried in Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a lead-lined coffin.

Due to Byers’ prominence, his death received much publicity. The Wall Street Journal ran a headline reading “The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off”? after his death. His illness and eventual death also led to a heightened awareness of the dangers of radiation poisoning, and to the adoption of laws that increased the powers of the FDA.

William Bailey was never tried for Byers’ death, although the Federal Trade Commission issued an order against his business. However this did not stop Bailey from trading in radioactive products. He later founded a new company – “Radium Institute”?, in New York – and marketed a radioactive belt-clip, a radioactive paperweight, and a mechanism which made water radioactive.

The death of Eben Byers, along with the plight of the Radium Girls getting sick from the radium-based glow-in-the-dark paint they applied to watch dials at the United States Radium factory, enlightened the public to the dangers of radium.

Radium-based products were still sold into the 1980s, including the Lifestone Cigarette Holder in the 1960s which was said to “protect users from lung cancer, promise them beautiful faces, and excellent health.”?

Radioactive health springs are still in operation today.

[WildAboutHarry]

Mountaineer:  Good one!

MG: I have watched Dr. Strangelove numerous times.  I think it is among my all-time favorites.

In the past, radiation has been used to treat acne, demonstrate properly fitting shoes, etc.  Radithor sounds particularly gruesome.

Isn't Bill Gates a "...Harvard University dropout..."?  Hmmm...

[WiseOne]

I laughed when I saw it was a "hindawi" journal.  They're essentially scams.  They publish online (which costs next to nothing) for the low, low price of $800, and of course I get requested to "contribute" several times a day. Not surprisingly, only pure crud gets published there.  In this case, if the article were a respectable research report with the implications described in the abstract, that would have easily gotten into a journal that doesn't charge.

I heard about a guy who submitted a paper to one of these online "journals" titled "Take me off your f*****g mailing list", consisting of that phrase repeated a thousand times.  It was accepted "pending payment".

[MachineGhost]

I laughed when I saw it was a "hindawi" journal.  They're essentially scams.  They publish online (which costs next to nothing) for the low, low price of $800, and of course I get requested to "contribute" several times a day. Not surprisingly, only pure crud gets published there.  In this case, if the article were a respectable research report with the implications described in the abstract, that would have easily gotten into a journal that doesn't charge.

Whoops, I've got to start remembering to check the journal and not assume an article is quality just because its listed in PubMed.

[Benko]

You do realize that fluoride rinse is the last step in your dental regimen and if you're using that regularly, you're swallowing fluoride even if you only rinse with the stuff right?

[MachineGhost]

You do realize that fluoride rinse is the last step in your dental regimen and if you're using that regularly, you're swallowing fluoride even if you only rinse with the stuff right?

Dental flouride is not the same as the toxic shit they put in the water.  Why does everyone continue to conflate this?

But, yes, I spit plenty on the last step.

[Ad Orientem]

Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face...

http://youtu.be/Qr2bSL5VQgM