Sunday, September 8, 2013

Communities Succeed in Eliminating Water Fluoridation

English: Putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. T...
English: Putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. The toothpaste is Crest Pro-Health Clean Cinnamon, 0.454% stannous fluoride, 0.16% w/v fluoride ion. Deutsch: Zahnpasta auf eine Zahnbürste auftragen. Русский: Выдавливание зубной пасты из тюбика на зубную щётку (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Dr. Mercola
After generations of misleading propaganda about the benefits of water fluoridation, the truth is finally getting some traction.
According to the former EPA risk assessment scientist, Dr. William Hirzy, water fluoridation still remains a government policy because of “institutional inertia [and] embarrassment among government agencies that have been promoting this stuff as safe.”
Indeed, contrary to popular belief, the science clearly demonstrates that fluoride is a toxic chemical that accumulates in your tissues over time, wreaks havoc with enzymes, and produces a number of serious adverse health effects, including neurological and endocrine dysfunction. Children are particularly at risk for adverse effects of overexposure.
Yet despite the scientific evidence against the practice, the United States lags far behind other nations in acknowledging the mistake and ending this tragic “public health” measure. As usual, the big lie must continue to protect faith in long term public health policies and agencies.
As a result, individual communities around the US have taken up the fight to end water fluoridation in their own local areas. Today, Dr. Paul Connett and I are pleased to report a number of victories, both in the US and abroad.

An 8-Year Long Fight Ends in Victory, Yet Trouble Brews

Dr. Paul Connett, PhD, a chemist and executive director of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) is a recognized leader in the fluoride education movement, spearheading the organized efforts to remove fluoride from our water supply in the US and elsewhere.
One of the organization’s past victories took eight years to secure, namely the phasing out of sulfuryl fluoride, which is a toxic fumigant. In the face of defeat, the chemical industry has resorted to blatant political maneuvers to protect their toxic income stream.
“This was a major victory for us after [FAN] was formed in 2000. It took us eight years to get the EPA Pesticide Division to accept our objections to the use of sulfuryl fluoride by Dow AgroSciences as a fumigant on food,”Dr. Connett explains.
The idea of using sulfuryl fluoride as a food fumigant was extremely worrying as it not only leaves toxic residues on food, but can be lethal to humans in its pure gas form—the form in which it is applied to the food. According to Dr. Connett, people have died during the application of the fumigant.
When applied to food, it breaks down into free fluoride. Many American children are already heavily overexposed to fluoride, so this added source of exposure can only worsen matters. (Organic foods do not permit its use.)
FAN argued that the Food Quality Protection Act requires companies who want to market a pesticide to show that the cumulative dose—meaning the dose that will end up on the food as residues, plus already existing exposure from other sources—will not exceed the safe reference dose. Dr. Connett explains what happened in this case:
“We were able to show, very easily, that millions of children are already exceeding the safe reference dose of fluoride from a combination of sources – in the water, toothpaste and other dental products, pollution, and so on. No way should the EPA allow Dow to add more fluoride to the food supply.
Eventually, after going backwards and forwards for many years, and threatening legal action with the help of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Beyond Pesticides, we eventually got the EPA to agree to accept all our objections, and they announced that sulfuryl fluoride will be phased out in three years.”
Again, this was a major victory at the time, but Dow did not back down. Since then, they’ve done everything in their power to stop the implementation of the EPA’s decision—and in a manner that is quite worrying. First, they tried to introduce an amendment to the Farm Bill that would have allowed them to continue using sulfuryl fluoride, which meant subverting the EPA for doing its job.
“The EPA listened to the science. They agreed with us. They said, 'We’re going to phase it out.' But through the back door, Dow tried to get the Farm Bill to get it in.”
Fortunately, they didn’t succeed. Congress kept that amendment out. But, Dow came back again, this time using the 2014 House Appropriations Bill to cut back a lot of EPA’s work, including that relating to sulfuryl fluoride.1 In essence, the bill would prohibit the EPA from obstructing Dow’s use of this pesticide/fumigant!

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/08/water-fluoridation.aspx  Read more on this story and watch some videos at Mercola.com website.
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