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Fluoride Health Effects Database
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Isn't tap water great? Yes, but many of us can NOT drink it.
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Water is for everyone, fluoridation toxins are not
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Fluoridation-Free Ottawa - Ottawa Libre de Fluoration
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Attention MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS:
Please take a moment today and sign the Professionals' Statement to End Fluoridation. To read the Professionals' Statement, click here.
Fluoride: Top 10 Scientific Developments of 2007
Dr. Ted Schettler: Re-thinking Fluoridation
New Fluoride Warning for Infants
Joint Pain? It could be fluorosis
FAN Conference
featured in American Chemical Society magazine
Fluoride & Human Health: An interview with Dr. Kathleen Thiessen - FAN, July 29, 2006
Kidney & Liver Damage found in Fluoride-Exposed Children
- FAN, July 19, 2006
Excerpts from NRC Report on Fluoride - FAN, March 28, 2006
NRC Delivers Wake Up Call on Fluoride
- FAN, March 22, 2006
National Academy Calls for Lowering Fluoride Limits in Tap Water
- Environmental Working Group - Mar 22, 2005
Fluorosis on the Rise according to new U.S. Survey
- FAN Science Watch, Aug 25, 2005
Fluoride Warnings for Infants Most current data on Infant fluoride exposure.
For FAN's background information on Fluoride & Bone Cancer,
click here
FLUORIDE HEALTH EFFECTS DATABASE
- OVERVIEW PAGE
“Over the past ten years a large body of peer-reviewed science has raised concerns that fluoride may
present unreasonable health risks, particularly among children, at levels routinely added to tap
water in American cities.”
ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP,
July 2005.
“In summary, we hold that fluoridation is an unreasonable risk.”
US ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) HEADQUARTERS' UNION,
2001.
“Carefully conducted studies of exposure to fluoride and emerging health parameters of interest (e.g., endocrine effects and brain function) should be performed in populations in the United States exposed to various concentrations of fluoride.”
US NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
, 2006
“I am quite convinced that water fluoridation, in a not-too-distant future, will be consigned to medical history.”
Dr. ARVID CARLSSON,
Pharmacologist, Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine, 2000.
FLUORIDE ACCIDENTS & POISONINGS (Click for more detail)
Fluoride, the active ingredient in many
pesticides and rodenticides,
is a powerful poison -
more acutely poisonous than lead.
Because of this,
accidental over-ingestion of fluoride can cause serious toxic symptoms.
Each year there are thousands of reports to
Poison Control centers
in the United States related to excessive ingestion of fluoride toothpastes, mouthrinses, and supplements.
Water fluoridation accidents,
resulting in excess levels of fluoride in water, have been one of the sources of
acute fluoride poisoning.
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Excessive ingestion of fluoride during the early childhood years can
damage the tooth-forming cells,\
leading to a defect in the enamel known as
dental fluorosis.
Teeth impacted by fluorosis have visible discoloration, ranging from
white spots
to
brown and black stains.
According to the
Centers for Disease Control,
32% of American children now have some form of dental fluorosis, with 2 to 4% of children having the
moderate to severe stages (CDC 2005).
According to
Dr. Hardy Limeback, Head of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto,
“it is illogical to assume that tooth enamel is the only tissue affected by low daily doses of fluoride
ingestion.”
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The
kidneys
play a vital role in preventing the build-up of excessive fluoride in the
body. Among healthy individuals, the kidneys excrete approximately 50% of
the daily fluoride intake. However, among individuals with kidney disease,
the kidneys' ability to excrete becomes markedly impaired, resulting in a
build-up of fluoride within the body.
It is well recognized that individuals with kidney disease have a
heightened susceptibility
to the cumulative toxic effects of fluoride.
Of particular concern is the potential for fluoride, when accumulated in the skeletal
system, to cause, or exacerbate,
renal osteodystrophy
- a bone disease commonly found among people with advanced kidney disease.
In addition, fluoride has been definitively shown to
poison kidney function at high doses over short-term exposures in both animals and
humans. The impact of low doses of fluoride, given over long periods of time, has been
inadequately studied. A recent animal study, conducted by scientists at the US
Environmental Protection Agency (Varner 1998), reported that exposure to just
1 ppm fluoride
caused kidney damage in rats if they drank the water for an extended period of time,
while a
new study from China found an increased rate of kidney disease among humans consuming
more than 2 ppm (Liu 2005). Hence, the adverse effects to kidney function that fluoride
causes at high doses over short periods of time, may also be replicated with
small doses
if consumed over long periods of time.
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FLUORIDE & the BRAIN
(Click for more detail)
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In the 1990s, it was discovered that the pineal gland is a major site of fluoride accumulation within the body - with higher concentrations of fluoride than either teeth or bone.
Subsequent animal studies
indicate that the accumulation of fluoride in the pineal gland can reduce the gland's synthesis of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate the onset of puberty. Fluoride-treated animals were found to have reduced levels of circulating melatonin and an earlier onset of puberty than untreated animals. The scientist who conducted the research concluded:
"The safety of the use of fluorides ultimately rests
on the assumption that the developing enamel organ is most sensitive to the toxic effects of fluoride. The results from this study suggest that the
pinealocytes may be as susceptible to fluoride as the developing enamel organ" (Luke 1997).
The fact that fluoride's impact on the pineal gland was
never studied, or even considered, before
the 1990s, highlights a major
gap in knowledge underpinning current policies on fluoride
and health.
According to the US National
Research Council, "any agent
that affects pineal function could affect human health in
a variety of ways, including effects on sexual maturation,
calcium metabolism, parathyroid function, postmenopausal
osteoporosis, cancer, and psychiatric disease.”
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FLUORIDE & the THYROID GLAND (Click for more detail)
According to the US National Research Council, "several lines of information indicate an effect of fluoride exposure on thyroid function" - particularly among individuals with an iodine deficiency.
Fluoride's potential to impair thyroid function is most clearly illustrated by the fact that -- up until the 1970s -- European doctors used fluoride as a thyroid-suppressing medication for patients with hyperthyroidism (over-active thyroid). Fluoride was utilized because it was found effective at reducing the activity of
the thyroid gland - even at doses as low as 2 mg/day.
Today, many people living in fluoridated communities are ingesting doses of fluoride (1.6-6.6 mg/day) that fall within the range of doses (2 to 10 mg/day) once used by doctors to reduce thyroid activity in hyperthyroid patients. This
is of particular concern
considering the widespread problem of hypothyroidism
(under-active thyroid) in the United States. Symptoms of hypothyroidism include obesity, lethargy, depression, and heart disease.
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FLUORIDE
& BONE DISEASE (Click
for more detail)
Excessive
exposure to fluoride is well known to cause a bone disease
called skeletal fluorosis.
Skeletal fluorosis, especially in its early
stages, is a difficult
disease to diagnose, and can be readily confused with
various forms of arthritis
including osteoarthritis
and rheumatoid
arthritis.
In its advanced stages, fluorosis can resemble a multitude of bone/joint diseases.
In individuals with kidney disease, fluoride exposure can contribute to, and/or exacerbate, renal osteodystrophy.
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FLUORIDE
& BONE FRACTURE (Click
for more detail)
The majority of animal
studies investigating fluoride's effect on bone strength,
have found fluoride to either have no effect or a negative
effect on strength. According to the US
National Research Council, "The weight of evidence
indicates that, although fluoride might increase bone volume,
there is less strength per unit volume."
Studies on human populations
consuming fluoride in drinking water have found an association
between dental
fluorosis and increased bone
fracture in children; and between long-term consumption
of fluoridated water and increased
hip fracture in the elderly.
Carefully conducted human
clinical trials - including two "double-blind trials"
- have found that fluoride (at doses of 18-34 mg/day for
just 1-4 years) increases the rate of bone fracture, particularly
hip fracture, among osteoporosis patients.
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FLUORIDE & CANCER (Click for more detail)
According to the National Toxicology Program, "the
preponderance of evidence"
from laboratory 'in vitro' studies indicates that fluoride is a
mutagenic compound. Many substances which cause mutagenic damage
also cause cancer.
While the concentrations of fluoride causing mutagenic
damage in laboratory studies are higher than the concentrations
found in human blood, there are certain "microenvironments"
in the body (e.g. the
bones and the bladder)
where the concentrations of fluoride can accumulate
to levels comparable to, or in excess of, those causing
mutagenic effects in the laboratory.
Fluoride has been found to cause bone
cancer (osteosarcoma) in government animal
studies and rates of osteosarcoma among young males
living in fluoridated
areas have been found to be higher than young males
living in unfluoridated areas. Osteosarcoma, while rare,
is a very serious cancer. Children who develop osteosarcoma
face a high probability of death (usually within 3 years)
or amputation.
Fluoride exposure has also been linked to bladder
cancer - particularly among workers
exposed to excess fluoride in the workplace. According to
the US National Research Council, “further research
on a possible effect of fluoride on bladder cancer risk
should be conducted.”
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Among people hypersensitive
to fluoride, gastrointestinal ailments have been produced
following ingestion of 1 mg tablets
of fluoride or consumption of 1 ppm
fluoridated water.
A single ingestion of as little as 3
mg of fluoride, in
carefully controlled clinical trials, has been found to produce
damage to the gastric mucosa in healthy adult volunteers.
No research on the gastric mucosa has ever been conducted
to determine the effect of lower doses with repeated exposure.
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According
to the current consensus view of the dental research community,
fluoride's primary - if not sole - benefit to teeth comes
from TOPICALapplication to the exterior surface of teeth, not from ingestion.
Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, tooth decay rates
have declined at similar rates in all
western countries in the latter half of the 20th century
- irrespective of whether
the country fluoridates its water or not. Today, tooth
decay rates throughout continental
western Europe are as low as the tooth decay rates
in the United States - despite a profound disparity in water
fluoridation prevalence in the two regions.
Within countries that fluoridate their water, recent
large-scale surveys of dental health - utilizing modern
scientific methods not employed in the early surveys from
the 1930s-1950s - have found little
difference in tooth decay, including "baby
bottle tooth decay", between fluoridated and unfluoridated
communities.
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