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An Open Letter to Councillors, the Mayor, the Medical Officer of Health, City of Ottawa
Monday, January 23, 2012.
To the Councillors and the Mayor Dear Councillors and Mr. Mayor Watson. I wish to address a practice that, in my informed opinion, was erroneously implemented in 1965 in our City with insufficient information and from pressures from improperly informed authorities of the day. I hope my approach is not discourteous, does not unduly offend and that you may find it worthy of attention. Please bear with me, or at least humour me, by reading it through to its conclusion. The issue I am currently concerned about affects our environment. Land, water and air pretty much define and insure who we are as a species. We could not survive without them! They have always been there for us and will be there as long as we exist as a species. Focusing on our water, I am convinced that we need to keep it pure and try not to add any chemicals to it, except for keeping it clean, safe and pure to drink and to wash with, as our forefathers have done before us. Are not these the main attributes of water, to be and remain clean and safe? Doesn't adding anything to it change its purity and its quality? Is it not bad ideological thinking and a dangerous practice for our society to add anything else to it for any reason other than to make it and keep it drinkable, as pure and safe as reasonably possible? I am speaking about the practice of water fluoridation in our community, more precisely the chemical compound added to it that is incorrectly and publicly mentioned and referenced as “fluoride” for the purpose of reducing dental cavities. However, is that really why we were made to add it to our water supply in the first place? The main benefits of fluoride is presumed and proclaimed to be for the strengthening of teeth and are currently believed to be topical, that is, to be applied to the surface of the teeth, but not ingested, and only for children starting at a specific age and ending at a specific age. Yet even topical applications are currently being brought into question by some reliable researchers in dentistry, medicine and in numerous fields of science, but mainly in biochemistry. There is also a major problem with the actual fluoride chemical used. It is not a natural chemical as claimed. It is not one that is good for us to add to our water supply. It is a chemical called hydrofluorosilicic acid. The name has been on our city's web site here: http://ottawa.ca/en/env_water/water_sewer/water_wells/quality/facts/fluoride/#P32_3079 for the longest time, under the sub-title How is fluoride added to the drinking water? explaining its use with much fanfare and marketing language. I contend that we've gone down this path in error. What else might we add next into our water: the mineral lithium for bipolar disorder? or an antidepressant drug to try to minimize or prevent depression and suicides in children? or a cholesterol lowering drug? or one to lower the incidence of ADD or ADHD among children? They all sound like reasonable ideas on the surface of it all. But are they really? Another major difficulty with this particular practice is that the chemical used is not an approved, tested and regulated substance by any health authority in Canada, the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, yet it is vigorously promoted by Canadian health bureaucrats at all levels of government as a magical cure (a panacea) for tooth decay.
Neither of the two products used in Canada qualify under the above requirements and are therefore not lawful for use in water fluoridation. A common and naive response to such an assertion is that if there was any harm to health by water fluoridation, we would have seen some by now. That does appear to be a reasonable assertion to the objection. However, is this claim substantiated by any research to prove it? Unfortunately, there is none whatsoever. In fact, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, the real life experience of people, that demonstrates that the opposite is true. Countless individuals suffering from such ailments as Alzheimer's to Fibromyalgia, to diabetes, to rheumatoid conditions of all types have stopped exposing themselves to fluoridated water, beverages and foods and have phenomenal recoveries. As the author of this letter, I am a living witness to this near miraculous type of recovery. The actual fluoride products used in artificial water fluoridation (silicofluorides Na2SiF6, H2SiF6) have been used for over 60 years with neither the required animal studies (toxicology studies) nor the required human studies (randomized controlled clinical trials, or, RCTs) to determine safety in order to protect consumer safety and satisfy the legal requirements in Canada.Although fluoridation is touted as safe, you can see from the above that it does not even satisfy safety requirements. It is now very apparent that it is associated with numerous side effects whose possibility is not even intimated, mentioned or acknowledged by any health authorities anywhere that fluoridation is implemented. Numerous attempts to bring health concerns related to fluoridation to their attention have been repeatedly treated trivially and even ignored. As an example of the noxious capability of fluoride chemical uses, fluoride compounds, which are composed of the element fluorine, such as in sodium fluoride are part of an insecticide that have been used in the past as the single most effective ant poison and as a rat and other rodent killer. The element fluorine is an extremely reactive element that can greatly increase the uptake of lead, aluminum and many other toxic metals in your body. It is also used in many pharmaceutical drugs as a bio-activator or potentiator. We have been led to believe that water fluoridation is one of the greatest health achievements of the 20th century, but I dare to differ. I passionately believe that this statement is in serious error. From my understanding, born of research and wisdom, I categorically and boldly assert the opposite conclusion that it is one of the greatest health disasters of the 20th century, surreptitiously harming us in hidden ways that we have just started to understand over the past thirty five years. Those most targeted for its presumed benefits are also the ones most unfortunately the first ones to be harmed by this untested mass drugging using our water supply. Two questions have been repeatedly asked of you, Mr. Councillor, and of every City of Ottawa Councillor, of you Mr. Mayor Jim Watson, and you, Dr. Isra Levy, Medical Officer of Health for the City of Ottawa Public Health office, but to no avail. I have proof irrefutable of this outrageous refusal to respond to these two simple questions.
“Please provide me with either primary research on: What is wrong with this picture? Why continued ineffectual responses? The problematic relationship between Fluoride concentration in drinking water and “Fluoride dose,” due to varying amounts of water consumed by individuals and to other sources of ingested and absorbed Fluoride, severely complicates attempts to determine both health risks and benefits associated with any specific Fluoride concentration in drinking water, currently set at 0.7 ppm in Ottawa (January 2012). Concentration is expressed commonly in parts per million, or, ppm. In particular, commonly available foods and beverages contain from high (greater than 2 ppm) to negligible levels of fluoride, and fluoridated toothpaste is variably used and often swallowed, while containing over 1,000 ppm. Adding to this disastrous picture is the complication of mouth washes and rinses with varying and undeclared amounts of fluorides. It is believed by impartial researchers that these factors grossly complicate interpretation of Fluoride use in drinking water studies and may explain why the numerous studies conducted have come to a variety of conclusions that, in many cases, are quite different and contrary to one another. There may be a place for minerals or safe compounds, based specifically on individual needs and using a monitored, required dose, in our homes or in the dentist's or doctor's office. However, we should not make the entire inhabitants of our municipality the test subjects of this practice. I personally and firmly hold that it is unethical, immoral and unlawful. A close and careful examination of the ramifications of adding any drug for medicinal mass medication to the municipal water supply will bear this out. There can be no valid reason for doing so, even for a proven, tested benefit, much less then for an unproven, an unapproved, and an untested benefit such as tooth decay prevention. Promoters and proponents have in the past protested that fluoridation reduces tooth decay in children, that it is reduced by an order ranging from 10-20%, 20-30%, 30-40%, depending on who was speaking, however, they have now begun to sing the same tune as opposition has grown across the land. They have even changed their tune to adding that it gives lifelong health benefits, however, such is totally unattributable to Fluoride. In fact, the opposite is being proven time and again as time progresses, but they refuse to even consider the evidence, obstinate in their erroneous belief that fluoridation is a panacea for tooth decay whereas proper nutrition is the real answer. Ignoring even the possibility of any harmful effects to your health is an ongoing practice at our Ottawa Public Health office. A long time ago, on Mondat, November 15, 1965, Ottawa implemented the practice of adding a “fluoride” chemical to its drinking water, presuming that it would most benefit those suffering from tooth decay, based on incomplete data made available at that time by individuals with that incomplete information. It is time to revisit this practice. Current data on that practice dictate that a proper analysis and thorough study be done, and done by an independent panel of specialists in various fields of medicine, toxicology, terratology, neo-natology, neurology, pharmacology, ethics, law and philosophy. Anything less would be to limit the scope to more of the same as what has been done in the past, that is, looking only at it's possible and expected benefit to teeth. One such extensive and surprisingly thorough study was completed by one City, Fairbanks, Alaska in 2011. A true copy of this report called “Report of the Fairbanks Fluoride Task Force” April 25, 2011, is available on the internet for all to read here: http://ffo-olf.org/files/FairbanksFinalReport.pdf. To think or believe that any food or chemical that we put in our mouth only affects our teeth and not the rest of our anatomy is paramount to thinking or believing that a scorpion's sting will only affect the place of its sting. Knowing the foregoing, I challenge anyone to counter this statement in a reasoned and unimpassioned manner. Therein lies the crux of the argument for cessation of fluoridation in any municipality. The kind of narrow thinking of fluforidation promoters is illogical, reckless, irresponsible and deficient. Much has changed and much has become known since that fateful implementation of the fluoridation of Ottawa's water supply in November 1965. I firmly believe that it is time for this City's policy on water fluoridation to be completely vetted and reviewed as detailed above. I therefore strongly recommend that the City of Ottawa undertake to investigate the subject of water fluoridation by impartial, objective and learned third parties who have no vested interest in either maintaining or opposing the status quo of artificial drinking water fluoridation, followed by a thoroughly publicized, full public input process into the practice of artificial drinking water fluoridation as currently practiced by the City of Ottawa. However, a cheaper alternative exists. Publicize the Fairbanks Report and publicize the presentation to Moncton Councillors that led to their well reasoned decision. I believe that the City of Ottawa may thus properly discharge its duty of care and due diligence in this matter, in light of modern research findings in this area of public health and come to a fully informed and enlightened decision. Our municipal politicians could then vote in good conscience to discontinue this practice while ignoring undue pressures from vested interests. In taking their responsibility in hand, our Councillors could hold their heads high in the knowledge that they have acted in the best interest of all of the residents of our City's residents and save the City's beleaguered taxpayers the expense of an expensive and senseless investigation, plebiscite or referendum. As a person adversely affected by fluoridation who has dutifully advocated for cessation of fluoridation, I suspect that this City's Councillors will prevail to ignore the marketing efforts and pressures for maintaining the status quo of its own misguided health bureaucrats and decide to ban this amazingly defective and persistent practice. Respectfully submitted,
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