Del Rio officials cite fluoride-vote reaction
Web Posted: 09/20/2006 01:09 AM CDT
John MacCormack
Express-News Staff Writer
A week after voting unanimously to eliminate fluoride from the city's drinking water, Del Rio City Council members remain awed at the widespread attention they are receiving.
"I've had a tremendous reaction to this. I've received e-mails from all over the world, not just the United States," said council member Pat Cole, who made the motion Sept. 12 to eliminate fluoride.
"We thought we were dealing with a local water issue. It's amazing to me so many people are against fluoride."
Another council member said almost all the feedback has been positive.
"For the most part, people say we did the right thing, and they want us to stick with our decision," Mike Wrob said.
The city had used the cavity-fighting water additive for 16 years without much controversy before retired biology Professor John Morony began telling the council more than a year ago that it's a cancer-causing poison.
After Morony's second presentation Sept. 12, the council voted to make Del Rio fluoride-free.
"Right after the decision was made by council, I made a call at 8:17 p.m. to my operator to cease fluoridation," said Mitch Lomas, manager of the city water plant.
"A lot of citizens are happy with the decision the council made and are applauding it," he said.
Six years ago, San Antonio voters approved adding fluoride to city water, after three referendums and decades of often-contentious debate. More recently, Alamo Heights followed suit.
And with more than three-quarters of Texans drinking fluoridated water, Del Rio's move to end the program for its 36,000 residents caught state health officials by surprise.
Tom Napier, the state's fluoridation engineer who helped set up the Del Rio system 16 years ago, hopes to visit the city next week to speak with local officials.
Only last summer, Napier appeared before the Del Rio council to make the case for fluoride.
"After 60 years of research and usage in the United States, fluoride is proven to be effective and safe," he said. "When you discontinue fluoride, you get an increase in cavities throughout the population."
Napier said it's quite unusual for a city of Del Rio's size to abandon the additive.
"We lose one or two small systems a year, but Del Rio is not a small system. I was surprised and disappointed," he said.
Morony, 70, said he is not against fluoride, but is opposed to putting it in the municipal drinking water.
"There is no dosage control. In the summer time, a construction worker outside will drink 10 times what someone in an air-conditioned office might drink," he said.
Morony said he was particularly opposed to the form of fluoride being used in drinking water, hydrofluosilicic acid, a waste byproduct of fertilizer manufacturing.
"If they want to give it to the general population, put a pharmaceutical-grade fluoride in salt, like they do in Europe. Putting an industrial waste in drinking water is criminal. It's insane," he said.
Not all Del Rio residents, however, were pleased with the decision.
"It's a bad move. They were misinformed, and without consulting anyone else, they took it hook, line and sinker," said Dr. Larry O'Brien, a Del Rio pediatrician. "In the '50s, it was a plot by the communists to make everyone docile. Now it causes cancer."
Council member Cole, however, said she did not act hastily and doesn't expect the city to reverse its stance.
"I have a feeling the council is going to stick with this because several of us are deep into the research and have been looking at it over a year," she said.
She said it does not concern her that Del Rio has acted contrary to the advice of state health officials and has taken a different course than most of the large cities in Texas.
"I feel in my heart we've done the right thing. If anything concerns me, it's the citizens of San Antonio drinking that water with fluoride."
jmaccormack@Express-News.com
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Information on the chemical
Fluoride comes from the element fluorine. All water contains some naturally occurring fluoride.
How much fluoride is enough? Experts recommend 0.8 parts per million to protect against tooth decay.
Benefits
Reduces cavities
Fluoride in water strengthens tooth structure; toothpastes and rinses only affect the surface enamel.
Risks
There is very limited evidence of cancer in male rats exposed to extremely high doses of fluoride.
Various studies have shown both increases and decreases in bone fractures.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Express-News articles
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The Ashburton Guardian (NZ),
Tuesday Sept 19, 2006
The great fluoride debate
What is fluoride, does it improve your teeth or does it make you sick?
There are two strongly polarised views on the subject; there is very little middle ground.
Fluoride was introduced to water supplies in Ashburton in September 1966 by the Ashburton Borough Council. In 2002 a group of Ashburton people pushed for the Ashburton District Council to remove fluoride from the town water supply, resulting in council voting by a narrow margin to remove it. Fluoridation continued in Methven.
In June this year, as part of the council's annual plan submission process, a team from the Canterbury District Health Board's community and public health group made a presentation to council, seeking to have fluoride reintroduced to Ashburton's water supply.
Councillors decided the issue should come back into the public forum and an independent survey began yesterday. This will involve about 400 households in Ashburton taking part in a telephone survey, with rural households surveyed by post. The results will be presented to the council for discussion in late October.
If there is a strong signal to return fluoride to Ashburton's water supply, the issue will become part of next year's annual plan process, when it will become a subject open for public submission.
To assist those who are selected to take part in the survey give an informed opinion, the Guardian went in search of answers.
We posed a number of questions to the two fluoride action groups - those who are in favour and those who are against. Both groups were given the same questions and had the same opportunity to provide answers. Both were limited to the same number of words - an average of 100 per question.
Answers have been provided by the Canterbury District Health Board's medical officer of health, Daniel Williams and Martin Lee, school and community dental health officer. In opposition to fluoride, answers were provided by Don Church.
What is fluoride and does it help prevent dental decay?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Fluoride comes from the element fluorine, which is the 13th most common element in the Earth's crust. As water passes over rocks that contain fluoride some of it dissolves, so all water sources contain some fluoride. Seawater contains around one part per million fluoride and fluoride is naturally present at differing levels in all foods and drinks.
Fluoride is naturally absorbed into the hard outer layer of the tooth - enamel - making it more resistant to decay. This protective effect occurs both before and after teeth come through the gums. Small, frequent exposures to fluoride work best.
Don Church: The term "fluoride" usually refers to Sodium Fluoride (NaF), but the actual fluoride used in Methven, and proposed for Ashburton, is Sodium Fluorosilicate (Na2SiF6), derived as a toxic waste product of the fertiliser industry.
MoH statistics show that fluoridation does not prevent (in the sense of stopping) dental decay. The WHO recommends 12-year-olds as the indicator group. For this group decay is slightly worse in fluoridated areas of the South Island, but for New Zealand as a whole it is slightly better in the fluoridated areas. In a recent major study of deprived rural children in Australia, fluoridation was shown to have no dental benefit whatsoever in 12-year- old children.
The presence of fluoride causes an eruptive delay. Thus, in younger children, decay is temporarily delayed but this illusory "benefit" virtually disappears when such children reach 12 years.
What is the difference in effectiveness between naturally occurring fluoridated water and water that has been fluoridated?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Fluoride is nature's way of protecting teeth. The benefits of fluoride in preventing decay were originally shown by studying communities with varying levels of naturally-occurring fluoride in their water. These studies showed that one part per million of fluoride gave good protection against decay. In New Zealand, no water supplies contain enough naturally-occurring fluoride to prevent decay and so to protect teeth more fluoride needs to be added. There is no difference between naturally-occurring fluoride and fluoride added in water fluoridation. The various purified forms of fluoride used in fluoridation all dissolve completely to give fluoride identical to the fluoride already there.
Don Church: Fluoride in water, whether natural or artificial, is equally effective in causing toxic damage to the human bio-system and equally ineffective as a solution to tooth decay. Please read the reports of Dr ME Godfrey and LHR Brett (joint) and of Dr Hardy Limeback which appear elsewhere on these pages.
Are fluoride supplements effective?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Fluoride supplements include fluoride toothpastes, tablets, mouthwashes, gels, and varnishes. They are all effective. However, with fluoride, little and often is best. Research shows that water fluoridation produces benefits that are above and beyond those from other supplements, and is one of the few ways fluoride can get to developing teeth. Fluoride supplements are much more expensive than water fluoridation, and usually require people to remember to do something.
Don Church: The report of Dr Kathleen Thiessen (Guardian 9-9-06), a specialist on contaminant risk, states that "Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. The body does not have a systemic requirement for it. A number of reports indicate that any anti-cavity benefit of fluoride is due to topical rather than systemic exposure, in other words from the use of fluoride on the tooth surface rather than from swallowing fluoride."
So what is the point of taking fluoride supplements other than to add further toxic load to the human body?
Does fluoride in the water supply at the recommended levels for preventing dental decay, adversely affect human health and is research still being done on the effects of fluoride on humans?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: The best available and most reliable evidence shows that water fluoridation does not adversely affect human health. The effects of fluoride on human health have been studied since the early 1900s, and today over 300 million people drink fluoridated water. Studies on the effects of fluoride continue to be carried out and published.
Don Church: Dr Godfrey states that "Although water fluoridation should not be expected to produce an acute (ie immediate) toxic reaction, the research shows that a toxic effect is accumulative over the long term. The cumulative effect over decades is likely to cause an adverse effect on human biochemistry even at very low levels of fluoride concentration".
Dr Kathleen Thiessen's report (Guardian 9-9-06) details the risk of a wide range of adverse health effects through the ingestion of fluoridated water even at the so-called "recommended" level.
Dr Robert Isaacson's comments (elsewhere in these pages) on brain damage, lowered IQ and negative behavioural effects, related to fluoridated water (even at "recommended" levels) are an absolute "must read".
Research is continuing and the findings related to fluoride's toxic effects keep getting worse.
What effect does drinking fluoridated water over a lifetime have on bone health?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Drinking fluoridated water does not have an adverse effect on bone health - either short-term or over a lifetime. Studies show that there is no significant impact on bone mineral density or the risk of bone fracture.
Don Church: Dr Godfrey's report states: "Other fluoride effects on the skeleton include arthritic-type effects and increased frequency of certain fractures. Fluoride has the effect of making bone dense but more brittle."
But the greatest concern with regard to fluoride and bone health is the magnified risk of bone cancer.
What is the relevance of dental fluorosis in the debate on water fluoridation?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Dental fluorosis is the only known adverse effect of water fluoridation, however it needs to be put into perspective. Firstly, the type of fluorosis commonly associated with water fluoridation consists of fine white mottling on teeth that is not cosmetically unattractive. In New Zealand, the more severe types of fluorosis which can show as brown stains, or missing enamel are very uncommon, and are caused by overuse of supplements while teeth are forming - particularly when pre-school aged children swallow toothpaste.
Don Church: The York Report (United Kingdom 2000) found water fluoridation to be significantly associated with high levels of dental fluorosis which was not just a "cosmetic issue" (as fluoridation proponents claim).
The recent National Research Council report parted ways with previous reviews of fluoride by saying that severe dental fluorosis is an adverse health effect.
Dr ME Godfrey (see advertisement elsewhere in this paper) states that "Dental fluorosis can be an indicator of developing skeletal fluorosis".
Opponents of fluoride often quote an increased risk of cancer as one of the side-effects. Is there scientific data to back this up?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: No. Many laboratory and population studies have been carried out to find if there is an association between fluoridation and cancer - collectively, these studies show that there is no association. Water fluoridation is supported by the Cancer Society of New Zealand.
Don Church: The subject of fluoride as a cause of cancer received major publicity in 1975 when Dr Dean Burk, formerly head of research at the National Cancer Institute, and Dr John Yiamouyiannis authored a report showing that cancer death rates in the 10 largest fluoridated cities in the USA were 5-15 per cent higher, and had risen faster, than in the 10 largest unfluoridated cities. That caused a storm of obfuscation by powerful pro-fluoride organisations.
In May 2006 a report from Harvard, known as the Bassin report, was published in the journal "Cancer Causes and Control".
This report established that boys who drank fluoridated water at age six to eight were more than five times likely to develop osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in their later teens. Osteosarcoma represents 5 per cent of all child cancers and is particularly aggressive. It has a 50 per cent mortality rate. The New Jersey Health Department found a similar result 10 years ago for young males living in fluoridated communities.
Is fluoride harmful to the environment when it is added to water supplies?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: No. While some water from municipal supplies is used to water gardens, most is eventually discharged into the sea. The concentration of fluoride in seawater is already higher than that in fluoridated drinking water. There is no evidence that fluoridated water is harmful to gardens, lawns and plants or domestic or wild animals.
Don Church: Waste fluoride compounds from fertiliser manufacturing are so environmentally hazardous that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forbids their disposal to air, land or water. A solution to this conundrum is to drink it. I have a letter from the EPA (dated 30/3/83) stating (and I quote)
"In regard to the use of fluosilicic acid as a source of fluorides for fluoridation, this agency regards such as an ideal environmental solution to a long-standing problem. By recovering by-product fluosilicic acid from fertiliser manufacturing, water and air pollution are minimised, and water utilities have a low-cost source of fluoride available to them."
Thus you are permitted to dispose of this substance to the environment only by drinking it first.
Environment Canada recommends that freshwater lakes and rivers contain not more than 0.12 ppm fluoride in order to protect freshwater life. And yet your MoH wants you to ingest water at 0.80 ppm. Have we gone mad?
How strong a rating should be given to public health versus freedom of choice when it comes to fluoridating public water supplies?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Tooth decay is a serious health problem that mostly affects those that can do the least about it - the very young and the very old. Freedom from disease is an important human right. Those that want their water to be free of fluoride can remove it - but they need to be aware that it is impossible to remove fluoride that is naturally present in all the rest of their food and drinks.
Don Church: We should give a very strong rating to both public health AND freedom of choice, by not fluoridating public water supplies.
Is fluoridation a cost-effective means of preventing dental decay?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Studies in New Zealand and overseas show that water fluoridation saves communities money - for New Zealand, each dollar spent on fluoridation can save at least 10 dollars in dental treatment costs.
To further reduce the costs on communities the Government can pay the full cost of installing fluoridation equipment. The ongoing cost of fluoridation is around $1 per person per year.
Don Church: Accountants use a phrase called "inventive accounting". But the real expert for inventive accounting is the Ministry of Health.
Their costings always show huge cost savings based upon reductions of dental decay that, by their own statistics, don't exist.
Dr Hardy Limeback's report (elsewhere in this paper) noted that in New Zealand a child may achieve a reduction in decay of half a tooth surface (out of a total of 128 tooth surfaces) after being exposed to fluoridation for 12 years. From that observation he comments "That's an exceedingly expensive way to achieve such a minimal and doubtful benefit".
Have New Zealand dentists, as an association, been surveyed to gauge their opinion on fluoridated community water supplies and if so, what is the finding?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: In April this year, the New Zealand Dental Association's Board heard arguments for and against water fluoridation.
The board, consisting of dentists from all parts of the country, and including specialists, general practitioners and university teachers, unanimously endorsed water fluoridation as being a safe and effective method of controlling tooth decay.
Don Church: I don't know whether dentists have been surveyed in this manner but, if they were surveyed, I can predict the result. I possess a copy of the "professional" advice that the American Dental Association gave to dentists in a White Paper they issued in 1979. It states that:-
"Individual dentists must be convinced that they need not be familiar with scientific reports of laboratory and field investigations on fluoridation to be effective participants in the promotion program and that non-participation is overt neglect of professional responsibility".
In other words they are told that it is their professional responsibility to promote fluoridation, via their status, even if ignorant of the research.
Why is the opposition to fluoride generally promoted by lay persons, rather than dentists?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: Fluoridation is also supported by doctors and scientists. Health professionals and scientists are used to using a scientific method that allows findings to be reproduced and verified by others.
Health and dental authorities have again and again concluded that the best available and most reliable evidence supports water fluoridation as safe, effective and worthwhile.
Antifluoridationists, on the other hand, generally approach the scientific literature quite differently, seizing on any findings, however weak or loosely related, which might support their central claim that fluoride is unnecessary or bad.
Quite apart from differences in their approach to the scientific literature, dental professionals have the advantage of seeing for themselves the importance of fluoride, in the mouths of their patients.
Don Church: A lay person, in this context, would mean someone without formal medical or dental training. However, this whole subject should properly be more focused on toxicity than teeth, and even dentists are lay persons on toxicity.
It would be a grave mistake to think that lay persons are fools. They generally have the wisdom and common sense to know when they are being conned. As "Caring Mother" stated (Guardian 12-9-06) those running on "sense and logic" can be just as correct.
Strong opposition to fluoridation is also arising from highly qualified medical and research personnel as should be apparent from recent reports published in the Guardian.
Can consuming water fluoridated at the proposed level for Ashburton (0.8 ppm) on an ongoing basis have a toxic effect?
Martin Lee and Daniel Williams: No. The first water fluoridation scheme started in 1945 and now over 300 million people drink fluoridated water.
After 60 years of research and observation, no adverse health effects beyond dental fluorosis have been found to be associated with fluoridation. Antifluoridationists have claimed that water fluoridation is responsible for a long list of health problems.
These claims have not been supported by careful and objective reviews of the scientific literature.
Don Church: Absolutely! Please read the quite startling reports from Dr Hardy Limeback; Dr Robert Isaacson; the joint report of Dr ME Godfrey and LHR Brett (appearing elsewhere on these pages); and of Dr Kathleen Thiessen (Guardian 9-9-06).
The essence of this whole subject is about toxicity, not teeth. That is why, in order to avoid such an admission, Dr Martin Lee (representing CDHB) found it necessary to publicly state that there are no adverse health effects from water fluoridation.
