Lies, damned lies and fluoridation

Promotional literature uniformly fails to present the most telling scientific evidence of all, tooth decay rates in cities that have ceased fluoridation. According to the alarmist claims of promoters if we quit fluoridation tooth decay rates would go through the roof. Yet the studies show that where fluoridation has been discontinued in Canada, Germany, Cuba and Finland decay rates have decreased over the following decade.

Non-truthful portrayal of safety

Under “Safety of Water Fluoridation”, The Victorian Department of Human Services document Water Fluoridation - Information for Health Professionals (2004) claims, “With the exception of dental fluorosis, scientific studies have been unable to link community water fluoridation with any adverse effects”. To be truthful this would have to be worded very differently. There is in fact a large scientific literature linking fluoridation with adverse effects. Were they meaning to say that they, along with other fluoridation agencies, don’t accept these studies?

If so they need to critique the studies and show where they err, rather than use slogans and appeals to other agencies to negate the evidence of harm.

Apart from dental fluorosis, which fluoridation enthusiasts admit is a large problem and try to downplay as “merely cosmetic”, another problem a biochemist might expect is bone damage, including fractures. The Victorian government document cites just two reviews and one other study to conclude that there is no evidence linking fluoridation with bone fractures. It fails to state that there have been many studies. Eleven of these since 1990 found an association between fluoridation and hip fracture, while eight did not. This omission is a case of non-truthfulness. It is also insulting to professionals who read the publication, to be treated as incapable of handling an analysis of conflicting studies. Publications for professionals, or the public, are not supposed to be outright propaganda pieces.

None of the promotional literature does justice to the toxic sensitivity symptoms experienced by a proportion of consumers, such as abdominal pains, joint pains, mouth ulcers, headaches, visual disturbance, asthma-like symptoms and skin rashes.

The booklet for professionals devotes just a few lines to the problem, and dismisses its importance with a reference to a US Academy of Allergy statement in 1971, and then a comment from the Australian NHMRC (1991) review of fluoridation. It fails to mention the most important comment by that NHMRC review, page 142, that health authorities are receiving numerous complaints from people who believe they are being made sick by fluoridated water. The review calls for these cases to be studied rigorously. “These claims are being made with sufficient frequency to justify well-designed studies which can properly control for subject and observer bias.” Fourteen years later and has this been done anywhere in Australia? No, the recommendation has been ignored.

On November 25, 2004 a delegation from Water Quality Australia Inc met with a team of “experts” led by Dr Robert Hall, Chief Fluoridation Officer for Victoria at the Department of Human Services. Dr Hall and team could not provide any reference for this concern about toxic sensitivity symptoms being addressed, since the NHMRC made that call in 1991 (see meeting report (pdf file 35KB) online). Not only is the publicity literature untruthful about this subject, but the failure to investigate may well be a serious breach of the duty to safeguard vulnerable consumers by Health Departments around Australia.

The toxic sensitivity symptoms suffered by people when water is fluoridated was well documented by the team of Dutch doctors whose research led to fluoridation being abandoned in the Netherlands after a few years experiment in the 1970s.

Space does not permit discussion of the effects of fluoride exposure on the endocrine and nervous systems and so on, nor how official fluoridation literature deals with them (a listing of some hundreds of references is found at  http://www.slweb.org/bibliography ).

How many countries fluoridate their citizens?

For many years Dental Association and Health Department literature have made the bold statement that 60 countries practise, or “enjoy” water fluoridation. The intended implication is that fluoridation must be right because it is accepted everywhere. The 60 countries are never named. From the 1970s Dr Philip Sutton, senior dental researcher at the University of Melbourne frequently asked the ADA to show their list of these countries, to no avail. The statement remained an article of faith.