This is not a Harvard Business School Case study; it’s a Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen case study. Which means I tell it like it is!
About 50, maybe even 60, years ago, my grandfather, J.I. Rodale, went on a revolt against the dental medical establishment of the day. (He wasn’t just an organic pioneer, he was a health pioneer too). He believed that adding fluoride to our water systems to provide a miracle cure for cavities was dangerous and, frankly, stupid (take that Harvard!). As the founder of Prevention magazine, he believed that true prevention comes from the food we eat, and the exercise we do, and the way we choose to live our lives—either healthfully or…stupidly. In general, he was against the idea that artificial synthetic chemicals can be good substitutes for the real thing, whether in the food we eat, or in the soil which grows our food—hence, his work as an organic and health pioneer.
But Papa (as I called him) was easy to make fun of. Firstly because he wasn’t a doctor or a scientist. Secondly, because he was a Jew at a time when Jews were not allowed to join country clubs. And third, because he loved to poke fun at things himself. He wrote plays in his later years, and one of them was called A Fluoridation Comedary Dromedary. But he was right about a lot of things. His very outsiderness gave him insight into things that have proven more right than wrong over the past decades—even though he spent his whole life labeled a quack.
A few weeks ago I was having breakfast with a lovely older doctor gentleman who was lauding his own great work on the idea of preventative health. He spoke at length about how kids have better teeth now because he brought fluoride to the water in our local region. The idea of chemicals possibly being harmful to children wasn’t on his radar. I kept my mouth shut. After all, fluoride has been shown to prevent cavities, right?
Well, my grandfather must have been working overtime from wherever Jews go after death, because just this past week I saw the following study results in our daily library report:
Too Much Fluoride May Lower Kids’ Intelligence
Previous studies have suggested an association between high levels of fluoride in drinking water and reduced intelligence, but data is limited. Researchers collected blood samples and IQ tests results from 512 children, aged 8-13 years, from two villages in China. After adjusted for age and gender, blood fluoride levels were found to be significantly linked to IQ, with increasing fluoride levels linked to lower IQ scores. Children’s family income and parent’s education level were not related to IQ scores. These results suggest too much fluoride in drinking water may not be a smart idea. Environmental Health Perspectives (Online 17 Dec. 2010).
And even the EPA is calling for reduced levels because, God forbid, our kids are starting to get spots and holes in their teeth from too much fluoride!
How many times must I explain that our kids should not be the guinea pigs to someone else’s chemical experiment!?!?! Whether it’s fluoride, agricultural chemicals, plastics, or antibacterial chemicals, something is messing with our kids’ health and intelligence, because despite all our spending, all our efforts, and all our good intentions, our children are getting sicker and their school scores are getting worse. The majority of these chemicals are unnecessary, untested, and unsafe. And the only people benefiting are the companies that make them. Isn’t it time to stop the toxic poisoning of our kids and our planet?
I recently was doing research on this topic. More & more, studies show that fluoride does more harm than good. However, even after these latest findings, and after a 40 years of resistance, Allentown PA began fluoridating it’s water in 2000! A HUGE step backwards!!
http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/allentown/
No doubt-diabolical & insidious schemes are at work here!
what a great Papa!
Okay, so now I am VERY glad I didn’t buy into my pediatrician’s recommendation of giving my kids extra flouride drops. Something just didn’t sit well with me and I’m glad I listened to my gut.
I live In Canada, and i’m so glad we don’t have flouride in our water.
( not that I drink tap water.. eww.. chlorine! another dangerous chemical)
I read in 2010, about an amazing alternative. A scientist in China, studied thousands of things against the cavity bacteria, and found that licorice root kills it! He now produces lolipops of licorice root, the idea is 2 times a year, for 10 days in a row you have 2 pops a day, and it kills any trace of the cavity bacteria! I have no website to offer, but I was able to order it thru a dentist office!
My son’s step mom is unfortunately, a dental hygenist, so we have conversations about flouride, she’s been taught how good it is, by the industry that promotes it and Ihave to counter her arguments with my internet education! However, at his dental appts I won’t let them do flouride cleaning (they do use flouride toothpaste on weekends, but there’s only so much I can do) It’s difficult!
One more things – my son has autism, so I read/study a lot of biomedical research. I have read studies that say that Flouride increases the bioavailabilty of Aluminum in the body.. so if you have elevated aluminum levels, which many do now.. flouride makes it more available for your body (ew!Bad!) yet another reason to avoid it.
More than 3,240 professionals (including over 290 dentists) urge the US Congress to stop water fluoridation citing scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks. See statement: http://www.fluorideaction.org/statement.august.2007.html
Also, eleven Environmental Protection Agency employee unions representing over 7000 environmental and public health professionals called for a moratorium on drinking water fluoridation programs across the country, and have asked EPA management to recognize fluoride as posing a serious risk of causing cancer in people.
The CDC reports that 225 less communities adjusted for fluoride between 2006 and 2008. Approximately, 90 US communities rejected fluoridation since 2008. New York State communities that stopped or rejected fluoridation include: Levittown, Canton, Corning, Johnstown, Oneida, Carle Place, Rockland County, Suffolk County, Western Nassau County, Albany, Beacon, Poughkeepsie, Central Bridge Water District, Homer, Ithaca, and Amsterdam. New York City Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr is introducing legislation to stop fluoridation in New York City.
If you live, work or play in New York City contact NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn here: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2477/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5443
to accept Vallone’s bill.
The Fluoride Action Network is working with Dr. Mercola to educate legislators and the media about the health hazards associated with water fluoridation which isn’t revealed to them by those lobbying in favor of fluoridation: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/03/paul-connett-interview.aspx
By the way, sodium fluoride – the same stuff that’s in children’s supplements – is regulated as a pesticide by the EPA
United States Prevention, Pesticides EPA 739-R-07-010
Environmental Protection and Toxic Substances December 2007
Agency (7510P)
Reregistration Eligibility Decision for Sodium Fluoride
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/reregistration/REDs/sodium-fluoride-red.pdf
Sodium fluoride was never safety tested by the EPA as a safe or effective drug against tooth decay because sodium fluoride was on the market pre-1938 when such laws were enacted. However, sodium fluoride was only on the market as a rat poison.
Modern science indicates that ingesting fluoride does not reduce tooth decay but does expose people to fluoride’s adverse health effects – some of which can be found here
http://www.FluorideAction.Net/health
The CDC reports that fluoride hardens outer enamel by topical means not by swallowing it.
The part that makes me so disillusioned is our government, the research institutes, the EPA, the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry and on and on… all of these agencies know the toxicity of these chemicals, preservatives, additives, GMO’s, antibiotics, hormones (and this is another unending list) and yet everything gets approved for use anyway.
Somehow the powers that be believe it is more important to make private industry rich and richer than it is to actually attempt to take care of the health and welfare of its citizens.
For some reason, if we actually desire to want to try and keep ourselves healthy, we have to fight tooth and nail to avoid all of these toxic substances that run rampant through our everyday lives. It is even getting more prevalent that labeling these toxic products is “unnecessary” because us consumers just do not understand how to use this information they are giving us anyway.
So now, the governmental agencies are trying to convince us about how “stupid” the general consumer is also?
I happen to be one of those general consumers and I dislike being called to stupid to understand the effects and outcome of their experimentation on us masses.
For some help in trying to avoid some of the toxicity permeating our environment and food supply, check at http://www.allergiesandalternativemedicine.com
Amen papa…
An above mention post says that 290 dentist are opposed means nothing. There over 290 dentist in my own town in California out of 10s of 1000s! 290 is an incredibly tiny amount of the dental population. Not real impressive!
Another previous post about how unfortunate your step son’s Mom is a dental hygienist! What is wrong with you? She is educating the public on oral health, screening for oral cancers, conducting nutritional counseling — she not not a hooker or a bank robber!
Better get your own water tested — you maybe ingesting fluoride without even knowing it! Arsenic, zinc, selenium, copper, lead, etc…….fluoride is the least of our worries!
After reading this post — it will be my last! Sheesh — they things people worry about! BTW – been a dental hygienist for over 20 years.
You think it’s sodium flouride they’re putting in the water? Think again folks. Its actually Hydroflurosilic Acid and Sodium Silicofluoride which are by products of the phosphate feriliser industry and aluminium processing. An S7 poison retrieved from the smoke stacks of these industries. Not purified in any way it includes mercury, aluminium, cadmium and a variety of other heavy metals. Here in Australia a brave independant filmaker has made a movie you can watch for free: http://www.FireWaterFilm.com
I won’t drink the stuff. Where I am renting, I have a machine that takes water out of the air – dragonfly, and at work a reverse osmosis system. At my future home tank water only.
I have several activist friends fighting the good fight on this and will be sending this blog to them. I have posted on my fb site – Environmental Neighbor several very informative articles by Ben Nelms a reporter for the The Citizen Newspaper – he is personally lobbying for reform in this area and is uses his pen as an awesome weapon.