Imagine ingesting a toxic chemical that slowly eats away at tissue function without even knowing you’re doing such a thing, a hidden poison that slowly pollutes the brain and the body’s senses. Consider the implications of weekly guzzling gallons of fluid laced with a substance terrifying in its potential for mental impairment. Most people would put such an activity on par with alcohol abuse or drug use given its potential for permanent payments of personal health. Most people who drink tap water put themselves at such risks every single day.
Our state puts $50,000 of fluoride in our water every year. This has gone on since 1973 when a nationwide recommendation said putting fluoride in public drinking water would help the dental health of those ingesting the water. Since then, many documented studies were done proving the myth of the health benefits in fluoride completely false.
So, with all this handy information, why does the Missouri Health Board insist on postponing the recommendation meeting in order to do more research?
Maybe the postponement has something to do with the fear that fluoride might actually help dental health. This opinion appears on a prestigious website such as www.apha.org, claiming the additional fluoride improves dental health. But, what the websites do not include are the studies done on subjects who ingest fluoride and the effects it has on an individual.
With some simple research using Google Scholar, research data sheets, papers and websites aiming to stop the purposeful pollution of our water gives all the facts. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, Fluoride Action Network and Natural News online providers cite such studies and other resources proving the negative health effects of fluoride in our water (if only to make the dentist’s job a bit easier). From these studies, subjects recorded frightening detrimental breakdowns of regular brain function and sensory recognition as well as showing no real signs of positive dental effects at all.
With all this information at our fingertips and wonderfully cited, why does the Missouri Health Board need to postpone it’s recommendation?
One could argue that fluoride is in our toothpastes and used daily. The problem with this argument is that toothpaste is not directly ingested from someone brushing their teeth, and when they slap some Colgate on their pearly whites, they’re not consuming fluoride products so willfully. Also, toothpaste has a much, much lower fluoride content than the amount put into our public drinking water, hence why Missouri spends a whopping $50,000 a year for fluoride while toothpaste only costs about $2 per tube depending on the brand. Fluoride really does nothing good to our bodies unless it is for our teeth and taken in small doses if ingested. There’s absolutely no logical justification for pouring it into our water supply anymore than there is a good reason to bake prescription medication into elementary school lunches.
The surprise of these findings can be unbelievable because the general public is not fairly educated about the artificial tampering with their primary source of refreshment; there is little chance to understand what is exactly being put in our free drinking water. The blame for this lack of education lies on the Health Board itself for not educating a population they are working to protect from disease and bad health; they have just left it in the hands of hard-working and busy parents and students.
Old habits must die hard for the Missouri Health Board, but by educating ourselves and taking action for our health, proper recommendation or not, the fight against fluoride can continue. Get the word out and inform the Health Board that fluoride is indeed not a good thing and must be removed from our water. Its devastating side effects far outweigh any of its minor potentials for meagre dental improvements. The chance of winning extra-shiny teeth in the fluoride lottery is a costly gamble to make when you have to pony up the health of your brain to play such a dangerous game.
Maybe then we will all be at ease when we smile.
By Maribeth Eiken