If I were to ask you to swallow battery acid, would you do it? Of course you wouldn’t, who would do such an idiotic thing? What if I told you that you were poisoning yourself each and everyday with a toxic pollutant? Would you stop doing it? Not likely. You wouldn’t stop because you wouldn’t believe it to be true or because of the very real inconvenience it would create in your lifestyle. What on earth am I talking about? Flouride.
Flouride? Do I mean the cavity fighter approved by the American Dental Association? Yes, that fluoride. You see, this is an old story but the passage of time tends to blur older people’s fading memories along with the ignorance of our youth. The battle over fluoride goes back decades and decades but time has led to its acceptance with each generation less resistant than the previous.
So why is fluoride a problem? In a nutshell, it goes like this. The fluoride in your food, water and toothpaste is not pharmaceutical grade pure fluoride but an industrial waste product primarily developed from the production of fertilizer. That waste product is a toxic pollutant that is sold to public water supplies around the world and added directly to your water. The water you drink with, bathe with, cook with, etc.
Say you only drink bottled water, think your safe? Do you consume any processed food from your grocer? Any beverages utilizing water in their production? The fact is that many bottled water sources are domestic water supplies and much of the food and beverages we consume utilize water either in the product itself or in the production of said product. Chances are that water is a public water source that adds fluoride.
Why is this version of fluoride so bad? Lets get a bit more technical. The fluoride were talking about is actually an offshoot of fluorine. Flourine is a gas that is encapsulated in phosphorus. When the phosphorus is mined to produce fertilizer by the addition of sulfuric acid, the fluorine gas, along with uranium, is released into the atmosphere. Yes, that uranium used to produce nuclear weapons.
The fluorine gas is a killer. It kills vegetation, livestock, and humans. Do a little research on the 1948 Halloween disaster in Donora, Pennsylvania which killed at least 20 and sickened hundreds. There are many, many more examples. Industry had a problem. The answer was the installation of ‘wet scrubbers’ in the factories. It’s a rather simple technology that basically sprays a fine water mist to entrap the gas into a liquid form. So we start with fluorine gas, convert it silicon tetraflouride and eventually to hydroflourosilicic acid or sodium silicofluride. They both contain silica which makes them unappealing to industry.
It has become an industrial waste product that is very expensive to store and dispose of. What to do? How about sponsoring some studies which promote the necessity for fluoride in our public water supplies? Then make it acceptable to substitute this synthetic industrial version of fluoride as opposed to the pure pharmaceutical fluoride?
If you’re familiar with the history of fluoride, you may think opponents are merely conspiracy theorists. The government says it’s ok and beneficial in fighting tooth decay. Please consider these facts.
Silicon tetraflouride is a toxin. Here are the health hazards listed from the MSDS, the material safety data sheet.
Corrosive and irritating to the upper and lower respiratory tracts, skin and eyes. It hydrolyzes very rapidly yielding hydrofluoric acid so that skin burns and mucosal irritation are like that from exposure to that acid. Symptoms include lacrymation, cough, labored breathing and excessive salivary and sputum formation. Excessive irritation of the lungs causes acute pneumonitis and pulmonary edema which could be fatal. Hydrofluoricacid dermal burns exhibit severe pain, redness, possible swelling and early necrosis.
You say wait, I brush three times a day and don’t have any of those symptoms. The problem with fluoride is a chronic one rather than acute. Acute means effects in a short-term period of time. Chronic means what accumulates over a long period of time.
The list of health hazards from ingesting fluoride is a long one. My intent is not to write a book on the subject in a blog post. Only to raise awareness where time has served to erase public awareness of what is the biggest health hazard of our time. Ebola may get the headlines but sometimes seemingly harmless everyday products are a bigger threat to most people.
I operate a public water plant in my profession so I am speaking from firsthand experience when discussing handling fluoride. It is a dangerous toxin that we must handle with extreme care and in my opinion should not willingly be put into our bodies. Please do yourself a favor and research the topic yourself. It is quite an eye opening experience to learn what you haven’t been taught. Just wait until you learn about the link between fluoride and The Manhattan Project.
Here are a couple of links to get you started.
The Phosphate Fertilizer Industry: An Environmental Overview
Spellchek 