Water Fluoridation

No thanks, but why?

Fluoridation of potable water has been mired in controversy for decades. Personally I do not find the subject controversial since I am wholly against all forms of (unnatural) mass medication. However, the subject is once again topical and this time the focus is the release of a long-awaited draft report from the EPA. Warning, this link takes you to a huge document the majority of which is largely superfluous to the immediate question of whether water fluoridation is harmful or beneficial or both.

I am not new to this discussion and one issue that is rarely if ever addressed, including in the new 1500 page draft report, is why or how is fluoride or specifically potable water fluoridation toxic. What is the mechanism underlying the toxicity of fluoride? Toxicity, that in the main, centres upon neurodevelopment in infants and neurodegeneration in adults. Let us be clear at this point. Water fluoridation does not expose us to acutely high concentrations of fluoride. We are largely talking about chronic levels of exposure over long periods of time. Fluoride is classed as a non-essential element. Perhaps a more accurate classification would be toxic since fluoride has no proven beneficial role in biota including in humans. I am putting the emphasis on proven as the dogma that fluoride substitutes for hydroxide in enamel apatite in human teeth is chemically dubious at best. It is certainly true that fluoride can substitute for hydroxide in minerals, our own research on hydroxyaluminosilicates has shown this. However, the concentration of fluoride ion required to achieve such substitutions is several orders of magnitude higher that the fluoride content of potable water following fluoridation. No, let’s be clear about this. Fluoride in fluoridated potable water is not substituting for hydroxide in enamel apatite in human teeth. Prove me wrong.

So, why is fluoride toxic in humans. The elephant in this particular room, looming so large that the recently released 1500 page draft report managed to completely ignore it, is, of course, aluminium. It has been widely accepted for decades that fluoride increases the toxicity of aluminium in the diet. Countless studies on animals have shown this relationship. Indeed the EPA through the research of Julie Varner were among the first to demonstrate this at concentrations of fluoride equivalent to those found in fluoridated water. I cited this research back in 1999 to warn against water fluoridation. I actually collaborated with a renowned clinical scientist at the University of Virginia on an EPA-funded project that showed unequivocally this relationship between fluoride in water and aluminium toxicity in white rabbits. Unfortunately and perhaps, thinking back, inexplicably, this research reported to the EPA was never published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The mechanism whereby fluoride increases the toxicity of dietary aluminium is straightforward chemistry. In the acidic environment of the human gut, fluoride competes successfully with most other ligands including hydroxide to bind aluminium. The resulting complexes of aluminium fluoride slow down the rapid precipitation of aluminium (as hydroxides and phosphates) as it leaves the acidity of the gut to the lower acidity of the small intestine and beyond. This means that in the presence of fluoride more aluminium is available for absorption across the gut. Fluoride increases the absorption of aluminium across the human gut and hence increases the body burden of aluminium.

It really should not be a mystery that research points towards a negative relationship between fluoridation of potable water and neurodevelopment in infants. I am sure that you are equally not surprised that increasing access of aluminium to human brain tissue results in a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease. The trouble with water fluoridation is simple, aluminium, an elephant so large that it fills this particular room.