Fluorine is a univalent poisonous gaseous halogen and it is the most chemically reactive and electronegative of all the elements. Fluoride is the ionic, or electrically charged from of the element fluorine. In aqueous solution, fluorine commonly occurs as the fluoride ion. It is reactive and strongly attaches itself to other elements, making them hard and brittle.
Fluorine is a trace mineral. Fluorine sources are not at all common and the fluorine mineral was not found in many of the foods that we ate. Many fluorine compounds come from the combustion of fossil fuel, certain industrial processes, and irresponsible agricultural practices. Currently 66% of United States residents on public water supplies receive fluoridated water. Furthermore, all of our food is now contaminated with fluorine compounds.
Hydrofluosilicic acid is one of the most corrosive chemical agents known to man: it is derived from toxic gases produced in the manufacture of phosphoric acid and phosphate fertilizers; it contains lead, mercury, arsenic, and high concentrations of radionuclides; it is also the chemical agent most used for water fluoridation in the United States . In essence it is a protoplasmic poison that is more toxic than lead.
During the late 1960s, fluorine (fluorosilicic acid) emissions were damaging crops, killing fish, and causing crippling skeletal fluorosis in livestock. The EPA became concerned and enforced regulations requiring manufacturers to install pollution scrubbers.
Recovered fluorosilicic acid minimizes hydrogen fluoride and other hazardous air pollutants from being released into the atmosphere. It is a fact that the release of this fluorosilicic acid, lead, mercury, arsenic, and high concentrations of radionuclides into the atmosphere via the chimneystacks are hazardous to every living thing in their path. So why would the EPA add these toxins to our water supplies? Now, instead of breathing large quantities of these poisons and watching them kill everything in their path, we are now silently given water to drink and food to eat that has been grown in and prepared with substances that are know to kill everything in their path.
The EPA's position on the use of industrial grade fluosilicic acid for the fluoridation of municipal water supplies is: the use of the industrial grade product is the ideal solution to the long-standing dilemma of disposing of the hazardous waste by-product produced from the manufacture of phosphate fertilizers. By recovering fluosilicic acid, water and air pollution are minimized and water utilities are afforded a low-cost source of fluoride. Food Grade fluoride is not used in the water fluoridation process because the cost factors would be prohibitive.
The aluminum industry, which previously supplied sodium fluoride for water fluoridation, was facing a shortage of fluorspar used in smelting aluminum. Consequently, there was a shortage of sodium fluoride to fluoridate drinking water.
For the phosphate fertilizer industry, the shortage of sodium fluoride was the key to turning red ink into black and an environmental liability into a perceived asset. With the help of the EPA, fluorosilicic acid was transformed from a concentrated toxic waste and a liability into a "proven cavity fighter."
Our government tells us that fluoride is added to our drinking water for the purpose of medication (to prevent tooth decay). However, fluoride is a cumulative toxin that can alter accretion and resorption of bone tissue; it also affects the homeostasis of bone mineral metabolism; it has been tied to bone cancer and osteoporosis. Babies exposed to fluoride are at high risk of developing dental fluorosis—a permanent tooth defect caused by fluoride damaging the cells that form the teeth. Other tissues in the body may also be affected by early-life exposures to fluoride. According to a recent study, fluoride may damage the developing brain, causing learning deficits and other problems. It has also been suggested that high fluoride doses can cause secondary hyperparathyroidism and subsequent calcium deficiency.
A March 2006 report from the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NRC) identified fluoride as a potent hormone disruptor that may affect normal thyroid function. Fluoride's potential to impair thyroid function is most clearly illustrated by the fact that until the 1970s, European doctors used fluoride as a thyroid-suppressing medication for patients with hyperthyroidism. Today, many people living in communities with fluoridated tap water are ingesting doses of fluoride that fall within the range of doses once used by doctors to reduce thyroid activity in hyperthyroid patients (NRC 2006).
Chlorine, fluorine, and fluoride are chemically related to iodine and compete with it for assimilation, blocking iodine receptors in the thyroid gland. Fluorine and fluoride readily displace other halogens—such as chlorine, bromine, and iodine—from their mineral salts.
According to The Lancet, a leading English medical journal, sodium fluoride accumulates in brain tissue; it inhibits or destroys the crucial neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is imperative for the process of learning and memory. This data confirms a correlation between fluoride exposure/accumulation and diminished intelligence quotients.
The mean IQ of 60 children, aged 10 to 12 years, in an area with a high level of fluoride in drinking water was significantly lower (92.27 [+ or -] 20.45) than that of 58 children in a low-fluoride area (103.05 [+ or -] 13.86). The high-fluoride area also had more children (21.6%) in the retardation or borderline categories of IQ than did the low-fluoride area (3.4%). In addition to studies on intelligence, other research on humans has associated fluoride with problems in brain functioning.
It has been proven that fluoride has an adverse impact on pineal gland; which regulates sleep cycles, the onset of puberty, and other functions. Work from Dr. Jennifer Luke (50-51) indicates that fluoride reaches one very important gland in the body, the pineal gland, at very much higher concentrations than 1 ppm. This small gland is almost at the geometrical center of the brain, between the two hemispheres. However, it is outside the blood brain barrier. It also has a very high supply of blood (a perfusion rate second only to the kidney) and it is a calcifying tissue, laying down crystals of calcium hydroxyapatite like the teeth and the bone. Because of these observations, Luke argued that one would expect the pineal gland to concentrate fluoride. When she had the pineal gland from 11 human corpses analyzed, she indeed found this to be the case. The levels of fluoride in the apatite crystals averaged about 9,000 ppm (and went as high as 21,000 ppm). The average level is as high as you would expect in the bones of someone afflicted with skeletal fluorosis. The average projected by Luke for the whole tissue was 300 ppm, well over the 1 ppm found to inhibit many enzymes.
Luke next examined the effect of dosing Mongolian gerbils (the animal of choice for studying the pineal gland) with fluoride. She found that animals fed higher doses of fluoride had a significant decrease in their excretion of melatonin metabolite in their urine. She also found that the high dose fluoride animals took a shorter time to reach puberty. This is exactly what you would expect if melatonin production were lowered. If this result were confirmed by others it would make fluoride an environmental hormone or endocrine disrupter, a topic of intense discussion (52) and review by regulatory agencies in the US and around the world.
Fluoride's effect on the human brain also extends to the fetus. An examination of 15 therapeutically aborted fetuses in the fifth to eighth month of gestation from a high-fluoride area documented a number of changes in the neurons, undifferentiated neuroblasts and mitochondria. The study concluded that chronic high-fluoride exposure during intrauterine life "may produce certain harmful effects on the developing brain of the fetus." (26)
A number of animal studies also have linked fluoride to neurotoxic effects, such as impaired learning and memory abilities, suppression of spontaneous motor activity and poor performance in motor coordination and maze tests.
Too much fluorine/fluoride can also cause the uptake of food from the stomach to decline and it can disturb development. Finally, it can cause low birth-weights. Some studies suggest that fluoride released in high concentrations during the normal resorption of high-fluoride bone, formed as a result of the habitual ingestion of fluoridated drinking-water for a period of years, may damage some immune system cells and reduce the efficacy of others.
There is no dispute that too much fluoride damages teeth, actually making them more decay-prone. If fluoride is absorbed too frequently, it can cause teeth decay, osteoporosis, and harm to kidneys, bones, brain, nerves, and muscles.
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulates the amount of fluoride in the water supply, either ambient (organic calcium fluoride) or industrial fluoride (inorganic fluosilicic acid, sodium fluoride, etc.). EPA/SDWA regulations require industrial fluoridated water supplies to be monitored daily with ion selective electrodes, calorimetric (hydrogen titration), or complexion tests. These only determine the amount of fluorine contained in the water and not the accompanying contaminants; they do not take into consideration the bioaccumulation of fluorine/fluoride in plants, animals, and humans.
Approximately half of each day's fluoride intake will be retained by a healthy adult. This includes intake from all sources: food, air, water, dental products, etc.
The fact that fluorides accumulate in the body is the reason that US law requires the Surgeon General to set a Maximum Contaminant Level for fluoride content in public water supplies as determined by the EPA.
This requirement is specifically aimed at avoiding a condition known as Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis, a disease known to progress through three stages. The Maximum Contaminant Level, designed to prevent only the third and crippling stage of this disease, is set at 4ppm or 4mg per liter. It is assumed that people will retain half of this amount (2mg), and therefore 4mg per liter is deemed “safe”. Yet a daily dose of 2-8mg is known to cause the third and crippling stage of Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis within 40 years. Furthermore, it has been proven that as little as 1 ppm of fluoride interferes with biological functions such as DNA repair enzyme activity and cause genetic and chromosomal damage.
In 1998 EPA scientists, whose job and legal duty it is to set the Maximum Contaminant Level, declared that this 4ppm level was set fraudulently by “outside forces” in a decision that omitted 90 percent of the data showing the mutagenic properties of fluoride.
All sides agree to the fact that healthy kidneys can eliminate only about 50% of daily fluoride intake. The rest gets stored mainly in calcified tissues, like bones and teeth, but also in soft tissue.
EPA/SDWA regulations do not take into consideration, that many research projects have highlighted how easy it is to absorb toxins through the skin. One study done in the 1980s, suggests that 64% of waterborne contaminants are taken in through the skin. It has been proven that we get more chemical exposure from showering in contaminated water—than we do from drinking contaminated water.
The EPA/SDWA regulations do not incorporate the fluorine contamination (from the combustion of fossil fuel, certain industrial processes, and phosphate fertilizer) in our food supplies and exposure from bathing and swimming.
For instance, the long-continued application of phosphate fertilizers can also raise the heavy metal and fluorine concentrations in irrigation runoff/drainage from fertilized lands, and, then, their application in agricultural soils constitute another source for workers and members of the public. One ounce @ 5.0% fluoride (about the amount used to fertilize one organic tomato plant as recommended by some organic growers) contains about 1.4 grams of fluoride, which is enough to kill a small child.
Additionally, fluorine/fluoride that is located in soils, phosphate fertilizer, and fluoride in irrigation water accumulates in many plants. The amount of uptake by plants depends upon the type of plant and the type of soil and the amount and type of fluorine/fluoride compounds found in the soil and water. With plants that are sensitive for fluorine/fluoride exposure, even low concentrations of fluorine/fluoride can cause leaf damage and a decline in growth. Too much fluorine/fluoride, whether taken in from the soil by roots, or absorbed from the atmosphere by leafs, retards the growth of plants, and reduces crop yields. Fluorine also attaches to fine ash particles, coats grass, and pollutes streams and lakes.
Tea leaves accumulate more fluoride (from pollution of water, soil, and air) than any other edible plant. Some seafood and fresh water fish have been found to have high levels of fluorides. In addition, water from fluoridated areas makes its way into processed foods and beverages it is then consumed by people in fluoridated areas, as well as nonfluoridated ones.
Animals and humans that eat fluorine/fluoride-containing animals, plants, and grasses accumulate large amounts of fluorine/fluoride in their bodies. Consequently, everyone in the United States is being exposed to potentially lethal concentrations of fluorine/fluoride.
Now add a little aluminum from antiperspirant deodorant, aluminum cookware, beverages from aluminum cans, municipal drinking water that often has aluminum compounds added, baking powders, bleached flour, processed cheese, some table salts, some antacids, and breathing in dust when sanding with aluminum oxide sandpaper.
Aluminum-induced impairment of mineralization has been related to a reduced extent of active bone-forming surface. The present study investigated the effect of fluoride, a potent stimulator of osteoblast. Aluminum toxicity in the presence of fluoride may involve physical-chemical inhibition of mineralization or altered cellular activity of osteoblasts. Fluoride exacerbates aluminums inhibition of mineralization.
All of the fluoride products used in the artificial fluoridation of water is contaminated with lead, arsenic, and radium. Lead is one of the most toxic elements naturally occurring on Earth. High concentrations of lead can cause irreversible brain damage, seizure, coma, and death. Arsenic in drinking water causes bladder, lung, and skin cancer, and may cause kidney and liver cancer; it harms the central and peripheral nervous systems, as well as heart and blood vessels, and causes serious skin problems; It can cause birth defects and reproductive problems. Exposure to high levels of radium may result in health effects, such as teeth fracture, anemia, and cataract. When the exposure lasts for a long period of time radium may even cause cancer and the exposure can eventually lead to death.
Large numbers of U.S. young people—up to 80 percent in some cities—now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. National Research Council. The teeth are windows to what is happening in the bones. In recent years, pediatric bone specialists have expressed alarm about an increase in stress fractures among U.S. young people. Studies have found an association between fluoride and the rate of hip fractures among the elderly.
Osteosarcoma (malignant bone tumor), while rare, is the third most common form of cancer in children. Osteosarcoma accounts for about 3 percent of all childhood cancers. The five-year mortality rate is around 50 percent, and nearly all survivors have limbs amputated, usually legs.
The overall weight of the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that exposure to fluoride in tap water during the mid-childhood growth spurt between ages 5 and 10 increases the incidence of osteosarcoma in boys ages 10 through 19. Fifty percent of ingested fluoride is deposited in bones, and fluoride stimulates bone growth in the growing ends of the bones where the osteosarcoma occurs. Fluoride is also a confirmed mutagenic agent in humans, which suggests that fluoride can cause genetic damage in bone cells where it is actively deposited, in this case precisely where the osteosarcoma arises.
Some forms of fluoride are used in high concentrations to kill rats and crop-eating insects. Municipal employees who add fluoridation chemicals to public water systems must wear protective clothing and respirators. Industrial workers regularly exposed to fluorine, the gas form of fluoride, have suffered skin, lung, and gastrointestinal problems; it has even been fatal for some.
Children, women in childbearing age, the elderly, and any person with impaired liver or kidney function are in the high-risk group for fluoride poisoning and must be warned to monitor their fluoride intake. Also at high risk are people with immunodeficiency’s, diabetes, and heart ailments, as well as anyone with iodine, calcium, magnesium, selenium, Vitamin C, and A deficiencies.
Exposure to this powerful caustic irritant can cause conjunctivitis, skin irritation, bone degeneration, and mottling of teeth. Excess fluorine results in a significant cause of death and injury. Acute fluoride poisonings have occurred at doses of 0.1 to 0.8 mgF/kg of body weight in the USA . This means that the synergistic affect of food, fruit and vegetable juices, drinking water, and bathing in fluoridated water, combined with many dental products contains more than enough fluoride to kill or seriously harm a small child.
Don’t worry, unless you are bothered by genocide or feeling fat, fuzzy, frazzled, fatigued, forgetful, depressed, ignorant, beset by intolerance to heat or cold, annoyed by problems with skin-hair-nails, or suffering with severe arthritis, osteopenia, osteoarthritis, constipation, low libido, infertility, or uncomfortable menopause.
I can fix this is with your help – contact me – glen b. Caulkins
Peace, Joy & Blessings
Glen & Ginger Caulkins
www.GC4Health.com Posted via email from Reggie Smith 770 by SocialNetGate
