Excerpts:
Editor,
… Eureka Springs has voted twice against it [fluoridation]. They were lucky, other member cities councils voted for them rather than letting people decide for themselves. Hot Springs city council decided for their citizens, but their citizens demanded a referendum and voted against fluoridation.
Oh, the top dog dentist for the state says fluoride is perfectly safe and is a nutrient. Well, that might have been thought to be true at one point, but it’s my understanding that the U.S. National Research Council no longer considers fluoride a nutrient.
… I am in my 14th year as a licensed water treatment plant operator at CBWD (Carroll-Boone Water District). We told our engineers that if we were forced to medicate our customers against theirs and our wills that we wanted to put the safety of our customers and our safety handling this industrial waste as priority #1. (As I understand about a third of this waste comes from China. Even the Chinese don’t fluoridate their water but they are perfectly happy to ship their industrial waste to us.
The health dept. has to review our plans and approve or disapprove what our engineers have designed. I am of the opinion that the health department is here to set minimum standards for the safety of the consumers and ourselves as operators. But it is my understanding they rejected the idea of having in-line analyzers that we could monitor from our computers as to the mg/liter as unnecessary. We would still be manually confirming the readings with grab samples at whatever time frame that they deem necessary.
If we could have online monitoring, then we could also have alarms that the rate is getting out of specifications and to shut down the feeder once it crossed a certain threshold. It is my understanding that the fluoride does not add any taste to the water — I wonder if Homeland Security has ever given consideration to terrorists not having to bring their own poisons with them to a fluoridated water treatment plant, because now within close proximity to our clear wells we’ll have tons of easily dumped poison readily available.
If we had in-line monitors we could, as an extra public safety measure, shut down the whole water plant if the water reached a more dangerous level. Maybe we should have National Guard troops protecting our property instead of trying to decide whether they’re in Afganistan or Pakistan.
They rejected certain safety precautions that we deem necessary for our health. They want us to store and feed at our east plant in a building that contains the main electrical system, even though this toxic substance would cause never ending problems because of its corrosive properties.
Our operator control room is also in this same area. They say we only need regular particle masks for inhalation, not even respirators, but with or without respirators, you’ll still have this toxic dust on your clothing for you, your fellow workers and your family to breathe when you get home.
… The real problem isn’t that we don’t get enough fluoride in our diet, but limiting the amount that we do get. All teas have more than an ample supply, with green and dark teas the most. I know Southern people like sweet tea with their meals, and that alone is more fluoride than you need without using fluoridated water to make it.
California raisins, grapes and wines have more than enough fluoride in them because pesticides used for years have leached into the ground and grapes absorb it. It can’t be washed away because it’s inside.
Coca-Cola has fluoride in it, soy has a high degree of fluoride in it, even soy-based baby formulas have fluoride in them. Juice drinks are loaded with fluoride. Read the warning on your toothpaste tube and you’ll see right there that you’re getting enough. If a child under six swallows as much as he or she uses to brush their teeth, then call Poison Control ASAP. An adult can be killed by about the same amount as the weight of a credit card.
In this day and age I would think that it would be easy to see if adding fluoride to water is advantageous. Just take two equally large cities with similar environmental habitats, one that has been fluoridating for at least 25 years and one that has never fluoridated. Then look at the statistics of the people who have lived in those cities at least 25 years and the children who were born there and still residing there.
Then compare the amount of dental caries, cancers, fluoride collected in the pineal gland, dementia, Alzheimer’s, bone fractures, joint pain, male infertility and impotence, obesity, thyroid function, IQ of the children — anything that can be affected by fluoride.
… We sent 49 requests to suppliers for their NSF-60 certification on their products, so far, several months have passed and we still havn’t received even one response. We sent a request to the Health Dept. and wanted to know if Arkansas was a state that practiced NSF-60 certification. After more than a month they responded and said that yes under state law, we were to follow NSF-60 guidelines.
They couldn’t inform us of a supplier. Well, I ain’t got no high falutin’ college education, but it would seem to me that the state health dept. would have on file a list of suppliers already, ones that supply legal fluoride in Arkansas. Surely, they check fluoridated water plants to make sure that they are following state statutes. If they do not have NSF-60 documentation of the fluoride that they are using, then it is the health department’s responsibility and duty as regulator of our industry in Arkansas to force these plants to stop using fluoride until they comply with state mandates.
John Dulin