BRANTFORD – With a new $200,000 fluoridation system being considered in Brantford, maybe it’s time to rethink the whole fluoridation thing in the first place.
The practice of adding fluoride to city water supplies is on the decline and has been eliminated in dozens of countries around the world and municipalities in Ontario.
These countries and cities have found that existing sources are enough to prevent tooth decay by themselves, making the addition of fluoride to the water supply both redundant and expensive, but not totally devoid of risk. Today’s toothpaste, mouth wash, milk, and fluoride treatments at the dentist, for instance offer the same protection. There are trace fluorides found naturally in most water supplies.
But it is possible to get too much fluoride in your system, which can cause teeth to develop brown ridges. It can also attack the bones in high concentrations.
The City of Brantford was the first municipality in Canada to begin the practice back in 1945. It was an experiment that the people of Brantford knew nothing about for at least three months after they had been drinking it. At that time, extensive follow up research was to have been done to check the long term affects, if any, on the users. Apparently, this was never done, or if it was, never made public.
Dr. W.L. Hutton, known as the father of fluoridation, was the head medical officer of health of Brantford in 1945 and was behind the fluoridation experiment.
Hutton was the president of the Eugenics Society of Canada before taking the job with the City of Brantford. Many other noted city personalities, like Alexander Graham Bell, also belonged to, and held prominent positions of influence within the Eugenics Movement and were openly excited when Hitler’s Germany joined the movement just prior to the Second World War.
Eugenics is a pseudo-science advocating the improvement of human heredity traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of those deemed to possess more desired traits, and reduced reproduction of less desired people and traits.
During the War, Nazi scientists used fluoride and other chemicals to experiment on imprisoned Jews as a possible means of controlling mass populations. They found the addition of large amounts of fluoride in their water supplies caused prisoners to become more docile and easier to manipulate.
USAF Major George R. Jordan testified before Un-American Activity committees of Congress in the 1950s that in his post as U.S. Soviet liaison officer, the Soviets openly admitted to: “using the fluoride in the water supplies in their gulags (concentration camps), to make the prisoners stupid, docile, and subservient”.
Fluoride is the slurry that is left after the manufacturing of phosphorous fertilizer. It was discovered as a potential tooth decay retardant in the late 1930s, but Nazi German scientists wondered what it would do to people if applied in large doses.
A recent study of fluorinated versus non-fluorinated countries shows “tooth decay rates are unequivocally in decline equally well in fluoridated countries as in non-fluoridated countries.”
The practice has been stopped in several countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and Portugal, and others are considering the move. Many cities within the U.S. and elsewhere have also banned the practice.
John Colquhoun was a high level municipal councillor in Auckland, New Zealand, trained in dentistry and served as that city’s Principal Dental Officer and was once a proponent of the use of fluoride. He is now an outspoken critic. He has done a worldwide research project visiting several countries and collecting data. He found that tooth decay is in fact on the decline, but no more in fluoridated countries as non-fluoridated ones.
“The current Maximum Acceptable Concentration (MAC) of 1.5 milligram per litre of fluoride in drinking water is unlikely to cause adverse health effects, including cancer, bone fracture, immunotoxicity, reproductive/developmental toxicity, genotoxicity, and/or neurotoxicity,” according to the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Committee on Drinking Water.
Most bottled water does not contain added fluoride; however, trace levels are in all water. Municipality of Lakeshore former Mayor Tom Bain was faced with the same dilemma Brantford is in with aged fluoridation equipment in need of replacement.
“Spending $340,000 on upgrades to the water filtration plant that must be completed before fluoridation can resume in Cornwall.”
Council rejected its use as the Cornwall Seaway News reported in 2016.
Six Nations new state of the art water treatment plant will continue to reject fluoride to the water supply, according to the Elected Band Council.
If it makes no significant difference to one’s dental health, but may produce unwanted side effects like fluorosis and learning disabilities, and will cost Brantford $200,000 and more, one must ask, why add it to municipal or community water supplies in the first place?
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