As accumulating health studies and litigation come nearer to forcing the U.S. EPA to ban, nation-wide, the deliberate addition of fluoride into public water supplies, we, as Arkansans, should inform ourselves regarding the current science on ingested fluoride as well as Arkansas’ law mandating the practice.
The CDC and ADA classify ingested fluoride as ‘safe and effective’ – a classification once shared by such substances as DDT (’39–’72), asbestos (1890–1973), leaded gas and paint (’24–‘96), and synthetic estrogen (DES) (’40–’75). Meanwhile, a growing body of research from the Harvard School of Public Health, the National Research Council and other bodies has classified ingested fluoride as a neurotoxin, linked it to wide-spread health maladies—neurological, skeletal, and endocrinological—and urged further research into its accumulative and whole-body effects, especially on the young and elderly.
As cities across the U.S.—and nearly all of Australia, Britain, and Canada—were voting down existing water fluoridation programs and joining 97 percent of Western Europe in non-fluoridation, the Arkansas legislature, in 2011, passed Act 197 mandating fluoridation of all water systems serving 5,000 people or more.
Act 197-2011 overturned previous citizen de-fluoridation votes in towns including Ft. Smith, Hot Springs, and Texarkana; consequently, over 30 municipal water districts sued the state over the Act, lost, appealed, and were overruled in their appeals. In 2017, the Arkansas Senate City, County, and Local Affairs Committee refused to allow Senate bill SB 299—a bill to restore citizen sovereignty over fluoridation—to be brought before the Arkansas general assembly for either discussion or vote.
Ingested fluoride is an issue separate from topical (dental) application of pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride. Ingested fluoride describes the addition to public water supplies of fluoride in the form of hydrofluosilic acid—a toxic by-product of the phosphorus (fertilizer) and other earth mining industries that, were it not re-packaged and sold to municipalities as a ‘product’, would require environmental clean-up and disposal fees to be paid by its producers. Absorbable through the skin, once dissolved in water fluoride is removable only through the processes of reverse-osmosis, de-ionization, or activated alumina filtration.
The MSDS for Mountain Home’s acid, Act 197-2011’s text, and a sample of recent studies on ingested fluoride may be viewed at {https://jasonmcnabb7.wixsite.com/informyourself}.
Mt. Home began fluoridating their water after a citizen vote in 1978 during the height of CDC/ADA propaganda.
We should ask ourselves:
Should any chemical be allowed in our public water supply for the sole purpose of affecting a human physiological response without consent, prior medical consultation or individual dosage control?
Should we allow past ignorance to direct our future in the face of improved understanding?
Most importantly: should citizens be denied a vote over what substances are added to their publicly funded water supplies?
I hope all will consider what effects both our water quality and our degree of local citizen control have on our health, our society, and our futures and inform yourself and others on this issue. May God bless.
Jason McNabb,
Mountain Home
*Original letter online at https://www.baxterbulletin.com/story/opinion/2018/11/27/letters-editor/2124832002/
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