Remember Donora?

 

This was the pivotal point in the environmentalists battle to get fluoride emissions from factory smoke stacks reduced to a more livable level.  After Donora, the government was practically FORCED to bring in clean air laws governing what could and could not be sent up a smoke stack.

 

Fluoride was one of the substances that became restricted.  There may not be an official acknowledgement that it was fluoride that killed the residents of Donora, but fluoride was still on the list of proscribed pollutants.

 

Industries first response was to sell the fluorides as pesticides.  It is effective even against rats and cockroaches.  But there is a limit to the amount of fluoride that you can sell in this way.

 

The aluminum industry was one of the biggest producers of waste fluorides because they used the substance to cause the aluminum to “flow” at a much lower temperature than it would normally, the gasses then escaped up the chimneys.  They began to capture the fluorides and re-use them.

 

The superphosphate fertilizer industry, however, had no use for them at all.

 

Superphosphate fertilizer is made from phosphate bearing rocks.  Unfortunately, there is a large percentage of fluorides also caught up in the same rock, along with a pretty cocktail of radio nuclides and heavy metals.

 

To process the rock into fertilizer, the first thing that happens is that the rock is crushed to a fairly fine powder.  It is then mixed with either phosphoric acid or sulphuric acid to liquefy it.  This converts the rock into a form of phosphate that plants can use. This acidic slurry is then neutralized using ammonia.

 

During this process, hydrogen fluoride (HF) and silicafluoride (SiF4) escape up the chimney in gaseous form.  Previously, these were just left to dissipate in the atmosphere (and all over the surrounding land and water).  Environmental legislation, however, now dictates that as much of this fluoride as possible is captured and disposed of in a safe manner.

 

Pollution scrubbers in the chimneys remove a lot of the fluoride from the emissions, along with a number of heavy metals including lead and arsenic, and also a range of radio active products that occur during the decay process that slowly converts uranium down through a number of radioactive incarnations until it reaches lead, as well as arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, manganese, mercury, and nickel. (HAP metals); and methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK)..

 

The liquid that is collected from these scrubbers is highly acidic. 

 

There are several names for it, including Fluorosilicic Acid, Hydrofluosilicic Acid, Fluosilicic Acid and
Hexafluosilicic Acid.  I don’t know exactly how much it costs to store this in safe containers and dispose of it safely, all I know is that it is enough to frighten industry into looking for a more profitable way to get it off there hands.

 

Guess what?

 

They sell it to the water companies to put into our drinking

water!!!!!!!!!

 

What threatened to nearly bankrupt them (or at least seriously dent their profits) is now a profitable and legitimate product.

 

The ICI (Imperial Chemical Industry) have this to say about the stuff:-

“Symptoms of Exposure:

Acute: Liquid or vapors can cause severe irritation and burns which may not be apparent for hours. Can cause severe irritation to the lungs, nose and throat if swallowed, can cause severe damage to throat and stomach.

 

Chronic: Prolonged exposure could result in bone changes, corrosive effect on mucous membranes including ulceration of nose, throat and bronchial tubes, cough, shock, pulmonary edema, Fluorosis, coma and death.

 

Aggravated Medical Condition: Any skin condition and/or pre-existing respiratory disease including asthma and emphysema.”

 

They also suggest that if workers are handling any concentration higher than 20 parts per million, they should be wearing an airtight all over environmental protection suit and using a respirator capable of filtering out the gasses.  THE EPA HAS SET A SAFE LIMIT OF 4PPM IN DRINKING WATER.  WHERE IS THE SAFETY MARGIN IN THERE?

 

Dental and Health Care professionals will tell you that what they’re doing is merely topping up the natural levels of fluoride in your water to 1ppm – the so called “optimal level”.

 

This is not the case.  Where fluoride occurs naturally in water (and not water contaminated by airborne fluorides) it is calcium fluoride, which is not readily available to the body and most of it will pass through the gut unchanged.  The additive IS NOT the same thing, so they are not “topping up” anything, they are adding something that was not there before.

 

AS FAR AS I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FIND OUT, THIS STUFF HAS NEVER – EVER – BEEN TESTED IN A LABORATORY TO FIND OUT WHAT EFFECT IT HAS ON LIVING SYSTEMS SUCH AS OURS.

 

So this does, somewhat, beg the question of how it ever came to be authorized as a water additive.

 

We are now entering the world of the looking glass.  Hold on to your hats, it could be a bumpy ride.

 

 

 

 

Fluorides of different types have found an enormous range of uses in industry and daily life.  Fluorocarbons make extremely durable lubricating agents for use in machinery that is exposed to other fluorides.  Ordinary hydrocarbons like oil tend to react with the fluorine and become totally useless in that environment, so a number of industries use fluorocarbons instead of oil.  What happens to old fluorocarbons, no longer able to function?  Do they breakdown and go away?  If so, what do they become – is it more or less toxic than the original?  If not, what damage do they do in and of themselves?  I don’t know.

 

Fluoride is an integral part of a large number of things that are used in the household too – how many Teflon lined pans do you have?  Bake ware?  Does your fridge still run on CFC’s?  These are Chloro-Fluoro Carbons.  What do your aerosol cans use as a propellant?  The problem with these is that the fluoride is so reactive that as these gasses rise up into the ozone layer, they react with the ozone, creating other chemicals and rendering our planets natural sunscreen less and less efficient.

 

Fluorides (particularly sodium fluoride) are still used as pesticides for killing not only rats and cockroaches, but it is also sprayed onto crops to protect them from attack by insects.  In most countries it has been banned, but the latest information I was able to gain still has America down as using these pesticides.  Always wash fruit before eating it – especially grapes.  Pray that the manufacturers of sultanas wash the grapes before they dry them.

 

Hydrofluoric acid (same as the gas that escapes from factory chimneys) is used to etch glass as well as liquefy rock and metal for several industrial processes.  This pleasant substance has the handy little talent of anaesthetizing the nerves so that you don’t actually feel any pain while it is destroying the flesh.  This is why the victims at Donora felt no pain – just noticed when so much of the lung tissue had been eaten away that they could no longer breath easily. 

 

Fluorine has profound effects on the central nervous system, a fact that caused the American government a lot of concern during the war (more of that later) and was eagerly seized on by Nazi Germany as a way of keeping prisoners of war quiet in the prison camps.  A number of prescription drugs today take advantage of this.  It is also used in a number of anti-biotics such as fluccoxacilin (any drug with the three letters “flu” in its generic name will probably have one fluoride or another in it.

 

Probably the most spectacular example of fluoride having an effect on the central nervous system is a drug called Rohypnol which has been nick-named “the date rape drug because of the way it causes inhibitions to disappear (making it easy to seduce you) and then makes the memory of the events disappear (making it very difficult for you to cry “rape” even though you have been).  Rohypnol’s chemical name is Flunitrazepam.  It’s basically diazepam with added fluoride (and added muscle).

 

See here for more details. 
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/rohypnol/rohypnol.htm      http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/roof.html

It has also been used as a treatment for hyperthyroidism (over-active thyroid).

 

All in all, if you add up all the sources of fluoride in your environment, you would probably find that you were getting far more than the recommended daily intake.  Look at this:-

Artificially fluoridated water contains one part per million of fluoride.  This means that if you drink your recommended minimal of 2 liters of water a day, you are also getting 2 milligrams of fluoride.  Doesn’t matter whether you are a 14lb child or a 140lb adult, you get the same dose.

 

Add to this the fluoride in your toothpaste, mouthwash, the food that you eat that was processed using fluoridated water, the soda and soft drinks or alcohol that you drink that was processed using fluoridated water, The juice that you drink that was made from fruit dusted with fluoride pesticides, Some manufacturers of baby formula add fluoride to the powdered milk substitute.  Some plants absorb more fluoride from the soil than others – tea is one of the worst for this, and tea leaves can contain up to 12ppm of fluoride.  ONE CUP OF TEA PER DAY could be taking you out of the “safety zone” and into real danger of feeling the effects of fluoride.  Long term effects, slow to emerge, that you may not feel for thirty years.

 

Another source of fluoride is cigarettes.  Pre-made, ready to smoke cigarettes have a bewildering number of chemicals added to them for a variety of reasons, and fluoride is one of them.  The fastest way to get a chemical into your bloodstream is to inhale it.  That is why most nicotine addicts prefer to smoke it rather than chew gum, that way it has an almost instant “hit”.  Smoking delivers the fluoride straight into the bloodstream, where it can go anywhere in the body.

As far as I am aware, no-one has yet undertaken a study to find out how much fluoride American citizens are getting from all the various different sources.  It would be an extremely difficult study to do.  It would also, probably, be the beginning of the unraveling of the tissue of lies that supports the practice of fluoridating water in the first place, along with a nasty, sticky end to the reputations and careers of a lot of people that currently support it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are certain groups of people for whom the drinking of fluoridated water forms a very real risk.

 

There is an extremely narrow margin between the amount of fluoride that is in drinking water and the amount at which noticeable effects will begin to emerge over a period of time.

 

Normal, healthy people with a normal intake of 2-3 liters of water per day, good nutrition and otherwise good health may probably make it through forty years or so without feeling the symptoms start to bite.

Some groups of people, though, are at far more risk from Fluorosis merely through drinking fluoridated water.

 

The kidney is the organ of the body that bears the brunt of clearing the bloodstream of fluorides.  This means that if your kidneys are not functioning at full efficiency, then more fluoride is being left in the bloodstream and the effects add up faster.  Patients that need dialysis are at particular risk.  There have been cases of dialysis patients dying because of the fluoride in the water used during the process.

 

Diabetics, also, very often drink more water than most people.  This means that they are getting a higher dose of fluoride than most of the rest of us.  Also at risk for this reason are athletes and people with heavy physical jobs such as construction workers, who will need to drink more to replenish moisture lost in perspiration.

 

Children are also at considerable risk too.  During the early years while the tooth buds are forming, they are most at risk from a condition called “dental Fluorosis” which we will look at in detail later, but during the so called “growth spurt” during the teenage years, when the body gains so much of it’s height so rapidly, and the bones are VERY actively growing, they are also a lot more vulnerable to getting a cancer of the bone called osteosarcoma which has been tied very closely to fluoride consumption in lab rats.

 

Any soft drink or beer that is made in an area with fluoridated water will also contain fluoride at the “Optimum” level of 1ppm so people that regularly consume two or three liters of either in a day should also avoid fluoride as much as possible (yes, there are people out there that can easily consume 3 x 2litre bottles of soda in a day, and fluoride will not be listed on the label as an ingredient because it was not added at the factory.  Indeed, the manufacturers may not even be aware that there is fluoride in their water.

 

 

 

If you were to say to a chemist “Go away and design me a poison.  One that will build up slowly in the body over a number of years and never be looked for when it kills” he would probably come back to you with fluoride.

 

One of the reasons why pro-fluoridationists can keep on saying that it is perfectly safe is that there is not one single “signature” symptom associated with its effects.  It doesn’t make you foam at the mouth, smell of bitter almonds or turn blue and swell up.  It does not attack any one single organ or bodily system directly, so you can’t point to a characteristic symptom at all.  Everything it does looks like something else until the poisoning becomes so advanced that it is difficult to deny it any more.

 

So, how does it manage to camouflage itself as so many different things?

 

The secret is in what part of the body it attacks.

 

Apoptosis is a natural process.  The cells in any multi-celled organism need to be in constant contact with each other, reminding cells around them that they are a viable and valuable part of a whole.  Once a cell is cut off from this communication it generally gives up and dies relatively quickly.

 

In most creatures, enzymes are the communications industry responsible for this.  They are constantly carrying messages through the body.  Messages like “Who loves you baby” and “O.K. then, lets divide and make two shall we?”

 

Enzymes are essential for the healthy functioning of ALL cells on a day to day basis.  They carry the encoded information that dictates the cells lifetime and function.

 

Fluoride attacks the enzymes in the body, disrupting – but not stopping- the messaging system.   Information to the individual organs is suppressed or scrambled and the organ begins to mal-function in small ways that, over a period of time, become more and more serious.

 

This means that a lifetimes drinking of water artificially (or naturally) fluoridated at 1ppm or higher will slowly undermine your body’s ability to support its own activity EVERYWHERE AT ONCE.  It affects every organ and process in the body to some extent, some more than others.  Since everyone is different, it seems to affect each person differently, according to how old they were when they became exposed and how long they have been exposed as well as what the exposure was and which of their organs are most vulnerable.

 

And when I say it affects everything, I mean EVERYTHING.

Here’s just a short list, it does not include it all, and it only covers exposure to fluorides found in drinking water (either natural or “man made”):-

 

Thyroid
Parathyroid
Brain
Heart
Bones and joints
Tendons and ligaments
Teeth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the rumors that pro-fluoridationists are so quick to ridicule, is the story that fluoride can make you fat.  There are no calories in fluoride, they say, so how can it?  What a ridiculous proposition!!!!

 

Well folks, they are NOT rumors.

 

The thyroid gland produces a hormone called thyroxin which regulates the speed at which your metabolism runs.  Not enough thyroxin and your metabolism slows down, becoming sluggish.  You feel that you don’t have the energy you need to get through the day.  It can lead to depression and what has colorfully become known as “couch potato syndrome”.  It also tends to lead to weight gain.  This is HYPOTHYROIDISM, or under-active thyroid.

 

Too much thyroxin and your metabolism speeds up.  You have tremendous energy, yes, but it puts a strain on your heart and other organs and it becomes difficult to maintain a healthy body weight, because no matter what you eat, you burn it off.  This is HYPERTHYROIDISM, or over-active thyroid.

 

By interfering with the enzymes that carry the chemical signals that keep the thyroid operating at its optimum levels, fluoride inhibits the production of thyroxin.  It does it so effectively that, before more modern approaches took over from it, it was used as a treatment for hyperthyroidism.  The patient just merely sat in a bathful of fluoridated water and soaked it in through the skin.  Yes, that’s right folks, you don’t even need to drink it, it just comes right on in through the skin whenever you bathe or shower.  There is also a rumor that it can be absorbed from clothing washed in fluoridated water too – but as far as I know, that is all it is.

 

If fluoride can cause a hyperactive thyroid to run at a slower speed, what do you suppose happens to a normal thyroid when dosed with the stuff?

 

I’ll give you a clue.

 

After tranquilizers and antidepressants, artificial thyroid hormones are right up there in the list of the top ten drugs prescribed in America.  So next time you see a program with some poor overweight person sitting in front of the TV with a vacant expression on their face – its as likely to be fluoride as laziness.

 

 

Fluoride and the parathyroid.

Most of us have probably never heard of the parathyroid glands.  I know that I hadn’t until I started research on this project.

The parathyroid glands are tiny, tiny little glands that hide behind the thyroid gland in the throat.  Four of them, low on each side.

 The parathyroid glands are seen here as the tiny golden glands.  The larger one is the hyperactive one.  The other three may have shut down altogether in an attempt to offset the excess hormones secreted by the other one.  Where fluoride is involved, it is likely that all four will be marginally hyper active.

They have two functions in life.  One of them is to monitor the levels of calcium in the blood stream.  The other is to regulate those levels.

These glands have an excellent blood supply, being some of the most vascular organs in the body.  They constantly monitor the levels of calcium in the blood stream because it is imperative that the levels stay constantly between strictly defined limits.

Calcium is essential for a number of functions in the human body.  It is necessary for the development of the brain, nervous system and intelligence during gestation, and for maintaining these after birth.  It is needed to maintain healthy functioning of the heart, pancreas and stomach.

Too little will have adverse effects on intelligence and the nervous system – too much will damage the stomach, pancreas, kidneys and heart.

By inhibiting the enzymes governing the working of the parathyroid glands, fluoride causes these glands to go into overdrive, to become over-active.

Hyperparathyroidism is a serious disorder.  It causes the glands to produce more of the hormone that the body uses to increase the amount of calcium in the blood stream.

This hormone has three effects on the body. It stimulates the intestines to absorb more calcium from the food.  It reduces the amount of calcium excreted from the body, and, most worrying of all, it encourages the bones to give up calcium stored in them.

The connotations of this are obvious and slightly worrying.  As the human animal gets older, it will lose bone density anyway.  This happens in the natural course of things.  To be having the calcium leached out of the bones like this, however, is going to result in several problems which I will go into in the next section.

This high level of calcium in the blood will have other effects, too.

Two much calcium is dangerous to cells in the lining of the stomach and the pancreas, causing them to become inflamed.  In the case of the stomach lining, the ultimate result is ulcers.  Pancreatitis is the result in the pancreas.  Both of these are painful and serious conditions.  Trouble is, there are so many other causes for both of them, that who is going to be looking to fluoride as a possible culprit?

The kidney is the organ responsible for the excretion of calcium.  As calcium levels rise in the blood and the body is inhibited from excreting it, the levels of calcium in the kidney start to rise.  This is how kidney stones happen.  When calcium builds up in the tiny tubes within the kidney and starts to form solid masses.  In extreme cases, this can lead to the kidney becoming so choked up with calcium that it collapses altogether, becoming almost calcified and bonelike itself.

Thank heaven that this is VERY rare.

Fluoride alone is unlikely to carry the body to such an impasse, but even small amounts of imbalance in the calcium levels, over a lifetime of drinking fluoridated water, can still add up to a long lasting, low grade misery that is not necessary.

Other symptoms include insomnia, irritability and patchy memory.