CDC acknowledge that 2 in 5 US children harmed by water fluoridation

by the ANH-Intl team

On the 7th January 2011, there was a joint announcement by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The HHS proposed lowering the level of fluoride per litre of water from the current recommended range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams to 0.7 milligrams, whilst the EPA will initiate review of the maximum amount of fluoride allowed in drinking water.

The announcement proclaimed that these steps were important to ensure that US water fluoridation standards and guidelines were maintained “to provide the maximum protection to the American people to support good dental health, especially in children”. Included in the news release, was also the CDC ‘assurance’ that the fluoridation of drinking water was “one of the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century”.

The Irish have seen all this before! Levels of fluoride in water were similarly lowered by their government in 2007, in response to concerns about children. Unfortunately, however, Irish children have continued to suffer permanent harmful effects from fluoridation, and this is the likely future for too many Irish, US, Australian and British children.

Voice of Irish Concern for the Environment (VOICE) have, today, issued a press release to the effect that they are unimpressed by the inadequately lowered levels proposed by the US authorities. VOICE ‘Stop Fluoridation’ campaigner Robert Pocock described such a move as “too little and too late for tens of thousands of US and Irish kids”, and explained that the lower levels still result in 42% of people being permanently damaged by dental fluorosis. We, like VOICE, believe that the only way to protect children and babies is to stop adding fluoride to drinking water, altogether!

The new US recommendations are in response to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999-2004 and the 1968-1987 National Survey of Oral Health in U.S. School Children. This report informs us that mottling of teeth enamel (fluorosis) affected 41% of children (aged 12-15 years) between 1999 and 2004. An analysis of these figures has been done by the UK Councils against Fluoridation and this analysis has found that this figure actually rises to 73% in fluoridated areas, which is very shocking indeed, and much more relevant! Fluoridation now covers 72% of the USA.

UK evidence of over-exposure to fluoride

Speaking of surveys; a recent analysis by Dr Peter Mansfield (member of both the Advisory Board for "The York Review", and of the Medical Research Council Working Group) provides actual evidence (as opposed to other EU data, which are only estimates) of the general fluoride overload problem. Among the conclusions are that fluoride exposure in the UK, from all sources, is much higher than has been estimated, and that fluoridated drinking water results in excessive consumption of fluoride for most of the population. It calls for an urgent surveillance program in the fluoridated West Midlands, to monitor adverse health effects, and stresses that, until this has occurred and the results analysed, no further fluoridation schemes should be started! We hope that these facts help win the day for the residents of Southampton, Hampshire, UK, who are still battling to prevent fluoridation of their water supply.

Fluoride over-exposure is happening now, in Europe and no doubt elsewhere, and it is why children, in particular, suffer when they drink deliberately fluoridated water! This is why ANH-International is calling for an end to the dangerous practice of fluoridating water supplies everywhere!

For more information about fluoridation and its harmful effects, please see our Clean Drinking Water Campaign.

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