Fairbanks city law requires Golden Heart Utilities to add fluoride to water supplies, a practice that’s drawn periodic public debate and prompted the City Council to form a fluoride-focused task force.
Oran Paul, chief operating officer at the utility, said managers had been notified of the expected federal change before the Jan. 7 announcement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“In response to that, we have lowered our fluoride levels to be right at the bottom of that range,” he said, referring to the level of 0.7 parts per million. The level had been at about 1 part per million.
The state of Alaska’s role in watching the use of fluoride, used to prevent tooth decay, is advisory and limited in focus to education, said Brad Whistler, a state dental officer. It generally falls to communities to decide how much fluoride should be in drinking water, he said.
Whistler said the state will nonetheless contact water programs to inform them of the proposed change, a change he told the Daily News-Miner he expects to clear federal review. He said his office is meeting with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the state’s Drinking Water Program today to review the federal plan and to prepare a letter for water programs.
The federal health agency’s proposal follows reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that enamel fluorosis — splotchy teeth — has become unexpectedly common in children and appears to have grown much more common in the past quarter century.
The report also suggests, however, that those fluorosis cases are typically cosmetic dental issues.
Whistler said water managers in Alaska typically aim for between 1 and 1.2 parts fluoride per million parts water, the rough equivalent of 1 to 1.2 milligrams per liter. That falls within the half century-old federal recommendation that levels stay between 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter. The new federal recommendation would lower the upper limit to 0.7.
Whistler said his office doesn’t plan to comment on the proposed change because it’s strongly supported by scientific conclusions. He said the new target should minimize the risk of enamel fluorosis without compromising broader efforts to prevent tooth decay.
“For that reason we believe the proposed recommendation will move forward for adoption,” he said by e-mail. He speculated that the change could mean relatively more work for larger, urban water systems, which typically use technical systems to set fluoride levels.
Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.
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to name a few.....
Floride Free Fairbanks - You are making a difference. Thank you.
The dose/concentration issue is a major no-no according to physicians who've looked at the delivery system. Essentially, the city delivers a drug to everyone, without a determination of need, based on a standard that was developed through a questionable process 65 years ago for a 175-pound adult male.
Imagine a physician telling everyone, sight unseen: "take this drug; use as much as you want; use it all your life; and there's no need to monitor the effects."
The federal government announcement calling for a new concentration standard is a limited hangout. The EPA/CDC failed to discuss a range of effects implicated in fluoride exposure. These include IQ reduction, thyroid dysfunction, arthritis, osteosarcoma and other cancers, and hip fracture in the elderly. Why didn't federal health officials come clean with the nation? Because they want to save the fluoridation program and its links to major industries. Because money and face are more important than your health.
However, with so many children showing signs of stained and pitted teeth (fluorosis), the CDC was forced to act. The damage is apparent in kids' teeth from coast to coast. The average percentage of fluorosis in children is over 40 percent. However, in some inner cities like Atlanta, the rate is 80 percent. And try to tell a mother that her child's stained teeth are nothing to worry about, "it's just cosmetic."
http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/fluoride opinion pulled root/4107690/story.html
The CDC finally lowered the concentration in order to head off the growing criticism. The agency is thoroughly politicized and shacked up with the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and has repeatedly favored those interests over the health of Americans. The comments from argodduhn sum up the origins of the fluoridation scam. Follow the links argodduhn provides to learn what real scientists conclude when they study the biological effects of fluoride/fluorine.
On filters: any filter less than a reverse osmosis system will not remove fluoride. The molecule is so small that reverse osmosis is required. However, even RO is not 100 percent effective.
The city's Fluoride Task Force (FTF) is nearing its one year mark and is in the final stages of producing a draft report. It will be open to public review and comment before being submitted to the city council. The FTF represents some of the best minds in Fairbanks. Trained in science, education and medicine, they discovered large gaps in their knowledge base, when it comes to fluoride. As the fluoridation saga unfolded, each one expressed levels of surprise at what they didn't know. During a discussion, an FTF member exclaimed, "If Fairbanks didn't have fluoride in the water, and someone today presented a proposal to add it, they'd be laughed out of the room!"
On contacting the FTF: Speak to Debi Osterby in city clerks office, 459-6715. All FTF meetings are recorded and you may request CDs of the proceedings. ddosterby@ci.fairbanks.ak.us
To share your support for ending fluoridation in Fairbanks, send the mayor a note: jcleworth@ci.fairbanks.ak.us
The next FTF meeting is Feb. 1, 7pm, city council chambers.
Douglas Yates
fluoridefreefairbanks.org
http://www.dhmo.org/
I wonder if some of the posters worry about the agro businesses addition of gross amounts of real toxic chemicals into our food.
Grapes and strawberries can't be cleansed by washing; the fungicide is in the flesh. So snowball pop one of those into your mouth.
So what happens to raisins, prunes, cereals with raisins, grape jelly??????
Then just open your mouth and breath as you drive on the highway. There are so many different carcinogens in exhaust; heavy metals to boot.
If you don't want poison you are up the creek.
Baaaaaaaahhh.
I think its time to light this issue up again and hopefully get this poison removed.
Enough said - there are a lot of websites out there, but this one takes you straight to the health effects:
http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/
http://www.fluoridefreefairbanks.org is also an amazing, if slightly overwhelming)
I don't know about the local dentists, but as far as how could so many people be wrong:
Industrial manipulation of governmental policy is a powerful - water fluoridation is a classic example.
Waste was converted into a commodity, based on substantial but not conclusive evidence of the topical benefit of fluoride and a desire for a cheap easy fix to the refined sugar revolution that was destroying teeth across the nation, and fluoridation became standard. Unfortunately, research to demonstrate the problems took decades partly because toxic exposure is most dangerous during development - in the womb and throughout puberty - but related disease may not be apparent until adulthood. With the cocktail of toxic exposure we all experience, beginning at conception, cause and effect relations are virtually impossible to establish in humans, so the arguments rage on (which doesn't mean science cannot tell us a lot - it does, we just have to be willing to recognize implications instead of insisting on proof).
Does anyone know when the task force is due to make a recommendation to the city?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride
http://www.fluoridealert.org/50-reasons.htm
I think it's about time for this practice to be ended especially since there are newer, better ways to get flouride to your teeth that don't require ingestion.
Thanks to those who stood by their guns and forced the "experts" to answer their reasonable and intelligent questions. This is a triumph of democracy over technocracy.
And I hardly think we need to cry over the larger water plants having more work to do with regulating the mix, because if they stopped adding any of it and stopped drugging us altogether, they would save money.
This article also states something as a fact (that is not a fact) via Whistler comment, which is nothing more than a way to sway the mind and Eshleman should not have written it this way. Hopefully, intelligent people can weed thru the personal leanings of the writer,but I cry for those that can be so easily duped. Drugs should never be added to community supplies of anything.
I just spent $300 on fluoride-reduction filter elements for our two Berkey drip filters just so we can take this poison out. And in 6 months I will have to sink another $300 to get these replaced.
ALL of our children have perfect teeth, and we do NOT use fluoride toothpaste. And no, it's not about heredity in our case. My teeth are lousy because I didn't take care of them as a child, even though our water supply was poisoned -- I mean, fluoridated. It’s all about brushing and flossing after meals, and limiting sugary junk food. Too bad the Federal Govt doesn’t change its tactic and require fluoridation of all sugar and HFCS sold in the US -- might as well add the poison to the poison, instead of adding the poison to our water.
I pray that some day our local officials will go the NEXT step and just take ALL fluoride from our public water supplies. It’s poisoning us!
"we have lowered our fluoride levels to be right at the bottom of that range,” he said, referring to the level of 0.7 parts per million"
"The new federal recommendation would lower the upper limit to 0.7"
Even most proponents of fluoridation admit that -if- there's a benefit to fluoridation, it's as a topical application to the teeth, to be expelled orally before ingestion occurs.
Why, then, would -anyone- insist others -ingest- this stuff, when even those who support its use admit that it's most effective in a topical application, directly to the teeth, and those who oppose it point to the previously-mentioned (current) research that indicates it shouldn't be used at all, and lacks any real effectiveness in preventing tooth decay??
I guess it's one of those great mysteries.....