Stop Fluoridation

Evidence shows it is neither effective nor safe

"Fluoridation is an obsolete practice. It goes against all principles of modern pharmacology" - Dr Arvid Carlsson (Nobel Laureate in medicine).

"Fluoride is causing a greater overall loss of IQ points today than lead, arsenic or mercury" - Dr Philippe Grandjean (Harvard University).

The threat Lack of benefit Harm Haphazard and unethical Countries for and against Deception FAQ Other websites Books How to help

The threat

Parliament has passed the Government's Health and Care Act which received the Royal Assent on 28 April 2022. Along with much else, it includes two clauses to facilitate water fluoridation schemes by taking responsibility for them away from local councils and giving it to central government.

The legislation is expected to result in fluoridation throughout the UK. It received support in September 2021 from the four Chief Medical Officers for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Members of Parliament are mostly unaware of the harm that fluoridation causes. They and the public need to be alerted to the following facts.

Lack of benefit

Addition of fluoride to water supplies started experimentally in America in 1945. However, well before the trials had been completed, the US Public Health Service and the American Dental and Medical Associations endorsed the chemical's use.

The reason for their undue haste was discovered only decades later. In due course the government and Dental and Medical Associations in Britain followed the American lead.

The ADA had opposed fluoridation but became keen after receiving a large donation from an industrialist with a stake in fluoride's commercial use (Bryson, pp42-44).

Independent studies, by Philip Sutton, and by Rudolf Ziegelbecker, found the trials had been full of errors, but by then the authorities had firmly attached their reputations to the claim that fluoridation was effective and safe, and there was a huge campaign to promote fluoridation.

Praising Ziegelbecker's research, Prof Erich Naumann, Director of the German Federal Health Office, added: "It is regrettable that the existing data on water fluoridation had not been examined earlier using mathematical-statistical methods. Otherwise the myth of drinking water fluoridation would have already dissolved into air long ago."

However, in 1951 Dr Frank Bull told a confidential gathering of State Dental Directors in the USA: "We have told the public it works, so we can’t go back on that".

Many trials of fluoridation have declared that it works, but their purpose has almost always been to proclaim good results rather than to investigate them rigorously. It was officially stated that pilot studies in the UK should include "full medical and dental examinations at all ages", but no medical examinations were done, and neither short-term nor long-term possible side-effects were explored.

When trials started in Britain, Dr Geoffrey Dobbs wrote in New Scientist (31 October 1957) that they "are now officially described as demonstrations of the benefits of fluoridation, not experiments, so the results are a foregone conclusion" and their purpose quite openly "promotional".

When Dr John Colquhoun compared data for tooth decay in children throughout New Zealand, aged 5 and 12, he found that those in unfluoridated areas had teeth as good as those in fluoridated areas. Twenty years later, in 1998, Dr Betty de Liefde did a similar study (Connett, p60) on permanent teeth and also found practically no difference.

A report by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York concluded in 2000 that, despite many studies over 50 years, "We were unable to discover any reliable good-quality evidence in the fluoridation literature world-wide".

A Cochrane review in 2015 said that, "There is very little contemporary evidence, meeting the review's inclusion criteria, that has evaluated the effectiveness of water fluoridation for the prevention of caries". Moreover, while reduced decay in children’s teeth was reported, there were "concerns about the methods used, or the reporting of the results, in the vast majority (97%) of the studies".

When Israel ended fluoridation in 2014-15 (partly because of health concerns), its Ministry of Health pointed out that there was no significant difference in the level of tooth decay between countries that fluoridate and those that do not fluoridate.

More on why fluoridation is unethical

Countries for and against

The authorities in some countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, USA, and UK (currently for about 10% of the population), accept fluoridation. Other countriess reject it, including Belgium, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. Several rejected it after trying it.

In the UK, the first four areas to accept fluoridation were Andover, part of Anglesey, Kilmarnock and Watford. All, for various reasons, sooner or later stopped it.

The Irish Republic has compulsory fluoridation throughout, despite much local opposition. In 2014, Cork County Council and Laois County Council passed motions for the cessation of water fluoridation, followed by Cork City Council, Dublin City Council and Kerry County Council. However, owing to centralised control local wishes were ignored.

Deception

Astonishing as it might seem, promotion of water fluoridation was linked to the project to create the first atomic bombs. It took more than half a century before secret US government documents were declassified and the connection was discovered.

During his research, Christopher Bryson, an award-winning investigative reporter, discovered that the long-hidden motive was not to prevent dental decay but to protect industrial interests including those of works that supplied fluoride to make the bombs.

The purpose of fluoridation was to transform fluoride, seen as a dangerous pollutant that was damaging to health, into something to be regarded as not only harmless but even beneficial. The plan involved suppression of evidence of fluoride's toxicity, coupled with deceitful publicity.

The transformation of fluoride's public image was achieved with the help of Edward Bernays ("the father of public relations"), an expert in the use of psychological techniques to achieve what he called "manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses". He had devised a way to get American women to take up smoking. Noted for that success, he was asked to help with fluoridation, using what he called "the engineering of consent". (Bryson, 2006, pp158-164.)

The leading initial promoter of fluoridation was Dr Harold Hodge who had the idea of calming the public's fears about fluoride pollution by talking about its usefulness for teeth. In January 1944, a secret conference took place in New York, and documents from it connect the atomic-bomb project, for which Hodge had worked, to water fluoridation. (Bryson, pp72, 77, 80.)

Hodge insisted that fluoridation was harmless, and he claimed that it would take a massive dose of fluoride to produce injury. Some 25 years later, he quietly admitted in an obscure paper in 1979 that he had been wrong. By then fluoridation was firmly established, and his confession was too late. (Bryson, p157.)

A study on workers at the Harshaw Chemical Company in Cleveland was important in promoting the idea that fluoride reduces tooth decay. It said workers exposed to fluoride had fewer cavities than those unexposed to it. However, the secret version of the report stated that most of the men had few or no teeth, and that corrosion affected such teeth as they had. The deceitful public version helped, as its producers wanted, to shift the medical debate over exposure to industrial fluoride. (Bryson, pp88-90.)

A Committee to Protect Our Children’s Teeth was formed. It had strong links to the military-industrial complex and to the efforts of relevant manufacturers to escape liability for fluoride pollution. In 1956 it published Our Children's Teeth, a booklet that was promptly used in court by lawyers for the aluminium company Reynolds to indicate the harmlessness of even low concentrations of fluoride.

The transformed perception long served those who were accused of harm caused by fluoride. In 2000, when Reynolds Metals was taken to court by employees, fluoridation was used as a defence, by pouring scorn on the idea that workers could possibly have been harmed by something that is beneficial for children. (Bryson, p208.)

The review of Bryson's book in Chemical & Engineering News stated: "We are left with compelling evidence that powerful interests with high financial stakes have colluded to prematurely close honest discussion and investogation into fluoride toxicity".

Publisher's Weekly said: "Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride's harmfulness. ... The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate".

However, debate is not what fluoridation's promoters want. Bernays advised them to avoid it, and give the impression that fluoridation is uncontroversial. This is what they still do.