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Jeff Green has been an activist in the movement to eliminate a toxic fluoride from your water supply for the past 15 years. The practice of adding fluoride to municipal tap water across the U.S. began in 1945. With more than 60 percent of U.S. water supplies currently fluoridated, chances are you're one of the 170 million Americans who drink fluoride on a daily basis. Chances are also high that you're unaware of the sordid history that made water fluoridation a reality in the first place, because contrary to popular belief, its origins actually had nothing to do with protecting your dental health. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, you might be unaware that the fluoride added to your water is far from pharmaceutical grade… The Manhattan Project Gave Birth to More than the Atomic Bomb…"If you go back, especially if you read some of the books and the information that came from the declassified documents from the Manhattan Project, you see that the primary motivation from the very beginning was liability protection," Green says, referring to the fact that massive amounts of fluoride was manufactured and used for the bomb-making process, which created huge liability once they realized just how toxic it was. "… [M]ost people don't realize that the magical element [used] to make the bomb was uranium hexafluoride. It was actually this special aspect that allowed them to separate the uranium isotopes to make the bomb." The fluoride from this bomb-making process was initially released into the environment – as was fluoride waste products from the aluminum industry – where it ended up killing herds of cattle and wiping out entire orchards. Both the aluminum industry and the Manhattan Project realized they had a major toxic waste problem on their hands that would cost a lot of money to dispose of properly. "Part of the protection for the liability was to basically put it everywhere and tell everybody it was great," Green says. But just how do you do that? Very shrewdly… Water fluoridation could easily qualify as one of the grandest public health frauds and toxic cover-ups in U.S. history. The deceit has been so effective, you're hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't automatically say, "But everyone knows fluoride is good for you!" Why Fluoride HAD to be Declared SafeNow declassified files of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission shows that the toxicology department at the University of Rochester – which was under the direction of Harold Hodge – was asked to produce medical information about fluoride that could help defend the government against lawsuits where they were charged with fluoride pollution. It is now clear that if water fluoridation were declared harmful to human health, the U.S. nuclear bomb program, as well as many other fluoride-polluting industries such as aluminum plants and fertilizer manufacturers, would have been left open to massive litigation. The plan? Declare fluoride not only safe, but beneficial, and sell the troublesome waste to municipalities across the US… How the Idea for Water Fluoridation Came aboutThe brainchild of water fluoridation was Gerald Cox, a researcher with the Mellon Institute in Pittsburg. He received the suggestion to look at fluoride's dental effects from Francis C. Frary, then director of the aluminum laboratory for the Aluminum Company of America. Frary had reasons for the suggestion other than the possibility of protecting tooth enamel, however. He was very concerned about the fluoride pollution being generated by the aluminum plant, as lawsuits from surrounding farmers increased. Another major player in the creation of this scheme was Harold Hodge, the chief toxicologist of the Manhattan Project. As part of a group of scientists and engineers who helped develop the atomic bomb in World War II, Hodge was responsible for evaluating the toxicity of the chemicals used in the production of the bomb. One of the chemicals, as mentioned, was fluoride. Due to the massive amounts of fluoride required to produce bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for these nuclear weapons, the Manhattan Project also needed some way to avoid potentially crippling lawsuits. Last but not least, there was Robert Kehoe with the Kettering Laboratory, a private toxicology lab that ended up producing a massive bibliography of abstracts on the soundness of communal water fluoridation, and fluoride's (beneficial) role in public health. However, this research was not particularly independent or unbiased. Not only was Robert Kehoe working for the Fluorine Lawyers Committee, preparing defenses in fluoride litigation cases, the Kettering report on the health benefits of fluoride was also funded by the National Institute of Dental Research and fluoride-polluting industry-heavyweights like:
What's Really Being Added to Your Water Supply?Originally, the fluoride used to fluoridate water supplies came from the aluminum and atomic bomb industries. A couple of years later, however, they realized there was another fluoride product that was much more readily available. The reason it was so readily accessible was because it was a truly hazardous waste that was very hard to get rid of, namely hydrogen fluoride from the phosphate fertilizer industry. This fluoride gas is captured in the scrubber system and turned into hydrofluorosilicic acid – which is the primary source of fluoride used for water fluoridation. This phosphate fertilizer byproduct also typically contains arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury, plus a variety of other contaminants that are part of the phosphate ore. "And so now you have a product, or a hazardous material, that you can't put in an ocean, you can't put in a river or lake or stream, you can't bury it, and you can't even give it away," says Green. But you can sell it and put it in the commercial water supplies! "… [T]his is why we hear all of these constant claims of how great it is without any treatment," Green says. "Meaning, it doesn't have to be filtered. It doesn't have to be refined or anything. It can be taken directly all across the United States and dumped in the water – the very place they couldn't put it directly [if it was still considered hazardous waste]." Fluoride Proponents Never Actually Tested "the Real Thing"Part of the difficulty when discussing water fluoridation is that many do not realize that the fluoride you find in drugs, for example, while harmful, is not quite as bad as what's being used for water fluoridation. The fluoride added to your drinking water is not pharmaceutical grade. It's a toxic industrial waste product. Deepening the deception is the fact that none of the studies on fluoride actually used the far more toxic hydrofluorosilicic acid that is added to the water supply. Rather they use pharmaceutical grade fluoride, so the health hazards are likely FAR worse than any study has so far discerned. "So when someone uses the word fluoride, I believe we start with a deception from the very beginning," Green says. "… [T]here is almost a bragging by the promoters of fluoridation that you don't have to study it because they have studied fluoride over and over again, yet they have never looked at the actual product itself until just recently! In 1998 to 2000, I was able to get a congressional investigation on fluoride. At that particular time, the House Committee on Science allowed us to write some questions that would be sent out to various entities. Originally it was to the EPA… We asked them to send the scientific data they had on the silicofluorides. They wrote back [saying they] couldn't find any [data] for chronic effects of the use of hydrofluorosilicic acid or the silicofluorides. They didn't have any at all. Up until 2010, and now 2011, there have only been two studies that have dealt with the continued use of hydrofluorosilicic acid. … [T]hey were able to finally confirm, through these toxicological studies, the very thing they had found through large epidemiological study – that there is a higher amount of lead that shows up in blood. In the epidemiological study it was 400,000 children. It showed that there was a tremendous increase... four times as much for Latinos, seven times as much for blacks, and a[n on average] doubling of the danger level of lead in children's blood, when hydrofluorosilicic acid was present in the water." The importance of that was that it was also compared to having no fluoride added into the water and [pharmaceutical grade] sodium fluoride added into the water. So there was really a difference between the specific products being placed in there." Fluoride Increases Heavy Metal Accumulation in Your BodyThese studies also showed that hydrofluorosilicic acid increases lead accumulation in bone, teeth, and other calcium-rich tissues. According to Green, the free fluoride ion actually acts as a transport of heavy metals, allowing them to enter into areas of your body they normally would not be able to go, such as into your brain. "Industry prizes what we call fluoride compounds," Green says. "What's amazing is there is so much [information] out there that's never explained to the general public. But [fluoride] is… the most aggressive seeker of another electron. It's the most electromagnetically negatively charged element in the entire world. It basically is the most interactive of all the elements… It will give up whatever it's with to be with something else… So it's prized by industry because it actually disrupts molecular bonds… Industry also wants it because it creates tighter molecular bonds. So Scotchgard, Stain Master, Gore-Tex, ski gear… These are all fluoride-type compounds as well because they actually make it a tighter molecular bond that is more impervious to penetration. … By the time you get to the enzyme activity, and knowing what it can do to disrupt enzyme activity, the effects are so widespread, it's just amazing... Once [people] learn the nature of fluoride, they would never want to put it in their water." How to Eliminate Water Fluoridation – An Alternative StrategyGreen suggests an alternative strategy for ending water fluoridation. Rather than being "anti" fluoridation, he prefers reframing the issue from a more positive perspective. "First of all, we always have to determine what our audience is," Green says. "There are certain audiences that you could talk about science to because they are scientists… but for the general public, [you need to] start talking about the nature of fluoride, and broaden the base of their understanding so it isn't just a single-purpose agent that is being placed in the water… So as an example, fluoride is used in the ceramics business to make ceramics more porous. Well, it does exactly the same thing to your bones. Once they have learned all the other uses for fluoride, it becomes very easy to see how it does the same thing to your own calcium-rich tissues." Join the Fight to Get Fluoride Out of Drinking WaterEarlier this year I joined forces with Dr. Paul Connett to help put an END to water fluoridation in the U.S and Canada. The Fluoride Action Network has a game plan to do just that. Our fluoride initiative will primarily focus on Canada since 60 percent of Canada is already non-fluoridated. If we can get Calgary and the rest of Canada to stop fluoridating their water, we believe the U.S. will be forced to follow. I urge you to join the anti-fluoride movement in Canada and United States by contacting the representative for your area below. Contact Information for Canadian Communities:
Contact Information for American Communities: We're also going to address three US communities: New York City, Austin, and San Diego:
Source: Video Transcript November 14, 2011
Copyright © 2011 Dr. Joseph Mercola
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