A wee bit of fluoride makes teeth and dentists happy, we're told. Dr. Happy Tooth's smiley face turns into a frown when his favorite decay buster is busted as a killer. Anything in large doses kills, bristles Drill & Fill, DDS, even Dihydrogen Monoxide, they often tease. Ha, ha, get it water H2O. Stop picking on fluoride, they say, you make us look bad. Few people know that fluoride maims and kills. Dentists wouldn't want you worrying your little head off, and possibly scaring you away from twice-yearly insurance-paid-whether-you-need-it-or-not treatments. Fluoride's toxicity is downplayed-or worse, never mentioned. That way everyone stays happy including organized dentistry's biggest benefactors--toothpaste makers, and the media paid to showcase the fluoride-good-news, only.
Four stories, organized dentistry and fluoride profiters would rather you didn't see :
1) A 51-year-old committed suicide by fluoridated toothpaste, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers (1). They won't release the who, what, where, when and why to us.
2) A 52-year-old women with a two-gallon, double-strength daily instant tea habit developed bone and joint pain and other abnormalities indicative of chronic fluoride toxicity or skeletal fluorosis. After breaking the tea habit her pain and discomfort alleviated. Tea is naturally high in fluoride and few doctors are trained to diagnose fluoride's adverse effects (2).
3) Daily high-dose fluoride home therapy caused gastric distress, difficulty in swallowing, leg muscle and knee joint soreness, and general malaise in a patient, according to the Journal of the American Dental Association (3).
4) Elk drinking naturally high fluoridated water in Yellowstone Park die a decade sooner than they should (3a).
In case you missed previous fluoride deaths:
a) A two-year-old died after swallowing too many fluoride tablets.
b) A three-year-old dies from swallowing too many fluoride tablets.
c) Three-year-old dies from ingesting, instead of expectorating, dentist's fluoride treatment.
d) Three dialysis patients died from fluoride poisoning at the University of Chicago Hospital when equipment meant to filter out fluoride from the water supply malfunctioned.
e) Fluoride killed an Alaskan man and poisoned 296 others after too much fluoride accidentally flowed into the public water supply (8).
f) Fluoride killed a 65-year-old kidney dialysis patient who became ill during a blood cleaning process after water supply workers left a fluoride valve for too long to allow toxic fluoride levels to flow into the public water supply in Annapolis, Maryland.
Fluoride caused many industrial, occupational and environmental sicknesses and deaths also (10).
Fluoride cripples and maims too many people in the world who live on naturally high fluoridated water supplies such as in Nalgonda, India (11).
About 62 million people including 6 million children, have been suffering from fluorosis due to excessive consumption of fluoride through water, reports Newindpress.com
One simple method of assessing the extent of fluorosis is to estimate the prevalence of dental mottling which is the most convenient bio-marker' of exposure to fluoride, they report (12).
Symptoms of skeletal fluorosis (13):
In the early clinical stage of skeletal fluorosis, symptoms include pains in the bones and joints; sensations of burning, pricking, and tingling in the limbs; muscle weakness; chronic fatigue; and gastrointestinal disorders and reduced appetite. During this phase, changes in the pelvis and spinal column can be detected on x-rays. The bone has both a more prominent and more blurred structure.
In the second clinical stage, pains in the bones become constant and some of the ligaments begin to calcify. Osteoporosis may occur in the long bones, and early symptoms of osteosclerosis (a condition in which the bones become more dense and have abnormal crystalline structure) are present. Bony spurs may also appear on the limb bones, especially around the knee, the elbow, and on the surface of tibia and ulna.
In advanced skeletal fluorosis, called crippling skeletal fluorosis, the extremities become weak and moving the joints is difficult. The vertebrae partially fuse together, crippling the patient.
References:
(1) American Association of Poison Control Centers, 2002 Annual Report,
(2) American Journal of Medicine, January 2005, "Skeletal Fluorosis and Instant Tea, Whyte, Essmyer, Gannon, Reinus Am J Med. 2005;118:78-82
(3) Controlling the fluoride dosage in a patient with compromised salivary function.
Journal of the American Dental Association. January 2005
(3a) Fluoride takes toll on elks' teeth,Areas with hot pools, geysers are putting animal at risk, BY BECKY BOHRER, The Associated Press, February 12, 2005
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