Fluoride: Disposing of Mining Waste Through Your Body

BRADENTON -- August 13 ended Fluoride Awareness Week and promotion of the documentary with numerous health experts and scientists describing examples of many maladies caused by intake of the phosphate mining/fertilizer industry's hazardous waste. The documentary is available for free viewing on line here.

The maladies from this forced pollution of your body include (but aren’t limited to) lowered IQ, impaired mental development (brain retardation) and dementia; damage to your kidneys, pineal and thyroid glands resulting in hyperactivity and/or lethargy, chronic fatigue and disrupted immune system; arthritic symptoms and digestive tract (gastrointestinal) problems. See the Fluoride Action Network for more information about professional perspectives on fluoridation and the countless catastrophic health impacts from dumping hazardous waste in our municipal water.

I’m sorry to break the news that those aren’t the only costs you’ll be incurring as one of the enslaved filtration and disposal dump sites for the phosphate mining/fertilizer industry. Unfortunately the free preview of the fluoride awareness video didn’t begin by explaining that approximately 50 years ago, the phosphate mining industry discovered an alternative to paying billions of dollars to dispose of the highly toxic hydrofluosilicic acid industrial waste product (also known as fluorosilicic acid) from producing phosphate rock fertilizer. That alternative was to SELL the hazardous waste to municipalities throughout the U.S. to be dumped into our municipal water supplies, generating billions of dollars of income for the industry on the backs of those citizens' health. An earlier source was waste from nuclear weapons.

This would be like your municipality paying you to pick up your garbage then dumping it in the local stream!

The Manatee County Utility Department confirmed that its residents are paying more than $86,000 annually (in addition to what incorporated parts of the county pay) for hazardous waste from the phosphate mining/fertilizer industry to be dumped into the municipal water supply. And this dumping has continued for many years. Such financial government waste sounds like a juicy morsel for the Tea Party!

How were municipalities throughout the U.S. convinced to pay the industry billions of dollars to dump its hazardous neurotoxin, described by Dartmouth College research scientist Dr. Roger Masters as "potentially the worst environmental poison since leaded gasoline, into our public water supplies and bottled water?" You’ll have to wait for my FLUORIDEGATE sequel for that mystery and intrigue.

Meanwhile, the short answer involves claims that forced “mass-medication” with this hazardous industrial waste product would prevent tooth decay. Despite these claims, none of the municipalities, agencies or dentists promoting fluoridation of water supplies contacted in preparation for this article produced a single peer-reviewed publication of results from any toxicological studies supporting those claims.

The lack of any support for these claims from published toxicological studies is the basis of a lawsuit filed on August 9, in the midst of Fluoride Awareness Week. The suit was filed against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), the largest water wholesaler in that area on behalf of millions of citizens and water consumers in San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, California. The suit alleges willful misrepresentation and deceptive business practices by the water supplier for “delivering a hydrofluosilicic acid drug through their water system that has never been approved for safety and effectiveness, nor in the expected dosages delivered by MWD through retail water districts, either topically, systemically through ingestion, or trans-dermal exposures through baths and showers.”  

The basis of the suit is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the only government entity with the authority to approve claims of safety and effectiveness for products intended to treat and prevent disease, but that the FDA has never approved mass-medication via fluoridation of the public water supply as a treatment for, or prevention of, dental disease. Jeff Green, National Director of Citizens for Safe Drinking Water and spokesperson for the Plaintiffs, summarized the suit as follows: "Don’t tell us, or the media, or the court how safe it is. Go tell it to the FDA through the evaluation process and get approval for the claims for the specific product you deliver, and don’t administer it to us topically, systemically through our ingestion, or through our skin from our baths and showers, without our consent until you do."

Yes, that’s correct - even if you spend hundreds of dollars buying a reverse osmosis filter to install at your sink or a portable Berkey Filter to remove this hazardous waste from the water you drink, you and your family still will absorb it through your skin when you shower and bathe. Whole-house filters to remove this hazardous waste from water you bathe and shower in are even more expensive and still won’t prevent you from being the hazardous waste dump-site of the phosphate mining/fertilizer industry. Your body still will be contaminated by fluoride if you ingest commercial beverages, food, toothpaste and other dental products.

And your costs and impacts don’t stop there. The surprising part of the Fluoride Awareness documentary preview was the Sierra Club representative’s comments. He failed to mention any of the countless environmental impacts of uncontrolled mass-disposal of this hazardous waste into our nation’s streams, lakes and oceans via discharges of fluoridated municipal water. The Sierra Club claims “We are America's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. Inspired by nature…” and that its magazine is “for people who care deeply about nature.” So where is the deep caring about nonhuman organisms in the water environments being used by the phosphate mining/fertilizer industry to dump this hazardous waste as municipal water discharge without any monitoring or regulation? Stay tuned for more details about your costs for forced filtration and disposal of hazardous waste from the phosphate mining/fertilizer industry and how you can become an abolitionist.