A major toxin prevalent in our environment, foods, numerous drugs and consumer products is fluoride and its formulated derivatives.

Fluoride is any combination of elements containing the fluoride ion. In its elemental form, fluorine is a pale yellow, highly toxic and corrosive gas. In nature, fluorine is found combined with minerals as fluorides. It is the most chemically active nonmetallic element of all the elements and also has the most reactive electro-negative ion. Because of this extreme reactivity, fluorine is never found in nature as an uncombined element.

Fluorine compounds or fluorides are listed by the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) as among the top 20 of 275 substances that pose the most significant threat to human health.

Fluorides are cumulative toxins. The fact that fluorides accumulate in the body is the reason that US law requires the Surgeon General to set a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for fluoride content in public water supplies as determined by the EPA. This requirement is specifically aimed at avoiding a condition known as Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis (CSF), a disease thought to progress through three stages

The World Health Organization in 1994 published a report, Fluorides and Oral Health. In this report it stated that, "Dental and Public health administrators should be aware of the total fluoride exposure in the population before introducing any additional fluoride program for caries prevention."

Fluoride toxicity has been linked to these and numerous other human disfunctions and diseases. The following is a simple brief overview of a few studied impacts:

• Bone Cancer - Dr. Dean Burk, the Chief Chemist Emeritus of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, stated: "In point of fact, fluoride causes more human cancer deaths, and causes it faster, than any other chemical " Osteosarcoma is a rare form of bone cancer but it is the most common form of bone cancer and one of the principal cancers of childhood. In the light of a strong correlation between osteosarcoma and fluoride in a study conducted on rats by the U.S. National Toxicological Program in 1990, and epidemiological evidence of osteosarcoma increase in boys and young men, especially in fluoridated areas, Dr. Perry Cohn of the New Jersey Department of Health surveyed its incidence in seven counties of New Jersey relative to water fluoridation. He found that, as demonstrated in Table I, in the fluoridated areas, the incidence of osteosarcoma in boys under the age of 10 was 4.6 times higher than in the unfluoridated areas, 3.5 times higher in the 10 to 19 age group and over twice as high in the 20 to 49 age group. In a similar study of three New Jersey municipalities, the figures for osteosarcoma were over twice as high for the 0-9 age group and nearly 7 times as high for the 10 to 19 age group in the fluoridated area
• Dental Fluorosis - Dental fluorosis was first reported by two dentists in 1916. By 1931 there was extreme concern about what was called Colorado Brown Stain and Texas Teeth. It is now called dental fluorosis. Dental fluorosis is extensively described by toxicologists as the first visible sign of chronic fluoride poisoning.
• Hip Fractures - In 1978 scientists of Yale University reported that fluoride in strengths as little as 1 part per million (the 'optimum' level) decreases bone strength and elasticity, increasing the risk of fracture. Workers at the Roswell Park Memorial Institute also showed that fluoride accelerated the process of osteoporosis. In 1992, a study of elderly patients in Utah found a small but significant increase in the risk of hip fracture in both men and women exposed to artificial fluoridation at 1 part per million.
• Osteoporosis - Dr. Dequeker and Dr. Declerck of the Department of Rheumatology and Arthritis, K. U. Leuven, U. Z. Pellenberg, Belgium, reviewed thirty years clinical research on fluoride in the treatment of osteoporosis. They point out that fluoride has a dual effect on osteoblasts (the cells from which bones are made). On the one hand, it increases the birthrate of osteoblasts, while on the other hand it has a toxic effect on the individual cell with mineralization impairment and reduced apposition rate resembling osteomalacia.
• Skeletal Fluorosis - The major side effects of fluoride therapy are skeletal fluorosis, gastrointestinal intolerance, and painful lower extremity syndrome.
• Reproductive Abnormalities - Decreased testosterone concentrations in skeletal fluorosis patients and in males drinking the same water as the patients but with no clinical manifestations of the disease compared with those of normal, healthy males living in areas nonendemic for fluorosis suggest that fluoride toxicity may cause adverse effects in the reproductive system of males living in fluorosis endemic areas.
• Thyroid Damage - Hyperparathyroidism is commonly observed in fluorosis patients. Fluorophenyl compounds have shown to disturb thyroid hormone activity in several ways, specifically in the liver and at the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis.

These are just a few of the potential impacts of fluoride and its related compounds. Many commonly recongized drugs also contain fluoride compounds and simply increase the body burden of fluoride within the human body.

Fluoride Content of Common Dental Products

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