by Gar Smith
While fluoride compounds occur naturally in some water supplies, the past
50 years have seen a dramatic - and troubling - increase in the volume of
man-made industrial fluoride compounds expelled into our water and air.
Pouring fluorides into water supplies has generated controversy and
opposition for five contentious decades. Meanwhile, little attention has been
paid to the fluoride pollution that pours into the atmosphere from thousands
of industrial plants around the world.
Fluoride pollution is not a new problem. As the two reports cited below
show, concerns about the dangers of fluoride contamination were well known 25
years ago.
Fluoride Pollution: In Our Water, Our Air and Our Food
"Fluorides
are pollutants with considerable potential for producing ecological damage,"
Edward Groth III warned in an article in the April/May 1975 issue of
Environment. By the end of the 1960s, the EPA estimated that 155,000 tons of
fluoride (calculated as hydrogen fluoride) was pouring into the atmosphere
each year from aluminum smelters, phosphate processing, coal combustion and
the manufacturing of steel, bricks and glass products.
Several types of coniferous forests are vulnerable to fluoride damage at
one part per billion (ppb) or less. Because fluoride does not break-down, it
slowly accumulates in the environment. As early as 1971, the National Research
Council warned that fluoride pollution from US industry (in concentrations as
low as 1 ppb) had caused serious damage to plants and posed a threat to
livestock as far as 20 miles downwind of the emission points. Some grasses
consumed by livestock have been found to contain 200,000 times more fluoride
than in the ambient air.
A 1971 National Park Service study of the area downwind of an Anaconda
aluminum company smelter and a phosphate plant found excessive elevations of
fluoride in pines, firs, grasses, shrubs, herbs and hay. Honey bees had the
highest fluoride levels among insects. Wildlife, from birds and ground
squirrels to larger mammal predators, had fluoride levels that reached as high
as 13,333 parts per million (ppm).
Foraging on grasses containing 30 to 40 ppm of fluoride can be toxic to
cattle. Mussels, oysters, crabs, shrimp and prawns have been killed by aquatic
fluoride pollution.
Groth noted that some plants can synthesize organic fluoride compounds like
fluoroacetates which Fluoride Quarterly Reports identified as "among the most
poisonous substances known." Fluoro-organic residues have turned up in
soybeans, lettuce, tea and oatmeal.
Airborne pollution dusts food crops with sodium fluoroacetate (which is
sold commercially as Compound 1080, a deadly rodenticide). Groth observed that
"a general buildup of fluoro-organic compounds in natural food webs" risks
severe ecological damage.
Groth also noted that "fluoride may interact synergistically with other
environmental pollutants to produce greater effects than either pollutant
could cause were it acting alone." This synergistic "boost" has been
demonstrated between fluoride and copper and between airborne hydrogen
fluoride and sulfur dioxide.
Fluoridating the water for 100 million people requires dumping
approximately 20,000 tons of fluoride into municipal reservoirs each year.
About half of the ingested fluoride winds up stored in human teeth and bones.
The rest returns to the environment via the household toilet.
A 1964 scientific study of fluoride levels in sewage in 56 California
cities "demonstrated that domestic sewage already contained fluoride over and
above that naturally present in water or added for dental health," Groth
reported.
The study discovered that even residents in cities without fluoridated
water were consuming so much excess fluoride in their foods and beverages that
they were flushing "significant fluoride into receiving streams in their
sewage."
The "Unpublicized Pollutant"
In a 1973 report in the
International Journal of Environmental Studies, researchers Elise Jerard and
J.B. Patrick identified fluoride as "a highly unpublicized pollutant" that the
President's Science Advisory Committee once classified as a "highest priority"
contaminant.
"During the past three decades, fluoride discharges from fossil fuel
combustion - and more than 50 types of major industries - have steadily
increased the burden of airborne contamination," Jerard and Patrick wrote.
"Invisible but potent, these emissions in both gaseous and particulate form,
with their repertoire of ecological effects, pollute rain, soil, plant life
and animals, surface waters [and] ... both directly and through interactions
of this cycle - man."
Jerard and Patrick reported that "airborne fluoride accumulates in plants
and can concentrate in the leafy portions by a factor of 2- to 260-fold
without any visible sign of the contamination."
Jerard and Patrick reported that in some regions of Florida, "25,000 acres
of citrus trees have been destroyed" within 50 miles of the phosphate
processing plants and apparently "normal" specimens of orange juice were found
to contain 3-12 ppm of fluoride.
In 1966, Professor of Atmospheric Sanitation Morris Katz noted that, while
most air pollutants are measured in parts per million, atmospheric fluoride
must be monitored in parts per billion. Katz warned that prolonged exposure to
airborne fluoride concentrations of less than 1 ppb "may create a hazard
[since] ... fluorides are more than 100 times more toxic than sulfur dioxide."
In 1969, a massive fish kill that turned Placentia Bay, Newfoundland into
"a biological desert" was traced to fluoride effluent from a plant that
produced elemental phosphorus for metal finishing and consumer goods. Some
22,800 pounds of fluoride effluent poured into the bay each day, primarily in
the form of hydrofluosilicic acid - the same substance used to fluoridate city
water supplies.
According to US Department of Agriculture Handbook No. 380: "Airborne
fluorides have caused more worldwide damage to domestic animals than any other
air pollutant." The handbook's list of fluorosis symptoms included: "dental
mottling, respiratory distress, stiffness in knees or elbows or both" and
concluded with the observation that "Man is much more sensitive than domestic
animals to F [fluoride] intoxication."
In a 1970 report on "The Effects of Fluorides on Man," Harold C. Hodge (See
Earth Island Journal, Winter, Spring '98) listed some of the symptoms of
fluoride poisoning found in industrial workers: osteosclerosis, ossifications
of ligamentous attachments, sinus trouble, perforation of the nasal septum,
chest pains, coughs, thyroid disorders, anemia, dizziness, weakness and
nausea.
Fluoride in the Food Chain
Twenty-five years ago, Jerard and
Patrick issued an alarm about the growing presence of fluorides in the food
chain. The researchers listed numerous examples of severe fluoride pollution
on foods ranging from spinach, lettuce and tubers to the milk and meat of
cows. In addition to contamination from atmospheric fluorides, Jerard and
Patrick discovered that farm produce also picks up fluoride pollution from
phosphate fertilizers and fluoride-bearing pesticides applied to apples,
pears, celery and raspberries.
Coal-burning electric powerplants and the petroleum industry are major
sources of urban fluoride pollution. Jerard and Patrick also noted a
"considerable fluoride content, up to 16% or more, in a number of important
drugs, including tranquilizers, corticosteroids, some preparations used in
cancer therapy and anesthetics."
"Fluoride-emitting factories, once scattered with wide exclusion zones,
have proliferated and become more closely concentrated," Jerard and Patrick
observed in 1973. "Foods grown in fluoride-polluted regions are distributed
over great distancesÂ… Foods and beverages processed with fluoridated water are
mass-distributed."
Each liter of fluoridated water, at 1 ppm concentration, contains a one
milligram dose of fluoride - the so-called "recommended" daily amount. Water,
however, is only one source of ingested fluoride. In 1991, the US Public
Health Service estimated that the total daily intake for a 110-pound adult
from all sources in an "optimally" fluoridated city, ranged as high as 6.6
milligrams. In 1997, the EPA estimated that Americans were ingesting nearly
five times more fluoride than in 1971 - from food and drinks alone.
Children are more at risk of over-exposure than adults. A 1991 study by the
Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry found that every sample of bottled
fruit beverages tested contained fluoride. One sample of Gerber's grape juice
contained 6.8 ppm - 70% higher that the EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level of 4
ppm for fluoride in drinking water and 240% higher than the EPA's 2 ppm
standard set to protect against dental fluorosis.
Currently there is no federal program to detect or label the fluoride
content in US foods or drinks.We hope that this special report will help to
encourage a fundamental review of the health and ecological impacts of
fluorides in the environment.
