Water Fluoridation War. Government Admits Dangers, Experts Speak Out

November 9, 2011

Natural Society

By Andre Evans

“To learn more about the dangers of fluoride, see this web site.”  –KTRN

It was only a few years ago that if you labeled fluoride as a dangerous substance, you would be laughed at and scorned. For years, a select minority of individuals were the only ones raising the awareness of this health concern. Their cries have been and continue to be met with dissonance, despite the fact that the public’s opinion on fluoride has changed much in just a short time. In fact, even the United States government has called for lower levels of water fluoridation following a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, which found that increased fluoride consumption led to decreased IQ in children.

Communities are attempting to end water fluoridation, mainstream news is acknowledging its negative effects, and even a number of professional dentists have recognized the dangers of fluoride, and spoken out against its use and distribution. Most recently, the Palmer City Council of Alaska passed an ordinance repealing the town’s water fluoridation mandate.

Mainstream dentistry and oral health has been the vehicle through which sodium fluoride, a chemical byproduct of fluorine has been injected into our everyday lives. Said to ‘fight tooth decay’ and ‘strengthen enamel,’ it has been proliferated into nearly every form of toothpaste. Dentists also apply fluoride topically to teeth during routine visits to produce said effects. It has been added to municipal water supplies since the early 1900s, under the same premise of aiding oral health and hygiene.

Despite this, fluoride has a notoriously negative track record in terms of how it is used, and the products that use it as an active ingredient. While being used in toothpaste and various mouth washes, fluoride is also the main ingredient in many rat poisons, Prozac (an anti-depressant found to actually lead to suicide and other health conditions), and is even labeled as a toxic substance.

In fact, the safety precautions regarding sodium fluoride are quite telling themselves:

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Study: FDA Seafood Standards Flawed

October 13, 2011

USA Today Your Life

By: Jennifer Portman

In wake of last year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a new study from an environmental watchdog group contends that current federal standards underestimate the risk to pregnant women and children of cancer-causing contaminants that can accumulate in seafood from such spills.

The Natural Resources Defense Council study, published Wednesday in the online journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that because of outdated assessment methods and assumptions, the Food and Drug Administration’s standard for certain carbon compounds in seafood is off by 10,000 times.

The group is requesting that the FDA enact a rule that sets a limit on the amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons deemed safe for pregnant women and young children.

“Everybody is using the numbers FDA published, and they are flawed,” said study co-author Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, who added that her analysis did not find any significant concerns for other adults.

However, FDA and Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services officials stand by their testing methods. They stress that seafood from the gulf harvested in areas reopened since the spill and those that were never closed, remain safe.

“We’re very confident that the steps that we have put in place to assure the safety of seafood have worked,” FDA spokesman Doug Karas said. “We put in an extensive program of sampling, at that time and since then, and the results have consistently been 100 to 1,000 times below our levels of concern.”

Sterling Ivey, spokesman for Florida’s agriculture department that has been tasked with monitoring seafood safety, agreed.

“We’ve been continuing to test, and we haven’t found any issue with the seafood we are testing,” Ivey said. “We haven’t found any contaminates or high carbonates in the samples we are testing that has showed the seafood is not safe for anyone to eat.”

Between August 2010 and August of this year, the department has screened 358 seafood samples, and all were below the FDA’s levels of concern.

But concerns about seafood safety have continued to be an issue, Ivey said. In response to that concern, Florida has received $20 million from BP to increase the state’s testing capabilities and launch an aggressive marketing campaign to inform the public that gulf seafood is safe to eat.

The Natural Resources Defense Council says federal standards that states rely on are outdated and don’t do enough to protect vulnerable populations that eat a lot of seafood. The study found about 50 percent of the shrimp the FDA tested after the BP spill had harmful carbon levels exceeding the level of risk deemed by the group to be safe for pregnant women.

The FDA said most of the seafood it sampled after the spill had no detectable trace of oil. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals calculated that every day for five years the average person could eat 1,575 jumbo shrimp or 130 oysters without health concerns.

Jeff Stilwell, owner of Barnacle Bill’s restaurant in Tallahassee, Fla., said he supports watchdog groups but wouldn’t mind seeing another study to “validate that (the Natural Resources Defense Council numbers) are even in the ballpark.”

His experience with seafood safety has been in a different area but adds that he’s never seen seafood inspectors more vigilant than they have been following the oil spill.

The agriculture department increased inspections and shortened fishing times. Stilwell said oysters must be into coolers by 2 p.m. and must drop to a certain temperature between 2 and 4 p.m. At 4 p.m., inspectors will come to the oyster house and insert thermometers into oysters at the top, middle and bottom of each batch.

If one of those oysters hasn’t reached the right temperature, Stilwell said the batch can’t be sold.

“I’m more confident than I’ve ever been that nothing’s coming through my door that’s harmful to anyone,” he said.

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Swimming Pool Chemicals Linked to Cancer, Lung Disease

October 15th, 2010

Natural News

By: Jonathan Benson

Frequent use of swimming pools, especially indoor ones, can lead to long-term health problems, say three new studies published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. According to the reports, chemical disinfection byproducts that form in pools — and in the air surrounding them — can potentially cause both lung damage, asthma and cancer.

In the first study, samples of blood, urine and exhaled air from otherwise healthy individuals who swam in an indoor pool for 40 minutes revealed a significant increase in bio-markers of toxicity. Such toxicity occurs as a result of chlorine and other pool chemicals reacting with organic matter that is either introduced into the water through sweat and skin, or that is present in the water naturally.

Exposure to disinfection byproducts increased the four bio-markers of toxicity sevenfold, indicating they are a serious threat to health.

The second study found that a 40-minute swim in the pool can also cause short-term cell damage in the lungs. Perpetual cell damage from prolonged exposure can lead to serious respiratory illness.

The third study revealed that both chlorinated and brominated pools are loaded with dangerous disinfection byproducts. Samples of water from both sources revealed more than 100 toxic byproducts, many of which have never been identified in either swimming pool or drinking water.

Research continues to show that long-term exposure to the countless disinfection byproducts present in both swimming pool water increases users’ risk of developing asthma and bladder cancer. Many are calling for sweeping changes to be made in the way water is disinfected in order to reduce the threat to human health.

Until then, concerned individuals can choose to swim in ultra-violet (UV) disinfected pools and spas. The UV treatment kills dangerous pathogens and pollutants without creating toxic byproducts. Minimal, if any, chemicals are required to keep UV-treated pools optimally purified.

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Think Your Exposure to BPA is Minimal and Harmless? Think Again

September 30, 2010

Natural News

By: Jonathan Benson

Some recent reports about the dangers of the plastic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) insist that people not worry because overall exposure is limited, they say. But a new report published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives says otherwise, estimating that the average person is exposed to at least eight times the daily amount of BPA that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers “safe”.

“Our data raise grave concerns that regulatory agencies have grossly underestimated current human exposure levels,” explain study authors in their report.

Many even question the EPA’s 50 micrograms per day threshold, citing evidence that minimal amounts of the chemical interfere with proper hormone balance, both in children and adults. But at eight times that amount, there is no telling the amount of damage being inflicted.

According to Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, BPA is known to mimic estrogen in the body. It also binds to two other receptors, including those associated with male hormones like testosterone and thyroid hormones. When altered, these imbalanced hormones eventually lead to serious illness.

Some argue that the liver filters out most BPA from the body within a few hours anyway, but scientific studies have shown that this is not the case. Julia Taylor, a biologist at the University of Missouri, conducted a study on both mice and monkeys which revealed that some BPA stays in the blood and remains “biologically active” long after exposure. And such findings can be extrapolated from monkeys and mice to humans because these animals process BPA in similar ways to humans.

“These data should make us reconsider some previously held hypotheses about BPA, such as how quickly it is cleared from the body and the differences in metabolism between species,” emphasized Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, concerning the findings.

Editor’s Note: NaturalNews is strongly against the use of all forms of animal testing. We fully support the implementation of humane medical experimentation that promotes the health and well-being of all living creatures.

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