Features/Reports: 27 Feb 2013
Adrienne Murphy

Hot Press Report: Fluoride

Ireland has the sickest population in Europe. This country is also the only one in the EU which engages in mandatory flouridation of the water. Here, we present the astonishing evidence which conclusively links these two facts. So why, asks scientist Declan Waugh, have the authorities refused to address an issue that is crucial to the health of the nation?

Ireland has the sickest population in Europe. You may not know this. I certainly didn’t. But, across a comprehensive raft of essential measures, it is scientifically, verifiably, true. We are sick – to our teeth!

Why is this so? The elephant in the room, according to Irish scientist Declan Waugh, is the fluoridation of our water supply. Again, many people might assume that this is a Europe-wide initiative. The opposite is the case. We are now the only members of the European Union still being exposed to the industrial waste chemical used in fluoridation, known as hydrofluorosilicic acid.

In 2012 Declan Waugh delivered a report, entitled Human Toxicity, Environmental Impact and Legal Implications of Water Fluoridation, which spectacularly blows the lid off the State’s position on the issue. As a result, amongst the international scientific community, Waugh is now regarded as a leading expert on the subject. His evidence regarding fluoridation’s harmful effects is being used in Canada, the US, Australia and Israel to help stop the practice there. Yet at home, his findings are being ignored by the authorities and the mainstream media.

What this scientist has to say is painful to hear – but can we risk not listening? Over to you, Declan.

We’ve Been Drinking Fluoride for 50 Years

Before I started my examination of water fluoridation, like most people in this country – including medical and scientific professionals – I was completely unaware of the long-term implications of fluoride on human health or the environment. I just presumed, given that the State has been pursuing this policy since I was born, that it was safe, and that they had done their own due diligence risk-assessment on it.

It is almost 50 years since we’ve been dumping this stuff into our water – and yet the truth is that there hasn’t been one public health study done in Ireland to examine the human health impact of consuming this chemical.

The first principle that any doctor has to follow is ‘Do no harm’. That the Department of Health mandated a legislative policy for a chemical to be added to the drinking water supply to be consumed by everybody, without testing the chemical for its toxicological profile and potential impact on health, is therefore a serious breach of professional ethics.

But when we look at the health of the Irish population since the mid-’60s, when the Irish water supply began to be fluoridated, we see that the disease burden in this country has gone through the roof.

When I started looking at the health data for Ireland, I had no idea that our nation was as sick as it is. Ireland has:

• the highest cancer incidence of all European countries, even as far as Russia.

• the highest incidence of neurological illness

• the highest incidence of cardiovascular illness

• and the highest incidence of diabetes.

There is no doubt in my mind that the record-breaking levels of sickness in Ireland are related to our water fluoridation. Other European countries either never started the practice, or gave it up decades ago.

What about America?

In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences in America published one of the most comprehensive reports on fluoride, known as the National Research Council (NRC) report. 12 experts from a whole range of medical and toxicological backgrounds spent four years reviewing all the data. The findings of their 500-page report were astonishing. It details how fluoride affects things like the thyroid, diabetes, cancer, neurological illnesses, gastro-intestinal diseases, skeletal and muscular-skeletal pain, lowered IQ and other neurological problems in children…

This research is out there for our Government and the Department of Health to read. But I want to tell everyone what it says, so that this information is finally, definitively out there in the public domain in Ireland.

The NRC found that the fluoride consumed in drinking water reduces the ability of the body to produce insulin. That’s a direct issue in regard to diabetes.

They found that it’s linked to preventing the body from properly metabolising things like cellulose or glucose, which is linked to obesity and weight gain.

They found that fluoride reduces the body’s ability to produce melatonin, which is linked to depression.

They found that fluoride affects cardiovascular health in a number of ways.

And, finally, they also found that it has the ability to cause serious harm from a neurological point of view, because the chemical that we’re using is a silico-fluoride-based chemical, which binds to aluminium, and massively increases the absorption of aluminium, as well as lead and mercury, into the brain. They came to the conclusion that there was evidence to show that aluminium-fluoride compounds actually cause Alzheimer’s. Ireland has one of the highest incidences of Alzheimer’s disease in the world.

The NRC also states, in unequivocal terms, that “there is no question but that fluoride compromises the immune system.” This makes us more susceptible to viruses and bacterial infections. We have the highest mortality from respiratory diseases in Europe.

Comparisons With Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is non-fluoridated, but the south is fluoridated. Despite what people might like to think, it is established that there is no real difference genetically between the two populations. The only known environmental toxin that’s not present in the north that is present in the south is fluoridated drinking water – so you can look at the data from both regions and see from a disease point of view how different our populations are. The comparisons are astonishing.

• We have four and a half times the early onset of dementia in healthy adults aged between 39 and 59 than they have in Northern Ireland. This is the group that was exposed to fluoride as children. The dementia in this group is a result of neurotoxicity.

• The south has twice the incidence of diabetes they have in Northern Ireland. Diabetes costs the state about 1.7 billion euros a year. We have 400,000 diabetics, and another 250,000 pre-diabetic. If we had the same incidence ratio of diabetes as in Northern Ireland, we would halve the amount of money that we’re spending on diabetes alone.

• There was a bloody conflict that took place in Northern Ireland for forty years, yet the south still has double the level of people who are suffering from depression.

• We started fluoridating in Ireland in the mid-1960s. By the mid-’70s, over 50% of the southern population were drinking fluoridated water. Now in that period, we had an 80% increase in cardiovascular mortality in Ireland. And we experienced that increase when internationally there was a 20% reduction in mortality from cardiovascular disease.

Guess what? There is only one country in the whole of the Eurasian landmass that beats us with cardiovascular mortality at the moment, and that’s Kyrgyzstan, a country whose population is grossly overexposed to fluoride. When you look at their data, you find that 70% of the population have been confirmed with dental fluorosis – white spots on the teeth, which are a physical sign of chronic overexposure as a young child to fluoride. And 17% have been confirmed with skeletal fluorosis.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, about 40% of the population of Ireland have been confirmed with dental fluorosis. They’ve never identified skeletal fluorosis for the simple reason that they’ve never looked for it.

The Irish increase in cardiovascular mortality continued until about 2000. It’s come down by about 30% since – but only because we’ve had a fourfold increase in the number of people taking medication for cardiovascular disease. And we are still the highest country for cardiovascular mortality in all 27 EU states. It’s absolutely shocking.

Down’s Syndrome and Autism

It is important to realise that putting fluoride in the water supply means that virtually all of our citizens are taking this toxin into their bodies on a consistent, daily basis – including, of course, pregnant women.

Now, the American NRC is very careful in its wording – you can imagine the lobby groups they’re under pressure from. Yet they came to the extremely disturbing view that it was biologically plausible that fluoride exposure in the population could cause Down’s Syndrome.

We know that the south of Ireland has twice the incidence of Down’s Syndrome than they have in Northern Ireland or the UK. Now you have to take confounding factors, like termination of pregnancy and genetic screening into account. However, the UK has done a study, and they found that early termination of pregnancy and screening for genetic defects has only reduced the incidence of Down’s Syndrome in the population by 1%. So the UK and Northern Ireland’s much lower incidence of Down’s Syndrome is not attributable to that.

In July last year, Harvard University produced a report where they reviewed a meta-analysis of about 28 studies looking at fluoride as a neurotoxin. And the report came to the firm conclusion that fluoride is a neurotoxin, as mercury and lead are neurotoxins.

Ireland has the highest level of neurological diseases in Europe. Looking at autism, for example: since the 1970s, just after we had 50% of the population exposed to fluoride, and we switched to silico-fluoride chemicals, which are the most neurologically harmful, we had a tenfold increase per decade in autism. The US, where fluoride is widely used, and Ireland have the highest incidences of autism in the world. The prevalence of autism in Ireland is at 1.1% of the population, and in the US it’s 0.9. The population of Ireland is more exposed to fluoridated water than the US – we’re between 75-80%, in the US it’s 65%. Compared to the non-fluoridated UK, we are 33% higher with autism.

The higher exposure you have to fluoridated water, the more dangerous it is, particularly for infants. We have the highest incidence of bottle-fed infants in the world and, as a corollary, we have the lowest prevalence of breast-feeding women in the world. In Denmark, 15 years ago, public health authorities came out very strongly saying that parents should not use fluoridated tap water to make formula milk.

In 2002, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland came up with a draft recommendation to tell parents not to use fluoridated tap water to make formula milk. The grim fact is that a baby fed formula milk made up with fluoridated tap water is exceeding by almost 200% the maximum tolerable intake for a healthy adult. But that recommendation was shelved.

The Official Response

I’ve spent the last two weeks looking at the statistics for 22 different diseases in Ireland, matching them to the Academy in the US where they came to certain conclusions about how fluoride affects various parts of the body. I’ve looked at their statements, and then I’ve looked at the issue of the incidence of thyroid problems, cancers, Down’s Syndrome, autism, epilepsy and a whole range of other conditions. The data is completely shocking.

• I sent a 16-page letter to the Irish cancer register body months ago, raising concerns and asking for them to examine some of the evidence. I never got a response. They came out with a press release without even contacting me, saying that the cancer incidence maps that are going around the country don’t show that there is any relationship between fluoride and cancer, and in their opinion there is none. Now the one absolute conclusion that the National Academy in the US came to – which all twelve members of the Academy agreed upon – was that fluoride can cause cancer and can promote cancer.

• I contacted the Irish Environmental Protection Agency – they said it had nothing to do with them.

• I contacted the Department of the Environment – they said it had nothing to do with them.

• I contacted the chief executive of the HSE, who sent me a letter this week saying it had nothing to do with him.

• As well as hard copies of my report, in the last 12 months I’ve sent 67 emails with different information on fluoride updates from around the world, with new studies that have been published, synopses of them, to every TD, senator, councillor and Cabinet member. I’ve also sent copies of my report to the European Parliament. I got a letter from the European Parliament President two weeks ago, thanking me for it, saying that he has raised the issue with other colleagues, and that he has circulated my information to various parties and organisations within the EU. I’ve also been contacted by a senior person in the World Health Organisation (WHO), who told me he’s also looking at the information that I’ve provided.

Yet the Irish political establishment are extracting themselves from the situation, because it’s been set up like a game of chess. An ‘expert group’ on water fluoridation was set up in 2002, which is costing about 400,000 euros a year. It’s based in the Irish dental health foundation offices. There are five dentists on it. Despite the masses of scientific evidence, they are entrenched in their views that no harm whatsoever is being caused by fluoride.

When the Irish ‘expert group’ did their review of fluoride, only one and a half pages of their report examined the health impacts. My report on the other hand is 350-plus pages, reviewing 1,217 studies from 250 of the top medical scientific journals around the world. Four months after submitting my report last year, I got a letter indirectly from someone in the HSE saying that the expert body had reviewed it and didn’t agree with anything I said. One of the members, who is a dentist, wrote a review of my report where he claimed that I had misinterpreted the international studies. I have officially refuted this, and highlighted the fact that the so-called ‘expert group’ hasn’t even discussed any of the findings that I had in my report with regard to the health statistics for Ireland.

I’ve read over 2,000 fluoridation studies at this stage. I’m not getting paid for this – I have no conflict of interest, and I’m not representing anyone in doing it. It has cost me a fortune; all of my savings have gone into it. And I’ve done it purely on the basis that I have a sixteen-month-old baby; I’ve had incidences of cancer within my own family; and I have friends with neurological problems. I see this tremendous disease burden, and the evidence is there, documented. In my view, a dentist is not competent to talk about the biological effects of consuming a toxin on your body. Where are the paediatricians, oncologists, toxicologists, neurotoxicologists? They’re the experts we should be going to, and there’s not one of them on the expert body!

The International Momentum Against Fluoride

My report has been downloaded in 47 countries, and in 45 states in the US. I’m getting emails from medical doctors, scientists and public citizens from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and the UK. I even had a medical doctor from Israel ring me last week saying that the former chief water sanitation engineer for Israel, who introduced fluoridation there in 2000, retired last year, and he’s now taking a historic High Court case against the State to reverse it. This doctor is working with him, and they’re using my data.

Last week, Windsor in Ontario – a city of 300,000 people who had been fluoridated for 51 years – finally stopped the practice. They had an independent review of fluoridation and 180 written submissions, including one that I was asked to put in. The City Council had a six-hour debate on the issue – interestingly the Lord Mayor of Windsor is both a biochemist and a lawyer – and then voted overwhelmingly to stop water fluoridation. And Carnes in New South Wales, Australia, have done the same in the last two weeks.

They started fluoridation in The Netherlands after World War 2, again under American influence. Dr Hans Moolinburgh immediately started seeing patients who he concluded were developing health problems because of their exposure to fluoride. The first was a 6-month-old baby who came to him with breathing problems. And when he removed fluoride from the baby’s diet, within a week the breathing problems disappeared. (Fluoride exposure causes an inflammatory response in the body, so it’s linked to respiratory illnesses.)

Moolinburgh set up a team of 12 medical physicians and toxicologists, and he got a legal team involved, and he did what they call ‘double-blind’ chemical studies in the population with fluoride, and they came to the conclusion – even though originally he was the only scientist out of the team of twelve who thought there was any link between fluoride exposure and disease – that water fluoridation is the equivalent of low-level poisoning of the population. They published their data in a fluoride journal in The Netherlands, and there was outrage, and the Minister for Health resigned. And the Dutch parliament changed their legislation almost overnight. That was in 1973.

In Finland they stopped fluoridation in ’91. In the last city in which they stopped, they did an interesting study. They turned off the fluoride tap and didn’t tell the population that fluoride was no longer in their water. They documented 26 major medical ailments in the population, before and after turning off the fluoride. The results were published in an epidemiological journal in Denmark. What they found was that there was a 13% reduction in major medical ailments in the population within two months of discontinuing.

Germany stopped in 1970, and the moment East Germany unified with the west, they stopped. Sweden stopped in the ’70s, advised by the Nobel Institute that otherwise there were going to be complications in the population, as they didn’t know how it was going to harm some sensitive sub-sectors. Denmark, Belgium and France never did it. The French went to the Pasteur Institute back in the 1950s, and they told them: ‘Don’t go down that route’.

The West Cork Phenomenon

West Cork has the highest disease prevalence in Ireland. This country has the worst cardiovascular disease prevalence in Europe, and West Cork has the worst cardiovascular disease prevalence in Ireland. Ireland has the worst prevalence of cancer in Europe, and West Cork has the worst prevalence of cancer in Ireland. The problem is that the drinking water in West Cork is extremely soft, so there’s very little calcium in it. The single most important factor in minimising fluoride toxicity is calcium in the drinking water. It means that in soft water areas that are fluoridated, people will have up to three times more fluoride in their bloodstreams than in hard water areas. It results in increased thyroid problems, neurological problems, cardiovascular problems, and a whole load of other issues, all of which we are being consumed by, slowly, in West Cork. In the street where I live, there are four men who have died from cancer, and there are only eleven houses. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that it’s related to the water. In my house, we use bottled spring water with a high calcium level for drinking and cooking. We only use tap water for washing.

I found something extremely shocking just last weekend. In a World Health Organisatioon publication, Ireland has been documented by the WHO as a country where we have a population that is deficient in iodine. We don’t get enough of it. And when you add fluoride to a person’s diet who is deficient in iodine, you’re going to get not just thyroid problems, but other problems. But the WHO had a report referenced in their study, which said that populations that are deficient in iodine suffer from apathy. So in a nutshell, what we have is a population already at risk from iodine deficiency, and we’re adding a compound to the water that will make it worse, thereby increasing the level of apathy in the population.

• 98% of Europe does not fluoridate the water supply on health and ethical grounds.

• Only 10% of Britain is fluoridated. These areas show the same extremely high disease burdens as the Republic of Ireland.

• The fluoridating agent used in Ireland is hydrofluorosilicic acid (chk), a component of toxic waste industrial chemicals. This acid is non-biodegradable, highly corrosive, and is contaminated with heavy metals including arsenic, aluminium, lead and mercury. This is different to the naturally occurring calcium fluoride, which is 85 times less toxic.

• Hydrofluorosilicic acid was used as a biocide until it was banned by the EU in 2006 due to a lack of human and environmental safety data. Now the Irish government are buying it from Spain.

• That fluoride is good for the teeth was a myth, originally promoted in the US in the ‘40s, to get the public to accept industrial waste chemicals into their water supplies. It was basically a way for industries to dispose of hydrofluorosilicic acid and other waste by-products. For more information, watch the free documentary, The Fluoride Deception, on YouTube.

• Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. No disease has ever been linked to a fluoride deficiency. Humans can have perfectly good teeth without fluoride. When fluoride has been discontinued in communities from Canada, the former East Germany, Cuba and Finland, dental decay has decreased.

• Ireland has the worst dental health of Western EU countries, despite being the only country to have a policy of mandatory water fluoridation. The improvements in dental health since 1980 have been significantly greater in other EU countries with no water fluoridation policy.

• Dental fluorosis ­­­– white, discoloured or weakened patches on the teeth – is evidence of fluoride poisoning. One third of all children in the Republic have dental fluorosis.

Read the second part of our Fluoride investigation in the next issue of Hot Press. Click to order this issue.

To download Declan Waugh’s report for free, visit his website at [link]www.enviro.ie[/link] See also [link]www.fluoridealert.org[/link]