Is there anywhere fluoride isn’t going to be found? (From Andover Advertiser)

Is there anywhere fluoride isn’t going to be found?

3:53pm Thursday 22nd April 2010 in Letters

THE government’s proposed addition of folic acid to all bread has been abandoned because there would be no way to check the total daily intake.

So what about the fluorides, now coming at us from all directions, from womb to tomb?

The government’s recommended Medical Research Report on fluoridation says ‘Fluoride crosses the placenta and is incorporated into the developing concepts . . . could plausibly be teratogenic’ (ie can cause malformation).

That would be only a part of the chemical load children are now inheriting through the 300 quarts of blood pumped through them every day in their last month in the womb.

A recent US Environmental Working Group study found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from babies born in 2004.

The industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides included eight perfluorochemicals, used as stain and oil repellents, in fast food packaging, clothes, textiles, carpets etc, including the Teflon and Scotchguard chemical, PFOA, recently categorised as a likely human carcinogen, by the EPA’s advisory board.

Professor David Meltzer, and epidemiological and public health researcher said, “There have long be suspicions that PFOA concentrations may be linked to changes in thyroid hormone levels.”

Samples taken from almost 4,000 adults between 1999 and 2006, reports the journal ‘Environmental Health Perspectives’, found those with the highest 25 per cent of PFOS were more than twice as likely to have thyroid disease than individuals with the lowest 50 per cent. (Samples from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, for study by Exeter University and the Peninsula Medical School).

Professor Galloway, of Exeter University said, “Our results highlight a real need for further research into the health effect of low-level exposure to environmental chemicals like PFOA that are the ubiquitous in the environment and in peoples’ homes.”

The home is rich in fluorides in dental products, as we all know.

There are now 17 pages of fluoride pesticides on the PSD lists. Fluoride is now a corn fumigant. And the government wants to add it to our drinking and bath water. Just how ubiquitous can it get?

Margaret Reichlin, MacCallum Road, Upper Enham.