1) Sign the online POWA petition at http://petition.powalliance.org/index.html

2) Write your own personal letter to your two US Senators and your US House Representative.

Scientific professionals within the EPA are speaking out against the entrenched policy of public water fluoridation.
If they are deeply concerned with the safety of the practice, we should be deeply concerned with the safety of the practice.

NTEU CHAPTER 280 - U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
BEN FRANKLIN STATION, BOX 7672, WASHINGTON D.C. 20044 - PHONE 202-566-2788
INTERNET http://www.nteu280.org E MAIL Murphy.JamesJ@epa.gov

DESCRIPTION NEWSLETTER CURRENT ISSUES PRESS RELEASES LINKS MEMBERS PAGE HISTORY SITE INDEX

PRESS RELEASE FOR AUGUST 19, 2005

EPA Unions Call for Nationwide Moratorium on Fluoridation,

Congressional Hearing on Adverse Effects, Youth Cancer Cover Up

Eleven EPA employee unions representing over 7000 environmental and public health professionals of the Civil Service have called for a moratorium on drinking water fluoridation programs across the country, and have asked EPA management to recognize fluoride as posing a serious risk of causing cancer in people. The unions acted following revelations of an apparent cover-up of evidence from Harvard School of Dental Medicine linking fluoridation with elevated risk of a fatal bone cancer in young boys.

The unions sent letters to key Congressional committees asking Congress to legislate a moratorium pending a review of all the science on the risks and benefits of fluoridation. The letters cited the weight of evidence supporting a classification of fluoride as a likely human carcinogen, which includes other epidemiology results similar to those in the Harvard study, animal studies, and biological reasons why fluoride can reasonably be expected to cause the bone cancer – osteosarcoma – seen in young boys and test animals. The unions also pointed out recent work by Richard Maas of the Environmental Quality Institute, University of North Carolina that links increases in lead levels in drinking water systems to use of silicofluoride fluoridating agents with chloramines disinfectant.

The letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson asked him to issue a public warning in the form of an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking setting the health-based drinking water standard for fluoride at zero, as it is for all known or probable human carcinogens, pending a recommendation from a National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council committee. That committee’s work is not expected to be done before 2006.

The unions also asked Congress and EPA’s enforcement office, or the Department of Justice, to look into reasons why the Harvard study director, Chester Douglass, failed to report the seven-fold increased risk seen in the work he oversaw, and instead wrote to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the federal agency that funded the Harvard study, saying there was no link between fluoridation and osteosarcoma. Douglass sent the same negative report to the National Research Council committee studying possible changes in EPA’s drinking water standards for fluoride.

The unions who signed the letters represent EPA employees from across the nation, including laboratory scientists in Ohio, Oklahoma and Michigan, regulatory support scientists and other workers at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and science and regulatory workers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and San Francisco. They are affiliated with the National Treasury Employees Union, the American Federation of Government Employees, Engineers and Scientists of California/International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, and the National Association of Government Employee/Service Employees International Union.

The unions’ letter is online at http://nteu280.org/Issues/Fluoride/fluoridesummary.htm

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:

Dr. William Hirzy, Vice-President

NTEU Chapter 280

Phone(cell) 202-285-0498

Doing something fast for example may sacrifice quality. But sometime doing something fast that cover 95% of thing is better than doing something very slowly that cover ~100%. In other case, you have no choice but reach 100% of success.

- There is a lot of wave going on and some might be also bad and some will be good! example of nice-health wave:

–> probiotics (I bet there is some formula which are more efficient than other)
–> tofu / soya (some say it is bad, search for healing crow website on the topic for example)
–> biologic food (I heard from a chemist, for example, that it was not changing much, from apparently what he studied, the main factor would be the time between when you get the food from its original location and your location. Meaning that if it is bio or not is one thing, but bio or not, vegetable will lose a lot of its property in transportation. But then there is also moral conviction about eating that way)
–> Vegetarian / Vegan (will those people change if they are proven that meat is necessary? do these people do it for health, for philosophic reason or both? etc.)
–> etc…

I think you get what I want to express there. There will be people on both side.

Steve is also saying that in case of doubt, he chose the choice that seem to not have any side effect. Of course, he may do the wrong choice.

And trying to censure someone that propagate false information is not a bad opinion, however, when that person run a blog and allow comments and respond, and threat that like a live discussion where himself and everyone can grow, you should not complaint. I am sure Steve will read all your comment, give them a second thought, and is open to be convinced. He has done errors, he will do more. He has done good shot, he will do more. I have done error, I will do more. You get it right!

So before trying to complaint and censure someone, even thought he has a great influence because he has a broad audience, you might want to wonder if what he is doing is good.

If that was coming from someone dumb who provide no value, that would be ok. However I expect personal developpement to be very broad and touch about subject like mind, training, health, food, sports, psychology, philosophy, religion, socializing, discipline, etc.

Ok now, I go back living in the world and be confused about everything. (You have to make choice… but sometime making those choice is very hard when all side are fighting with a lot of energy)

From this first sentence, I know this person is off-base in his/her argument.

Science does not require “belief.” It requires evidence. As a Professor at a major US dental school, I can tell you, I’ve read all of these studies. Axiom is about as correct as he could be, both in his/her analysis and his reference to quackwatch.

If you really were a “biochemist and molecular biologist,” you would know that a primary rule in toxicology is “the dose is the poison.” There’s no such thing as a “safe” substance. ANYTHING in large enough doses can cause physiological harm. As the RN pointed out, even water.

The benefits of fluoride are indisputable and supported by hundreds of double-blind, controlled, peer-reviewed studies. The best fluoridewatch can come up with on the risks of fluoride use is a study that someone says is “good” and “publishable.”

If it were, why hasn’t it been published?

Please learn how science works before you cherry pick unpublished studies to justify a pseudoscientific viewpoint.

I appreciate this article because, as Kelly points out, one must have both expertise in evaluating scientific research and in the subject matter at hand, in this case the effects of fluoride. (I have expertise in the former, but no professional expertise in fluoride).

While reading Steve’s article, I noticed him setting up some strawmen and anti-fluoride bias right away, but didn’t find anything noticeably wrong with his statements until his section “What is fluoride’s purported role in tooth decay?” As far as my knowledge goes, every statement in that section is wrong. The article goes down hill from there.

Did you know that daily reading of personal development blogs greatly reduces your risk of depression?

Disgusting.

As an RN, I’ve had a few psychiatric patients come in with seizures due to overconsumption of water (as in drinking gallons per day as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder) which caused their sodium levels to go down due to dilutional effects of gallons of water. Low sodium causes their brains to swell and thus seizures. If I wrote this up in a slanty-way, I’ll bet I could convince all of you that water has been associated with seizures and it should be banned. [Hey, maybe I’ll do that!]. I may be able to even pick out Chemical A (e.g. fluoride) in water and show that Chemical A is, in fact, the true culprit of the seizures since all of the patients-in-question probably drank fluoridated water. I am an expert in seizures, ya know. Trust me.

As a health care professional, I am keenly aware that the ability to evaluate scientific data and knowledge of medicine is a required skill before you decide to publish thoughts on whether or not a treatment is effective. This blog’s author has no such training. Once again. Disgusting.

I urge all readers to first look to respected sources such as the American Dental Association if they are questioning whether fluoride is ok or not.

(Repeat Link)

I’ve breezed through this document, and it shows consensus information due to rigorous scientific study and reveiw of multiple studies of community fluoridation. For example, in Question #28 concerning whether or not fluoride in community water is linked with cancer, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Academy of Sciences have concluded (as well as the ADA) that there is no such link.

I highly doubt that dentists, the EPA, and the NAS are in some sort of conspiracy to (since more tooth decay=more money for dentists) increase cancer.

There are many bunk sites on the web containing medical information, and this fluoride alert site is one of them. This discussion should end. Everyone drink their milk, too, as osteoporosis and bone loss is a significant cause of hip fracture and bone deformity.

In the Netherlands we had a test with fluoridated tap water in the 70’s (in Tiel, for interested Dutch readers). The results were favourable, but for political reasons it was decided that it was best to fluoridate toothpaste. Since fluoridation of toothpaste our dental health has improved dramatically. For years children were advised to eat fluoride tablets, but now they upped the amount of fluoride in toothpaste, and tablets are no longer advised. This is done because immigrant children often did not take supplements, but do brush their teeth. However: dentists raise alarm bells because they see a huge incline in cavities in children.

I do agree with the comments that probably fluoride is not necessary for most people eating a very healthy diet. However: I do not know many people that eat a truly healthy diet with lots of raw vegetables. Meat is supposedly very bad, but most vegans I know overeat on sweets (dried fruit, fruit juices, some herbal teas etc.) for example. On the other hand: I know a couple of very small children that already had lots of cavities living mostly on breastmilk. So I guess diet is not everything, and it is probably hard to compensate for the bad habits of our parents and grandparents.

I also agree with the comment about bottled water. I think it is absolutely unethical to drink bottled drinking water on a regular basis. To be truly healthy it is important to be concerned about the health of the entire planet, not just your own.

http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/fluoride.html

“Cancer Scares

In the mid-1970s, John Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D. and another anti began issuing a series of reports claiming that fluoridation causes cancer. Experts concluded that these reports were based on a misinterpretation of government statistics. They had compared cancer death rates in fluoridated and nonfluoridated cities but failed to consider various factors in each city (such as industrial pollution) that are known to raise the cancer death rate. By 1977, independent investigations by eight of the leading medical and scientific organizations in the English-speaking world had refuted the claims, but they still surface today in many communities that consider fluoridation.

In 1990, the cancer charge was raised again following an unauthorized release of data from an experiment in which rats and mice were exposed to high dosages of fluoride. The experiment was conducted by the National Toxicology Program, a branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The agency’s final report stated that there was no evidence of cancer-causing activity in female rats or in male and female mice and only “equivocal evidence” in male rats. Subsequent review by a U.S. Public Health Service expert panel concluded that the data were insignificant and that fluoridation posed no risk of cancer or any other disease.”

They also have a page specifically directed towards Yiamouyiannis:
http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/yiamouyiannis.html

I didn’t realize that he was also an opponent of vaccination.

“Yiamouyiannis was also opposed to vaccination. In High Performance Health, he expressed concerns that when vaccinations are given during the first few months of life, “it is likely that at least a portion of those vaccinated suffer permanent damage to the immune system.” He also speculated that vaccinated people would have a higher incidence of AIDS. There is no scientific evidence supporting either of these views.”

2. In 1977, the National Academy of Sciences said, “it would be important to have direct evidence that osteogenic sarcoma rates in MALES UNDER 30 have not increased with fluoridation.”

3. The National Toxicology Program conducted a study, which took more than 10 years that ruled fluoride an “equivocal carcinogen”, and further stated “The current findings are weakly supportive of an association between sodium fluoride administration and the occurrence of osteosarcomas in MALE rats, but are not conclusive… in view of the widespread exposure of the population to fluorides from a variety of sources it would appear prudent to re-examine previous animal and human epidemiologic studies, and perform further studies as needed to evaluate more fully any possible association between exposure to fluorides and the occurrence of osteosarcomas of bone.
Interestingly, in this cancer study, EVERY SINGLE tumor that was found was downgraded to a less significant tumor. This was not done by the researchers, but by someone else after the study was completed.
4. In 1990, a National Cancer Institute study concluded, “In summary, analysis of incidence data from the SEER program has revealed some age- and sex-specific increases over time for bone and joint cancers, and for osteosarcomas, which are more prominent in fluoridated than in non-fluoridated areas.” They ruled these results inconclusive because they did not have a clear dose-dependent data set.
5. 1992: The New Jersey Department of Health conducts a study and concludes, “The study observed an association between fluoridation of water and osteosarcomas among MALES UNDER 20 years of age in seven Central New Jersey counties”
6. 1993: Dr. Yiamouyiannis finds that, “These findings indicate that fluoridation is linked to an increase in bone cancer and deaths from bone cancer in human populations among MALES UNDER age 20 and that this increase in bone cancer is probably all due to an increase in osteosarcoma caused by fluoride.”
7. 1996: Japanese researchers find, “Our data and the NTP findings provide evidence that bone can be an organ for NaF carcinogenesis”
8. 2001: Bassin’s Thesis: “Among MALES, exposure to fluoride at or above the target level was associated with an increased risk of developing osteosarcoma…All of our models are remarkably robust in showing this effect during the mid-childhood growth spurt, which, for boys, occurs at ages seven and eight years…Our results are consistent with findings from the National Toxicology Program animal study which found ‘equivocal evidence’ for an association between fluoride and osteosarcoma for male, but not female, rats and from two ecological studies that found an association for males less than twenty years old.”

It seems that there is plenty of evidence that fluoride is capable of causing cancer, and that in young males, exposure to fluoride results in an increased risk of osteosarcoma. Anyone can draw their own conclusions, but the data speaks for itself.

That was the study that was NOT performed.

The article discusses the Bassin thesis. It quotes the founding editor of the journal Epidemiology, who - in contrast to Axiom’s friend - believes the study was well done and of “publishable quality.”

But, the most priceless statement in the article, is the journalist’s own observation that the promotion of fluoridation has “not been science’s finest hour.”

Ah, so true…

In this issue: a girl who throws, a boy who stays out late, and a cow.

“The basic problem from a statistical point of view is the subset analysis of a preplanned study that failed to find significance for this endpoint. The appropriate use of subset analysis is to examine the contributions to a significant result and to determine if the differences are isolated in a few groups or were they consistent across gender, race, age and geography. To subset/data-mine a nonsignificant result is almost guaranteed to isolate a significant subset - this is done for hypothesis generation and should be confirmed in another study with this finding as a preplanned endpoint. I would also ask if the entire dataset was used in a model with an interaction term for gender x fluoride exposure x age group is that term significant. If not there is no finding.

I am also courious as to how age was used in the model. The write up suggests that she did not have a model with indicator terms for 10 (or whatever the cutpoints were. Without including everything she cannot say that relative to other age groups and to females there is an increased risk of . . . . . which is what seemed to be implied.

I am certain that dental school dissertations and journals are not statistically reviewed for ‘peer-reviewed’ journals.”

Summary:

1. “To subset/data-mine a nonsignificant result is almost guaranteed to isolate a significant subset” - i.e., if you go in with a predetermined bias, you will be able to construct a filter that supports your bias. I.e., you could construct a filter that supports your bias that “people born on Tuesday are more likely to get cancer, ergo astrology works!”

2. “should be confirmed in another study with this finding as a preplanned endpoint.” - no work was done to support the hypothesis.

3. “I would also ask if the entire dataset was used in a model with an interaction term for gender x fluoride exposure x age group is that term significant. If not there is no finding.” - Make a model of expected behavior and then run the WHOLE dataset. If your model is not supported on this hand-picked dataset, start over.

Fundamentally, the dissertation is considered to be a non-indicator.