[All] FAN-Australia drops a bombshell on Water Fluoridation

[Carole Clinch]

**

*FAN-Australia drops a bombshell on Water Fluoridation.*
*
**Brisbane, Australia 4th April  2011***

* *

Merilyn Haines, the director of the newly formed group FAN-Australia
(Fluoride Action Network Australia), has found some startling statistics
buried deep in official research material by ARCPOH (The Australian Research
Centre Population Oral Health at the Adelaide Dental School) that could
scuttle the water fluoridation program once and for all.

Haines has found in the ARCPOH statistics that the permanent teeth of
children in largely unfluoridated  (<5% before 2009) Queensland were
erupting on average* two years earlier* than the children in the rest of
Australia, which is largely fluoridated (see the figure below). A two-year
delay would negate all the small reductions in tooth decay claimed by dental
researchers since 1990. *In other words fluoridation doesn't work. *Any
difference in tooth decay claimed to be due to fluoride is simply an
artefact of the delayed eruption caused by fluoride.



[image: cid:image003.jpg at 01CBF298.9D636A00]



Source – Published and unpublished data from 2003- 2004 Australian Child
Dental Health Surveys

( unpublished data obtained by Freedom of Information application)





According to Professor Paul Connett, director of the Fluoride Action
Network, who is currently on a fluoride-tour of New Zealand, *“Critics of
fluoridation, like Dr. Hardy Limeback in Toronto, have long pointed out that
any reduced tooth decay touted by promoters could easily be accounted for by
the delayed eruption of the teeth. Even when this argument received strong
experimental support from Komarek et al. in 2005, this has still has been
ignored by those promoting fluoridation. But they cannot ignore it any
longer: the figures of the dental department research team most associated
with the promotion of fluoridation in Australia (and beyond) demonstrate
that this delay is real.”*



Less teeth erupted for any given age would mean less surfaces available for
tooth decay to have taken place. A delayed eruption of one – two years would
account for the small reductions claimed in ALL the US and Australian
studies published since 1990 (Brunelle and Carlos, 1990; Slade et al., 1996;
Spencer et al., 1996; Armfield et al., 2009; Armfield, 2010). These studies
have found reductions ranging from 0.12 of one permanent tooth surfaces
saved in Western Australia (Spencer et al., 1996) to 0.6 permanent tooth
surface saved in the largest survey ever conducted in the US (Brunelle and
Carlos, 1990). This is not very much when you consider that there are five
surfaces to the chewing teeth and four to the cutting teeth, and by the time
all the child’s teeth have erupted there are a total of 128 tooth surfaces.
One tooth surface saved amounts to less than 1% of all the surfaces in a
child’s mouth. *Now even this small benefit has evaporated.*



*More on the history. *



In 1999, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia’s peak
Medical Research body, stated that, “*evidence exists that tooth eruption is
delayed in fluoridated areas. It has been suggested that a proper comparison
of caries rates should involve children one year older in fluoridated areas
than in non- fluoridated areas.”*


In 2000, the York Review pointed out that none of the studies that they had
reviewed had controlled for "the number of erupted teeth per child”
(McDonagh et al., 2000, p.24).



In 2005, Komarek et al.  did control for eruption of teeth and reported no
difference in decay between children living in Belgium receiving fluoride
supplements (and those who weren’t) that was relatable to fluoride exposure
(as measured by the severity of dental fluorosis).



In 2009, Peiris et al. reported that children in largely fluoridated
Australia had a delay in "dental age" of 0.82 years compared to children in
largely unfluoridated UK. However, the authors did not discuss the possible
reasons for this delay and the number of children involved in the study
(about 80 in each country) was not very large.

2011. Now the bombshell – the delay has been found and it is in the official
statistics.  ARCPOH has failed to respond to several inquiries on this
matter.  According to Haines, *“Surely, this must end water fluoridation. If
it doesn't work what's the point of putting this toxic substance into the
drinking water and what reason can they possibly have for forcing it on
people who don’t want it?”*


However, this isn't just about teeth. The finding could be even more
significant than that. If fluoride causes a delayed eruption of the teeth
then the most likely mechanism for doing so is fluoride's ability to lower
thyroid function (see chapter 8 in the 2006 National Research Council
review, “Fluoride in Drinking Water.” According to Connett,  *“Lowered
thyroid function in infants would mean slower growth of their tissues and
could explain the 24 studies that have found an association between lowered
IQ in children and exposure to moderate levels of fluoride in China, India,
Iran and Mexico*.”



It also raises the possibility that millions of people in fluoridated
countries suffering from hypothyroidism have had this condition caused, or
exacerbated, by exposure to fluoridated water.  Haines’ asks *“If ingesting
fluoride delays tooth eruption for 1 to 2 years what other effects is it
having on our bodies?”*



*Meanwhile, if swallowing fluoride does not reduce tooth decay, why would
any reasonable person, decision maker or regulatory official continue to
sanction adding fluoride to the public water supply?*
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