by Paul Connett
Animal Studies
There are many animal studies of fluoride’s impact on the bone and brain, as well as on the endocrine and reproductive systems. These are discussed in subsequent chapters along with some important human studies.
Farm and Domestic Animal Studies
Normally, when we talk about animal studies, we are thinking about animals used in lab studies, like rats, mice, and guinea pigs. However, in the history of fluoride pollution (see chapter 9) the fluoride poisoning of farmyard animals has been of great concern. Grazing cows have literally been brought to their knees by fluoride emissions from aluminum smelters.
One of the pioneers in researching the impacts of fluoride on farmyard animals was Dr. Lennart Krook, a veterinary pathologist at Cornell University. Dr. Krook passed away in April 2010. One of his last studies involved investigating the mysterious illnesses affecting a number of quarter horses on Cathy and Wayne Justus’s farm in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. 34 Some of the horses died. It was only when Cathy and Wayne Justus changed the horses’ water supply that the symptoms of the remaining animals began to clear up. Dr. Krook was able to show that the likely cause of the horses’ ailments was fluoride. This event led to the halting of fluoridation in Pagosa Springs. A very disturbing videotape of these horses can be viewed online. 35 The Justus and Krook study was published in the journal Fluoride in 2006. 36
The problem for both cows and horses is that they drink very large quantities of water, so should they be exposed to fluoridated water, their fluoride exposure can be very high indeed.
Another animal that might be very sensitive to fluoride is the dog. The dog is one of the few animals that succumbs to osteosarcoma, and larger dogs commonly lose strength in their rear legs. Fluoride is known to cause arthritic-like symptoms and is suspected of causing osteosarcoma in both rats and humans (see chapter 18). With the possibility that dogs are getting high levels of fluoride in pet food, 37 especially pet food that contains bonemeal, there is a very real chance that fluoride may be the causative agent for these conditions. These speculations need to be investigated.
Summary
The chemistry and biochemistry of fluoride, and its kinetics in the body, are such that fluoride can function as a cumulative poison when small amounts are ingested over a long period by drinking fluoridated water. Fluoride circulates in the blood and accumulates in calcifying tissues, which include the bone, the teeth, and the pineal gland. It can inhibit the function of a variety of enzymes in vitro (“in vitro” literally means “in glass” and is used to indicate an experiment performed outside the whole body ). Also in vitro, in combination with traces of aluminum, fluoride can interfere with G proteins, used by many water-soluble messengers, such as hormones and growth factors, to deliver their messages to the inside of the cells of tissues they help regulate. Although more difficult to prove, it is reasonable to assume that many of the effects seen in vitro can occur in the whole body.
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Fluoride Poisoning of Humans:
Early Reversible Effects
Reports began to emerge soon after fluoridation of public water supplies began that some people appear to be very sensitive to fluoride, even at the supposedly low level of 1 ppm in water. Unfortunately, governments that support fluoridation have never bothered to investigate this issue in a scientific manner. In 2008, Dr. Bruce Spittle published a book, Fluoride Fatigue, 1 that goes into the issue of individual sensitivity to fluoride and covers many of the findings discussed in this chapter.
Dr. George Waldbott and Sensitivity to Fluoride
Dr. George Waldbott earned his medical degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1921 and emigrated to the United States shortly afterward. As a physician in clinical practice, he specialized in the treatment and study of allergic and respiratory diseases. He was the first doctor to demonstrate that some people are sensitive to penicillin and that tobacco causes lung damage. Beginning in the 1950s, he increasingly turned his attention to the adverse health effects of environmental pollutants, especially fluoride. 2 He continued that work until his death, in 1982.
H. T. Petraborg, a medical doctor practicing in the town of Aitkin, Minnesota, gave an example of Waldbott’s work on sensitivity to fluoride:3
In 1955 Waldbott described a case of progressive illness in a woman aged 35, characterized by weakness, severe headaches, pains in the epigastric area, diarrhea alternating with constipation, and hemorrhages of the uterus. A cardinal feature of the disease was a gradual loss of strength and increasing fatigue which led to complete disability. Waldbott attributed this disease to intolerance to fluoridated water. The patient improved promptly following elimination of fluoridated water. When the subject was given, unbeknown to herself, a test dose of fluoride the disease recurred. Subsequently, Waldbott (1956) reported a series of 52 similar cases. 4
Later, other doctors, including Petraborg, repeated Waldbott’s findings. 5, 6
Spittle provides a long list of the symptoms that Waldbott identified and called chronic fluoride toxicity syndrome. 7 The symptoms involve various skin rashes, gastrointestinal symptoms, urinary problems, bone and joint pain, neurological symptoms (headaches, depression, etc. ), and excessive tiredness not relieved by sleep.
Many of the symptoms that Waldbott reported are very common complaints and have many different causes. Some have suggested that Waldbott’s patients were imagining these symptoms. That might explain some cases but certainly not all, because some patients had no prior knowledge of the issue of fluoride or water fluoridation. All that many people knew before they reported to Waldbott (and other doctors) was that they were experiencing problems, and neither they nor their doctors could explain the cause. No conventional treatment worked.
Some have pointed out that several of the symptoms described by Waldbott correspond to symptoms that appear or disappear when people are given placebos but think they are getting a particular drug—the so-called placebo effect. In Continuing Evaluation of the Use of Fluorides, Dr. Donald Taves cites D. M. Green8 to explain the issue, as follows:
A patient having gone from doctor to doctor and probably being labeled a “crock, ” who finds a sympathetic doctor who “knows” that fluoride is the source of his problems is going to try very hard to support his explanation. Expectation plays a very large role in what subjects experience when given placebos (such as capsules of sugar). Green reported a wide variety of symptoms (gastrointestinal, heartburn, drowsiness, blurred vision, dizziness, dry mouth, palpitation, urinary frequency and vomiting) among half of 50 professional people given placebos. The professionals, expecting that they might be getting an active drug, naturally worried about the side effects. Patients tended, on the other hand, to have a decrease in symptoms when given placebos. 9
However, the most important and consistent finding by Waldbott and others is that these symptoms clear up within a few weeks if the source of fluoride is removed, and return when exposure recurs (often without the patient’s knowledge). Where possible, Waldbott and others (e. g. , Grimbergen10 ) conducted double-blind trials to demonstrate the phenomenon.
Some commentators have wondered how one substance could cause so many problems. However, since fluoride interferes with many biochemical processes (see chapter 12), we should not be surprised to see a wide range of symptoms. We should also remember that there is some indication that fluoride interferes with thyroid function, and we know that those suffering from hypothyroidism also have many symptoms that overlap with the symptoms in Waldbott’s list (see chapter 16).
Moreover, many of these symptoms have also been observed in situations where people have received high doses of fluoride. We discuss some of these below. Thus, this looks like a sensitive response to a toxic substance rather than an allergic reaction mediated by the immune system (although skin reactions are somewhat reminiscent of contact allergy to nickel and other substances). Waldbott himself said, “By far the majority of my cases had no bearing on allergy (hives, ast
hma, allergic nasal and sinus disease and so on). They pertained to intolerance to fluoride that is true poisoning. ”11
Extreme sensitivity to any toxic substance should be expected in a small fraction of people. In any human population there is a very wide response to a toxic substance. We can expect that a small percentage will be very resistant to a particular substance, a small percentage will be very sensitive, and most of the population will be somewhere in the middle.
In 1997, Shulman and Wells analyzed reports obtained from the American Association of Poison Control Centers of suspected over-ingestion of fluoride by young children (less than six years of age). This poisoning arose from the consumption of home-use dental products, like fluoridated toothpaste. The authors made the following comment:
Parents or caregivers may not notice the symptoms associated with mild fluoride toxicity or may attribute them to colic or gastroenteritis, particularly if they did not see the child ingest fluoride. Similarly, because of the nonspecific nature of mild to moderate symptoms, a physician’s differential diagnosis is unlikely to include fluoride toxicity without a history of fluoride ingestion. 12
These comments were made in the context of poisoning by relatively large amounts of fluoride (e. g. , 50 mg in one case). If it is difficult for parents and doctors to recognize the cause of these problems at such high doses, it underlines how much more difficult it is for doctors to recognize the cause of poisoning that may accrue from very much smaller doses of fluoride among people who are particularly sensitive to fluoride.
Feltman 1956, Feltman and Kosel 1961
In the late 1940s Dr. Reuben Feltman, a researcher at the Passaic Hospital in New Jersey, started a study at his own expense to investigate the effects on pregnant women and young children of ingesting sodium fluoride tablets. 13 In 1950 he received funding from the U. S. Public Health Service (PHS) to continue the study. In the study the dose administered was 1 mg, which corresponds to 1 liter of fluoridated water at 1 ppm. The study was designed to last ten years, but when early results showed that patients were experiencing side effects, the PHS stopped funding the study. When James Rorty, the editor of Exner and Waldbott’s book The American Fluoridation Experiment, asked about this termination in 1956, Dr. John Knutson, dental director for the PHS, stated that Feltman’s “original research application proposed ‘to determine the efficacy (in preventing caries) of the addition of measured doses of fluoride salts to pregnant women and children up to and through the age of eight years, ’” and Knutson claimed that none of Dr. Feltman’s progress reports mentioned “any ill-effects to the persons taking the fluoride pills. ” Knutson added, “In point of fact, there are no data based on careful scientific research to indicate that waterborne fluoride ingestion at the levels used for dental decay control has any ill effects. ”14
In 1961, Feltman, joined by a second researcher from Passaic General Hospital, George Kosel, published a final report on this work, in which they stated the following:
One percent of our cases reacted adversely to the fluoride (1 mg/day tablets). By the use of placebos, it was definitely established that the fluoride and not the binder was the causative agent. These reactions, occurring in gravid women and in children of all ages in the study group affected the dermatologic, gastro-intestinal and neurological systems. Eczema, atopic dermatitis, urticaria, epigastric distress, emesis and headache have all occurred with the use of fluoride and disappeared upon the use of placebo tablets, only to recur when the fluoride tablet was, unknowingly to the patient, given again. When adverse reactions occur, the therapy can be readily discontinued and the patient or parent advised of the fact that sensitivity exists and the element is to be avoided as much as possible. 15
Waldbott’s Struggle to Be Heard
Waldbott summarized his work in Fluoridation: The Great Dilemma, a book coauthored by Albert Burgstahler and Lewis McKinney. 16 Unlike his other work, which brought him considerable fame among allergists around the world, Waldbott’s work on fluoride was largely ridiculed by those who resented his opposition to fluoridation. He documented the struggle he had with the promoters of fluoridation in A Struggle with Titans. 17
Moderate- to High-Dose Responses to Fluoride
Evidence that the symptoms described by Waldbott and others are real for highly sensitive persons is that they mimic the symptoms that occur at much higher doses for people who are not extremely sensitive.
In the next sections we discuss some of the skin problems, gastrointestinal symptoms, bone and joint pain, and neurological symptoms that have been described in the studies of people with moderate to high exposure to fluoride, which mirror the symptoms found by Waldbott at much lower levels.
Skin Problems
There have been many reports of skin problems (rashes, ulcers, pimples, etc. , in the area of the mouth) associated with the use of fluoridated toothpaste. 18–23 As early as 1957, Thomas Douglas, MD, of Seattle, Washington, described the lesions caused by fluoridated toothpaste in 133 patients he had treated. He described the lesions as follows: “shallow superficially ulcerated areas which tend to have a whitish exudate on the surface and surrounding areas. The worst lesions and, indeed, the earliest lesions, commenced on. . . those areas which come into contact with the teeth. The tongue, hard palate, soft palate, floor of the mouth, gingival regions and oral pharynx also produced similar ulcerations. ” Of the 133 patients who had the lesions, 94 had gums that bled easily and 99 complained of soreness. 24
Muscle, Joint, and Bone Pain
Sodium fluoride (as a source for fluoride) has been used in the treatment of patients with osteoporosis in an effort to increase bone mineral density and reduce fractures (see chapter 17). However, a number of side effects, including rheumatic pain, have been reported. Riggs et al. reported the following:
Twenty-three of the fluoride-treated patients (dose = 18–27mg/day) had adverse reactions (38 per cent), which caused five of them to discontinue therapy; 13 had rheumatic symptoms (joint pain and swelling or painful plantar fascial syndrome), nine had gastrointestinal symptoms (severe nausea and vomiting, peptic ulcer, or blood-loss anemia), and one had both rheumatic and gastrointestinal symptoms. 25
It is also well established that the earliest symptoms of skeletal fluorosis are almost identical to the symptoms of arthritis. Here are just a few of the many reports:
The onset was insidious, and stiffness of the back and legs was a universal complaint. Almost all the patients complained of vague fleeting pains all over the body, particularly in the spine and in the knee-joints. 26
The onset of chronic fluorosis is insidious and may be confused with chronic debilitating diseases such as osteoarthritis, trace-element toxicosis, and trace-element deficiencies. 27
In the initial stages, the complaints of the patients are not remarkable. At first they experience vague rheumatic pains, then the pains become localized in the spine. 28
Neurological and Behavioral Problems
Headaches have also been reported as one of the early symptoms of skeletal fluorosis. For example, in a 1994 article on skeletal fluorosis in the American Journal of Roentgenology, Wang et al. reported, “The initial symptoms usually were headache and weakness. ”29
Waldbott wrote that as early as 1974 Russian physicians (Popov et al. 30 ) had reported neurological symptoms among patients suffering from occupational fluorosis. He also noted that Polish researchers (Czechowicz, Osada, and Slesak31 ) had observed effects on brain tissue in high-dose experiments with guinea pigs. These observations prompted Waldbott to suggest, “If such a direct action of fluoride upon nerve tissue should be confirmed by further studies, it would explain some of the diverse neurological complaints in arms and legs, such as numbness, muscle spasms and pains, and the frequent headaches. . . that I and others have encountered in the early stage of fluoride poisoning before bone changes occur. ”32
To date over eighty animal and biochemical studies have indicated that fluoride damages the brain and changes behavior
; twenty-three studies have indicated that fluoride at moderate doses is associated with lowered IQ; and two studies have shown behavioral changes that were associated with fluoride exposure in both children and adults (see chapter 15).
Gastrointestinal Symptoms
The excerpts in the following paragraphs illustrate numerous examples of gastrointestinal problems reported in cases where people have had moderate to high exposure to fluoride. We begin with a statement from the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pertaining to poisoning by fluorides in pesticides: “Ingested fluoride is transformed in the stomach to hydrofluoric acid, which has a corrosive effect on the epithelial lining of the gastrointestinal tract. Thirst, abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea are usual symptoms. Hemorrhage in the gastric mucosa, ulceration, erosions, and edema are common signs. ”33
Swallowing fluoridated toothpaste.
Shulman and Wells, mentioned above, discuss parents’ confusion of the symptoms associated with mild fluoride toxicity with those of “colic or gastroenteritis” when fluoridated toothpaste and other fluoridated dental products are swallowed by young children. 34
