A coalition of groups has served the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a Petition asking for a national ban on artificial water fluoridation chemicals. Just as people once thought lead, DDT and asbestos were safe, there was a time when those erroneous assumptions shifted and the policies were forced to change. This is now that time for artificial fluoridation chemicals.

A coalition of environmental, medical and health groups, including leading national nonprofit Moms Against Fluoridation (MAF), has served the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Petition calling on the Agency to ban the addition of artificial fluoridation chemicals to public water supplies due to the evidence-based risks that drinking fluoridation chemicals poses to the brain.

The TSCA Petition, which includes over 2,500 pages of supporting scientific documentation, claims that drinking fluoride has profound harmful effects on the brain that were never understood years ago when communities started adding the chemicals to the drinking water.

Now that science has extremely sophisticated laboratory tools and technologies, scientists are able to examine the brain in detail as never imagined decades ago. This Petition reveals broad brain changes from fluoride, ranging from IQ deficits, neuroanatomical and chemical changes, to the worrisome effects on the fetal brain.

"In times past when fluoridation was instituted, science only had the scalpel or basic X-ray technology, and we simply weren’t able to assess the brain in the way technology can today,” states MAF leadership.

The Petition was filed under TSCA, which authorizes the EPA with the ability to prohibit the “particular use” of a chemical that presents an "unreasonable risk" to the general public or susceptible sub-populations. The Petition argues the intentional addition of artificial water fluoridation chemicals now constitutes an “unreasonable risk” to citizens, and those risks have now been revealed by 196 new scientific studies included in the Petition.

A Decade of Increasing Scientific Concern:

Over 10 years ago, at the EPA’s request, the National Research Council (NRC), with taxpayer funding, reviewed fluoride toxicology and concluded in 2006 that:

“…it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means.”

"Not only do fluorides [adversely] affect transmitter concentrations and functions but also are involved in the regulation of glucagon, prostaglandins, and a number of central nervous system peptides including vasopressin… and other hypothalamic peptides."

"Fluorides also increase the production of free radicals in the brain through several different biological pathways. These changes have a bearing on the possibility that fluorides act to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease."

These findings and dozens more like them were published in the 507-page NRC report.

Drinking fluoride may be doing damage to our brains, but does drinking fluoride do any good at all for the teeth? The Petition’s author, attorney Michael Connett, says, "It is now understood that fluoride's predominant effect on tooth decay comes from topical contact with the teeth, not ingestion."

The Petition states: "Since there is little benefit in swallowing fluoride, there is little justification in exposing the public to any risk of fluoride neurotoxicity..."

“It is important to note,” says a MAF representative, "that not only does it appear that drinking fluoride does nothing for the enamel, but not a single long-term fluoridation safety trial has ever been conducted on the fetus, the brain or the thyroid by our government. Not one."

The government may not have done any safety clinical trials, but scientists around the world are interested in fluoride toxicity, and the research has become so extensive that fluoride is now classified alongside lead, mercury and PCBs as one of the “developmental neurotoxicants" according to esteemed journal, Lancet Neurology.

Mothers are appalled, and petitioner K. Lavelle says: "I don't want my family drinking a neurotoxin (fluoride) just like I don't want them drinking lead or eating arsenic. Period!"

Physicians are also deeply concerned about adding this chemical to the drinking water, as Angela Hind, M.D. notes: “Right now we have 1 in 6 children in the U.S. with neurodevelopmental brain disease, including ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders, low IQ and behavioral disorders, and 1 in 8 women who will develop thyroid disease. These two epidemics tell us that chemicals like fluoride and lead, both developmental neurotoxins and endocrine disruptors, have no place in our public water.”

Leading professionals in the field of dentistry are bothered as well. "As a practicing general dentist of 39 years, I was stunned when I saw the studies demonstrating the effects that drinking artificial fluoridation chemicals can have on the body—particularly, on the brain," comments Dr. Bill Osmunson, D.D.S. of Bellevue, Washington.

"This Petition is a watershed,” adds MAF. “Just as people once thought lead, DDT and asbestos were safe, there was a time, after much work and pushing by the people, when those erroneous assumptions shifted and the policies were forced to change. This is now that time for artificial fluoridation chemicals, as the science raises far too many concerns, and the EPA must act to protect the people."

Petitioners include Moms Against Fluoridation, The Fluoride Action Network (FAN), Food & Water Watch, Organic Consumers Association, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT), as well as individual co-petitioners.

The EPA has 90 days to respond.

To view the TSCA Petition, visit http://momsagainstfluoridation.org/epa-petition. See the delivery of the petition at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI-1GxTfS9U.

Links:

http://momsagainstfluoridation.org/epa-petition

http://momsagainstfluoridation.org

https://www.Facebook.com/MomsAgainstFluoridation/

@EndFluorideNow

http://www.ourdailydosefilm.com/

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