If your tap gushes water laced with fluoride, you’re taking a powerful drug with every sip.



Imagine a stranger pressing you to drink a clear liquid with no special odor, color, or taste. “Just drink, it’s good for you,” he insists. What would you do? Refuse it, probably. And if the stranger were to become overbearing, you’d want to bat it away. At least, you’d want to know what’s in that water and what it might do to you. But do you know what’s in your own tap water?

One of the things in your water is fluoride. It’s supposed to be good for your teeth. In the US, Israel, and other countries in the Middle East the law requires that fluoride be added to the water supply. So it must be OK – go ahead and drink. Considering the scarcity of water in the Middle East, just be grateful. You might hesitate, though, if you knew that the comforting fluoride in your glass of water is used as rat poison. In this story I interview someone who has worked for a national water carrier. What she says might shock you.

It’s no secret where fluorides come from. They are the direct, unprocessed wastes of fertilizer, nuclear, aluminum, steel, and pesticide industries. Once hailed as a cheap way to rescue the population from tooth decay, it is proven to be a powerful toxin that causes, and aggravates, a long roster of ills.

According to studies provided by the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), cancer, arthritis, thyroid dysfunction, and neurological disorders are related to fluoride intake. Brittle bones. Calcification of the pineal gland.

We interviewed Prof. Loty Zilberman, occupational health and toxicology consultant and former water engineer for Mekorot, the Israel water company, to learn more.

GP: How toxic is fluoride?

Prof. Zilberman: It’s so corrosive that storage facilities have bunkers built around them for safety. Workers must wear full body protection.

Fluorides draw copper out of plumbing pipes, so our water contains copper. Boys and young men are at special risk of asthma and neurological dysfunction, leading to violent behavior, from excess copper absorption. The synergy of fluorides with other waste products in our water produces a most powerful toxin that increases risk of Alzheimer’s and and osteosarcoma (a type of cancer), again, especially in boys. Fluorides neutralize iodine, so that thyroid patients taking iodine medication suffer.

Excessive fluoride causes fluorosis – white streaks on children’s teeth. So what is it doing to the rest of their bones? Children are most at risk from the toxic effects of fluoride, absorbing three times as much as adults do. Bottle-fed babies inevitably drink fluoride in their formula.

We see the effects of excess fluoride in the rocketing levels of cancer and arthritis in today’s children and young adults.

GP: And this rat-poison business…? What’s that all about?

Prof. Zilberman: Fluoride, being a protoplasmic toxin, is used as rat poison.

GP: Quite a little shop of horrors! What are safe levels of fluoride in water?

Prof. Zilberman: In Israel, no studies have been conducted to determine safe levels. In the US, fluoridation laws were passed before any studies were done.

GP: Is fluoride in all water?

Prof. Zilberman: Any water that comes out of a tap in Israel has fluoride. We’re talking about the water used for agriculture and food and drink industries. The water with which you wash laundry, shower, and brush your teeth. You absorb the fluoride in water through the skin, so that every time you wash your hands, you get another tiny dose of it.

GP: Can’t we just boil it out of our drinking water? What about filtering it?

Prof. Zilberman: Boiling water only concentrates the fluorides in it. Popular household filters don’t affect it. The only way to eliminate fluoride from water is by reverse osmosis, a costly setup. So people without financial means have no choice but to keep absorbing fluorides.

Medicine should not be given out indiscriminately to an entire population. Fluoride is a medicine that dentists should prescribe when necessary, and monitor just as any other doctor monitors a patient taking a prescription drug.

GP: Why do fluorides get dumped into our water, anyway? And why do our governments still sing the “It’s Good For You” song?

Prof. Zilberman: I can answer only for Israel. It’s cheaper than burying it. It can cost thousands of shekels per cubic meter to remove waste. The Koor factory in Acre, for example, may have 15 cubic meters of waste daily.

Industries have a financial interest in maintaining fluoridation. The government apparently still holds by the outdated idea that it prevents dental cavities. Perhaps there’s also the fear that, as happened in the US, once the toxic effects of fluoride are understood, people will start suing industries for damages.

GP: Thank you, Professor Zilberman!

We are obliged to absorb fluoride every day, all day long, and have no say in the matter. In what other case does the law mandate medicating an entire population without the people’s knowledge and consent? Because that’s what fluoride is – a drug. A drug administered without monitoring individual dosage, one whose “treatment” has no time limit.

Take people who drink lots of water every day: athletes, diabetics, soldiers, people with kidney problems. They’re absorbing vast amounts of fluorides, and there’s not a thing they can do to control it. Shouldn’t they – and everyone else – have the choice?

On top of everything else, fluoridation doesn’t even prevent tooth decay.

This list of FAN’s excerpts from scientific literature argues that swallowing fluoride does little or nothing to stop formation of cavities. In other words, the correct way to use fluoride is by applying it directly to the teeth, as Prof. Zilberman suggests, in the dentist’s office. Not by making everyone swallow it.

Again, from FAN: “Several studies indicate that dental decay is coming down just as fast, if not faster, in non-fluoridated industrialized countries as fluoridated ones (Diesendorf, 1986; Colquhoun, 1994; World Health Organization, Online).”



More and more communities in the US and Canada are choosing to eliminate fluoride from their water. 97 percent of Western European countries have stopped fluoridation. Japan doesn’t fluoridate water.

It didn’t happen by itself. If you’re disturbed by this post, you too can do something about fluoridation. Write to everyone you can think of: the local water company, the municipality, Israeli Knesset members or state representatives in your communities.

Organize a petition and shamelessly canvass your family and neighbors to sign. Use social media. It’s time that fluoridation of our water stopped.

Listen to international experts speak on the dangers of fluoridation on this video from FAN.



More on water in the Middle East from Green Prophet:

Water & The Middle East At A Glance

Water Woes in the Middle East

Photo by Carnoodles via Flickr.

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