UK Health Ministers are acting beyond their stations this week, calling for powers to mass-medicate the UK population with Fluoride. I can’t help thinking that depriving people of a choice and pumping (more) chemicals into the water supply is a bit, what’s the word… crazy? Yes, I’m well aware that it’s been going on in certain regions of the UK for a long time now, but I’m fortunately living in one of those areas where it doesn’t. If I want fluoride, I’ll go get some. Oddly enough, it’s the same approach I otake with antibiotics. Or chocolate. Or anything else I decide to consume. Furthermore there’s increasing evidence, trotting out of China no less, that is particularly damning when it comes to fluride in water supplies. We’re not talking dodgy tooth enamel and swiss cheese bones here people, no, we’re talking about fluoride causing brain damage. In truth, it’s lowering IQ’s, but the link text is king and I fancied some sensationalism.
The gist of the study is that, in two villages distinguished only by the flouride content in their water supply, children from the high fluoride areas were found to have test-provably lower IQ’s than the children from the low flouride village. Most of the safety studies performed in the past, you see, were performed on rats and, judging from the results of those trials it seems to me that they were only watching to see if the rats dropped dead. They weren’t tasking them with calculus, or even basic addition. Had they done so they’d have long ago realised that it was indeed making the rats more stupid. Or less intelligent (If the glass is half full for you. Of low-flouride water, of course.)
So this study may be flawed, but the fact is that there isn’t any damning evidence to the contrary and, in that condition, it’s alarming that the government is considering a mass medication programme of this nature. Perhaps they haven’t read this report out of China, or perhaps they’ve just taken another fat bung from British Aluminium.
See, Fluoride is what happens when you electrolyse sodium-aluminium-fluoride. Gory details toward the end of this little PR page on aluminium production. So what happens to the waste product?
Fluoride was originally pursued as a rat poison but, faced with having to get rid of huge quantities of the stuff, far more than RentoKill could chew through in a decade, the aluminium industry turned to local legislators and convinced them dumping the stuff into the water supply would be good for childrens teeth. Everyone knows that Britons have bad teeth, so the move was considered genius and approved. Everyone wins. Governments get a kickback from the Aluminium producers, the Aluminium producers get rid of their waste and the children of the UK grow up with shiney teeth and an IQ so low that they are unable to question the system.
Bravo.
The absurdity of all this is compounded by the fact that the only positive reason cited for adding toxins to the water supply is that it helps your teeth by hardening them. Well, excuse me, but isn’t brushing your damn teeth a simpler alternative? If your child is too stupid or too lazy to brush its own teeth then you’re either a bad parent or natural selection is guiding your kid toward a soft food diet.