Researchers in London, England, have created a device to test your water for fluoride that is so sensitive it can detect the substance even in low concentrations in a few drops of water. It’s portable, easy to use and considerably cheaper than current high-tech devices, BilkulOnline reports.
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While adding fluoride to water is a practice that’s supposed to help prevent tooth decay, too much of it can be harmful, especially to children — and that’s why this device is important, the researchers said.
The featured article focuses on testing to make sure you and your children don’t get too much fluoride, but the real concern here is there is no reason to be adding fluoride to anybody’s water, if for no other reason than it’s impossible to measure how much fluoride anyone is getting. Obviously, if you drink a lot of fluoridated water, you’re going to get more of the substance than if you’re someone who doesn’t drink water at all, or who only drinks pure bottled water.
And even though the article hints at fluoride’s dangers, there is so much more you need to know about fluoride, including:
1. Most developed countries do not fluoridate their water. That’s right. Most of Western Europe — 97 percent — do not add fluoride to their water.
2. Fluoridated countries do not have less tooth decay than nonfluoridated.
3. Fluoride affects many tissues in your body besides your teeth: According to a 500-page scientific review, fluoride is an endocrine disruptor that can affect your bones, brain, thyroid gland, pineal gland and even your blood sugar levels
4. Forty-one percent of U.S. kids who drink fluoridated water have dental fluorosis, a condition in which your tooth enamel becomes progressively discolored and mottled. It is not something that can be reversed.
5. A Harvard study shows that fluoride exposure lowers your children’s IQ. Not only that, other studies show that maternal fluoride exposure during pregnancy also lowers IQ in their children. Additional studies have also shown that fluoride can caused impaired ability to learn and remember, impaired fetal brain development and brain damage, especially when coupled with iodine deficiency.
6. Fluoride is an endocrine-disrupting chemical linked to the rising prevalence of thyroid disease.
7. Research shows that the only way fluoride actually works is to use it topically, not internally. It has no beneficial effects on teeth when ingested. Besides, there are far more effective and safer options for decreasing tooth decay than using a topical poison or ingesting a harmful industrial pollutant!
8. Fluoride is an unapproved drug. You read that right. Fluoride is indeed a drug, since it's used to prevent a disease (tooth decay), and no other drug has ever been administered as a public health measure across the board without regard for age, sex, medical need and other factors that might place you at increased risk for side effects. Patients who are prescribed drugs must be medically monitored, yet in the case of fluoride, no one is tracking anything — not even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In fact, the FDA doesn’t even recognize fluoride supplements as safe and effective, instead classifying them as “unapproved new drugs.”
9. Water fluoridation is a violation of freedom of choice. When you turn on the tap and drink the water your municipality supplies, you are drinking whatever they put in there, including fluoride.
10. There is a movement to end fluoridation worldwide. Clean pure water is a prerequisite to optimal health. Industrial chemicals, drugs, and other toxic additives really have no place in our water supplies, and with your help this movement can spread. Visit the Fluoride Action Network at fluoridealert.org and learn what you can do to help.