WMAF Leaflet - West Midlands Against Fluoridation

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Water fluoridation doesn’t work and is poisoning us !

The Medicines Directive 2004, a supporting European Court of

Justice 2005 ruling and the poor research evidence examined by the Government’s own York Review in 2000, all argue against this very unwise public health practice.

Fluoride is a bio-accumulative, toxic illegal medicine. We’re all forced to drink it, so it’s the equivalent of mass medication.

Please visit the WMAF website* for much more information, for links to

International and UK websites, fact-sheets, references substantiating the facts in this leaflet , links to anti-fluoridation groups and discussions on associated topics

.

What you can do

Contact West Midlands Against Fluoridation;

Write to your 3 Ward Councillors to protest about the practice;

Write to the Sec. of State for Health;

Make an appointment with your MP at his or her local surgery at which you can protest about the practice;

Write to your MP or prospective MP and ask them to oppose water fluoridation;

Write to Severn Tren t Water’s Chief Executive;

Record local newspaper items and bookmark sites with the minutes of

PCT and SHA meetings and notify BAF if you find mention of water fluoridation, salt fluoridation or milk fluoridation;

Join Friends of the Earth: fluoridation is one of their campaigns.

* West Midlands Against Fluoridation website. (www.wmaf.org.uk)

website: http://www.wmaf.org.uk

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West Midlands Against Fluoridation

Fluoride is added to our drinking water because the Department of

Health believes that it prevents tooth decay. However, the opposite viewpoint, which is promoted in this leaflet, is that it causes permanent damage to teeth, interferes with child development, causing ill health.

1. What is fluoride?

The fluoride added to our water is hazardous toxic waste from the phosphate fertilizer industry (hexafluorosilicic acid). Fluoride is not an essential dietary mineral and our bodies have evolved perfectly well without it. It has no role in the body’s essential processes. In fact it damages the structure of our bones and teeth. The background level of fluoride (as calcium fluoride) in fresh water is 25 times less than the levels of artificial fluoride added to our drinking water.

2. Why is it added to our water?

Dental and medical fashion state that the real causes of tooth decay

– poor diet and poor dental hygiene - can be over-ridden by compulsorily medicating entire populations with fluoridated water, even though the target group (disadvantaged 1-8 year-olds) are a tiny percentage of the population. This is illegal mass medication of the most irresponsible kind – medication which is not practised on the European mainland.

3. What harm can fluoride do?

Worldwide studies have identified many health problems associated with the ingestion and absorption of fluoride. As well as Dental

Fluorosis, there are bone diseases such as osteoporosis, osteoarth- ritis, skeletal fluorosis, bone exostoses and osteosclerosis.

In America there has been a 5-fold increase in bone cancer

(osteosarcoma) in teenage boys living in fluoridated areas .

email: wmaf@live.co.uk

Studies have also revealed kidney damage, hypothyroidism, IBS, eczema, hives, depression and hair loss. Many people, having eliminated fluoride from their diet, find that their symptoms have ceased.

Twenty studies from China have reported reduced IQ in children living in areas where the natural fluoride occurred at 1.5ppm per litre of water.

Fluoride is capable of entering most of our body cells where it reduces the production of cell energy.

Fluoride potentiates the entry of aluminium into our brains.

Evidence is emerging that aluminium is the cause of Alzheimers and dementia. Aluminium is present in drinking water.

4. Toothpaste, toddlers and baby formula

American parents are advised to phone a Poisons’ Center if a child swallows its fluoridated toothpaste. The USA’s Dept of Health has recently sanctioned a reduction in the concentration of fluoride from

1ppm/litre of water to 0.7ppm because of high levels of Dental Fluorosis and brittle bones. Consequently, American parents are advised not to prepare baby formula with fluoridated water as this now contains 175 times more fluoride than is found in breast milk. West Midlands’ parents are not warned about this danger to their babies . Fluoride enters the brain through the undeveloped foetal blood-brain barrier during pregnancy and in the first 6 weeks of life. Moreover, the brains of vulnerable bottle-fed premature babies are exposed to fluoride for a longer period of time.

5. Fluoride in Europe

– Human Rights

Fluoridation is practised in parts of England and in much of the Irish

Republic. The rest of Europe has refused, ceased, or never started fluoridation. Dental health in mainland Europe is as good as, or better than in England and Ireland. In the most comprehensively fluoridated areas such as Ireland and the West Midlands, one third of children and teenagers have Dental Fluorosis which is visible permanent malformation and disfigurement of the permanent teeth. This is expensive to rectify cosmetically (the NHS does not pay) and the treatment is often painful and unsuccessful.

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The Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine

1997 , Article 5, makes it quite clear that compulsory mass medication is unethical . The UK and Irish governments have not signed up to this

C onvention because they have flouted the Convention’s principles since the mid1960’s.

6. The illegality of fluoridation

In Europe, fluoridated water is legally regarded as being a functional food which is intended to prevent a human disease (dental decay) and is presented in the UK and Ireland as such. Therefore, by definition, fluoridated water is a medicine. Consequently, the EU Medicines’

Directive 2004 takes precedence over food legislation. However, this medicine has never been clinically tested and has never been granted a medicinal product licence. Therefore, it is an illegal medicine .

W e’re all overdosing on a substance which is an acknowledged developmental neurotoxin , this being the same thing as a bioaccumulative poison. No-o ne really knows how much fluoride we’re eating and drinking in our food and water because the Department of

Health is strangely reluctant to undertake any monitoring and meaningful research. Instead that Department relies on out-of-date food surveys.

The UK’s Water Act 2003 (Section 58) gave Strategic Health Authorities

(SHA’s) the legal power to order water companies to fluoridate our drinking water should a consultation with the affected local population decide in favour.

Unfortunately these consultations are rigged in favour of fluoridation.

Even if a majority of local people expresses its opposition, they are not heeded because unelected SHA’s say they have over-riding dental health reasons for ordering water fluoridation. For example, of those who took part in the consultation in Southampton in 2008, 72% were against - but the SHA went ahead anyway. In 1964 in Birmingham, and later in the rest of the West Midlands, in Newcastle, Nottingham-shire and Lincolnshire, there were no consultations and the measure was forced on people without individuals giving their informed consent which is our right.

email: wmaf@live.co.uk

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