The difference between Water Fluoridation & Fluoridated Toothpaste

Letter from Roger D. Masters, to the current Governor of the state of Vermont

Subject: Government Deficits can be cut using Scientific Evidence

I am Research Professor & Nelson Rockefeller Prof. Emeritus of Government at Dartmouth, where I'm working on issues linking toxicology, brain chemistry, & behavior.  In peer reviewed publications with a senior chemist named MyronCoplan, we've identified two toxic compounds -- fluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6) or sodium silicofluoride (Na2SiF6) -- now added to water supplies of over 120 million Americans. In Vermont, they're  used in 24 water systems, including Burlington, the Champlain water district (serving Colchester, Essex, etc.,),
Middlebury, Montpelier, Poultney, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury, and Swanton.) Unlike fluoridated toothpaste, treated with sodium fluoride (NaF), when silicofluorides added to drinking water they leave behind toxic waste products
that are swallowed.

Although NEVER TESTED FOR SAFETY, these chemicals  are now used for over 90% of water "fluoridation" in the U.S.  Our research shows that where these compounds are added to water, children absorb more lead from
environmental exposures (like lead pollution, old houses with lead paint, etc.); for a number of reasons, this effect is more pronounced for poor minorities. Behavioral consequences include poor educational performance, more substance abuse, and higher rates of violent crime (with no comparable effect on property
crime).   Note that 50 years of debating water fluoridation ignored theimportant point: WHAT CHEMICALS ARE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE?

Whereas we don't find serious problems where sodium fluoride is added to water, the silicofluorides
are consistently associated with harmful side-effects.

The underlying mechanisms are interference with the brain chemistry needed for self control: all of these harmful effects could be described as duein part to greater impulsiveness (which explains the different effect on violent as compared with property crime).  Our data shows that ENDING THE USE OFSILICOFLUORIDES should produce big savings for taxpayers at federal, state, & local levels while reducing many costly problems.  For instance, estimates of the cost of each violent crime are often somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. Learning disabilities are estimated at $15,000 per child per year.  There's an estimated increase of about 100 violent crimes for each 100,000 population exposed to silicofluorides; it's not hard to do the multiplication for 120 million people exposed to these toxins (and I'm using conservative numbers).

As a former Vermont resident, I sincerely hope the state will provide national leadership
on an environmental issue that -- unlike most -- is both easy and inexpensive to solve. Given pressures on our criminal justice system, esp. in big cities, it's time to think about using science to try to cut the crime rate instead of spending money on new jails.  Nationally, adding the silicofluorides to the list of toxic chemicals barred
from sale in interstate commerce under the Toxic Substances Control Act (and in this case imported from China!!) would therefore save American taxpayers $$Billions AT NO COST.  For the state of Vermont, it would show the importance of putting science above party ideologies. Of course, the dentists who assume that
water fluoridation is always safe base this view on studies using sodium fluoride (NaF), a simple compound that splits in two so that the sodium is excreted without harm.

Supporters of water fluoridation rarely mention that less than 10% of water fluoridation uses sodium fluoride and ignore the major difference between sodium fluoride and either of the silicofluorides normally used for the purpose.  Along with this email are ATTACHMENTS describing our work along with a bibliography with over a decade of peer-reviewed studies.

It's been hard to get attention to these findings because the CDC dismissed them as "junk science" to cover up the mistake of approving silicofluorides for use WITHOUT TESTING in 1950.  That mistake was understandable at the time, since theManhattan Project needed to extract weapons grade uranium from phosphate rock and the silicofluorides were a toxic waste product we needed to discard without signalling the quantity of uranium being processed.  (This was the reason for the original introduction of water fluoridation, at the request of the Manhattan Project, during WWII -- and as the Cold War led to an arms race with the USSR, the basic problem only got worse in the late 1940's and 1950's).

The enclosures:
1)"To Committee2-21-11": my memorandum of testimony to a committee of
the NH House of Representatives (Feb. 22, 2011)
2) "#Synopsisforpressusage5": statement by Myron J. Coplan on the chemical
difference between silicofluoride and sodium fluoride.
3) "Toxins, Disease&Behavior13": short summary of harmful effects, illustrated
with 17 Figures and Tables of evidence.
4) "SiFPubs3j": Bibliography on silicofluoride toxicity

There are other reasons for ending silicofluoride use, by the way: their contribution to increased absorption of lead (and of manganese) is associated with higher disease rates, and helps explain why the U.S. has the most costly health care system in the world (we pay, per capita, about double the average
of 30 industrialized countries, but compared to these countries our life expectancy is about 1 year LESS. our infant death rate is higher (6.9 per 100,00 live births compared to 5.2) than average, and more than twice the obesity (see Internat'l Journ. Health Sci., vol 2 (July-Sept 2009), 221-226).    Health care costs
in Medicare and Medicaid could probably be reduced greatly by focusing on the harmful effects of heavy metals like lead and manganese: to do this, head hair screening provides an inexpensive and non invasive way of measuring both many toxins and the necessary minerals for proper brain function; where an individual has a high level of toxins, new methods of chelation can reduce their levels and help restore more normal behavioral responses.

I'll be happy to discuss this further with those on your staff -- and of course with you personally should you wish. And of course I'm willing to testify under oath on these matters should my expertise be desired by a committee of the Senate or House.  More details on this research are available on the web at: <http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rmasters> & my credentials are easily available in WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA.

 Sincerely,

  Roger Masters
  (Hanover, NH)