Toxicity of Artificially Fluoridated Water Richard D. Sauerheber, Ph.D.*
Palomar College**
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The Fluoride Story
Hard waters in the U.S. Southwest typically contain some calcium fluoride, from 0.2 ppm in Southern
California to 1 ppm in Texas. In Texas it causes structural effects on bones and teeth that are still
promoted by U.S. dental schools. Fluoride from the blood is trapped in dentine inside teeth at ten times
higher levels than in tooth enamel, making teeth interiors crumbly (National Institutes of Health). Texas
Dentist Dr. Heard first promoted natural fluoride consumption since enamel presented temporarily with
fewer cavities, but he later found it damaged teeth long-term and then fought against fluoride
consumption. We now know tong-term consumption of either natural or unnatural fluoride also leads to
thousands of times higher levels in bones than in water, that is irreversible and pathologic, weakening
bones (National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Report on Fluoride in Drinking Water,
2006).
Water districts inject artificial toxic fluosilicic acid into water to increase fluoride. Long-term drinking
causes fluoride to also accumulate into hydroxyapatite of the brain’s pineal gland and decreases IQ in
children (NRC). Ranking the 50 U.S. states according to % of the population receiving treated water
correlates strongly with modest increases in per capita heart attack rate, mental retardation and infant
mortality, while cavities were not decreased (Dental Dr. Osmundson study at fluoridealert.org). Children
raised on fluosilicic acid water develop 5 times more lethal bone cancer (WebMD article describing work
of Dr. Bassin, Harvard University).
The vast Niagara Regional Water in Canada stopped fluosilicic acid injection into water when learning
that 1) 1 ppm artificial fluoride in water interferes with thyroid function and in children this delays teeth
eruption, where statistics when read correctly prove it does not prevent decay but delays it and 2) that all
artificial fluorides are toxic compounds with lethality comparable to that for arsenic and lead in animal
studies (Environmental Science and Engineering, 2008). Although arsenic is a natural trace ingredient in
soils and water, it is a poison to be avoided, as are all artificial fluoride compounds, being calcium
chelators. Children in dental chairs have had heart attacks after accidentally swallowing fluoride gel.
Clinical trials have never been done, so the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never approved
artificial fluoride in public water supplies and admit that it “is a drug, not a mineral nutrient” and
fluoridation is an “uncontrolled dosage use of a drug”. In Hooper Bay, Alaska a water pump became
corroded by artificial fluoride, causing an overfeed that poisoned 302 people with one killed by heart
attack (New England Journal of Medicine, 1994, vol 330). In Pagosa Springs, Colorado, horses died from
skeletal fluorosis after only 9 years drinking 1 ppm fluosilicic water (Fluoride, February, 2006). Salmon
spawning is obliterated by artificial fluoride in water at only 0.3 ppm, but returns after discontinuing
fluoride dumping (fluoridealert.org).
This letter was published by the North county times, San Diego County newspaper for us in November,
2008.
Fluosilicic Acid Update, 2008
The vast Niagara Regional Water of Canada ordered all water district chemists to cease and desist from
injecting fluosilicic acid into municipal drinking water, superseding all existing fluoridation laws
(Environmental Science & Engineering Magazine, 2008). This resulted after the discovery that the effects
of ingested fluorides on teeth decay are nonexistent and were originally based on faulty statistical data,
and secondly, that all artificial fluorides are toxic calcium chelators with lethal doses comparable to that
for lead and arsenic, while natural calcium fluoride is not a toxic compound.
The fluoridation referendum in Nebraska, during the 2008 election, voted down fluoridation in 53 of 61
cities (a quarter million no votes, 30 thousand yes). Also, the Fluoride Conference, Toronto, Canada 2008
showed that: 1) 1 ppm fluoride in drinking water longterm causes iron deficiency anemia and 2) correlates
with modestly increased per capita heart attack, infant mortality and mental retardation and 3) in water
does not decrease teeth cavities.
Chemical Analysis of Poisoning from a Fluoridated Public Water Supply
Preface: This manuscript below is considered extremely important. The practice in the United States (but
which is forbidden in 90% of fully informed England) of injecting artificial fluoride compounds into
public drinking water supplies, and which thus enters into people’s blood and tissues, has not received
FDA approval, and yet is now very widespread. All fluoride compounds are calcium chelators at various
doses. Since every biological process in human physiology ever discovered requires millimolar free
ionized calcium ion to be fully operational, it is not possible for any health official at any rank to
guarantee that adverse health problems will never occur, inside one’s system or on one’s skin, as a result
of bathing in and consuming intentionally fluoridated water over their entire lifetime. The literature is
filled with an uncountable number of effects of these substances on human physiologic processes, mostly
because calcium ion is ubiquitous in its essential involvement in all. Even if free ionized calcium levels
are within a ‘normal range’ in treated persons, it is not possible to assess the influence of alterations in
body stores of calcium on the normal functioning of any particular bodily process. The U.S. Centers for
Disease Control is not prepared to sign a release that no one will ever be adversely influenced in any
bodily function by drinking fluoridated water compared to what would occur normally in the absence of
fluosilicates in their tissues and blood. All U.S. citizens should be protected from such risk.
All artificial fluoride compounds without calcium are listed as toxics in poison registries and have the
lethal potency comparable to arsenic. What this means is that if such a published dose were ingested by a
group of animals, then one fraction of the poisoned animals would be sickened but would recover, another
small fraction would not exhibit readily detectable symptoms, while most of the animals would be killed.
The mechanism of the lethal effect is different than that for arsenic and involves precipitation of blood
calcium ion, which blocks the heart beat. Amateur chemists and life scientists presume that artificial
fluorides can become some type of benefit when ingested in extremely minute doses but the experimental
evidence disproves such claims.
I am particularly concerned for our elderly retirement population who typically cannot maintain calcium
homeostasis because of age. It is simply impossible to test every calcium dependent bodily process that
could be subtly impaired now or in the future for any, let alone all, age groups over their entire lives, to
justify signing such a statement of release as above listed. The real cost of this ‘fluoridation’ experiment
on U.S. citizens, that has been administered by dentists with little actual clinical training and other public
health officials with little experience in conducting prospective experimental research with the scientific
method, will only in a few generations even begin to be understood. In all my 24 years of scientific
research, at both federal and private institutions, I have never witnessed such a complete breakdown in
communication between actual scientists, some of whom understand the scientific method reasonably
well, and those in control of mandating artificial water fluoridation procedures, for the purpose of altering
the blood composition of the citizens of this country. To all who promote fluoridation of water, which is
an artificial method of permanently adjusting human biology, not a natural environmental process, please
understand that willful presentation of false information to the public, for the purpose of preventing public
concern, questioning, or democratic debate on this issue, is against the law in some counties. Such laws
were passed because the burden of proof is not with those who freely oppose, and choose better brushing
and dental hygiene practices in situ, but with those who intentionally administer fluosilicic acid for the
purpose of influencing human physiologic processes in vivo, in the complete absence of prospective
clinical trials with explicit written permission and appropriate oversight from the National Institutes of
Health.
Treating water with the lowest toxicity halogen, chlorine, to sterilize bacteria prior to consumption, is
conservative, life saving self-defensive hygiene. Extrapolating however, by adding a higher toxicity
halogen, fluoride, to alter human tissues, is a radical, pre-emptive action, based on the assumption that
future bacterial caries will occur that will have required such action that were outside one’s own ability to
control. It considers irrelevant the common, complete absence of cavities in hygienic minded persons, and
that some households have zero access to another bathing and/or drinking water source. Based on
information in this manuscript, the author is concerned that the fluoridated city of Seattle, Washington,
where North West Pacific water is very low in calcium and magnesium ions, has the highest per capita
heart attack rate in the country. It had been formerly believed that this was due to a deficiency in calcium
and magnesium in the diet, but the possibility is much more likely to be due to the use of artificial soluble
fluoride compounds injected into the soft water, where no calcium is present to buffer the effects of added
fluoride. Also, a first suspected, not last suspected, phenomenon involved in the presence of heart attacks
in children under 13 (reported in a 2007 edition of Pediatrics) would be fluoride use, because it is so easy
to become overexposed to it. Many children like to swallow mint flavored toothpaste and in fluoridated
cities this is contra-indicated. I would also like to see studies of the percentage of people in fluoridated
cities having hip fractures and heart attacks who are of short but stout stature. It is likely that fluoride
long-term exposure is limited by the number of total fluoride binding sites that are available in the bony
skeleton. Those having the least bone mass for a given body weight would be the earliest to exceed the
total body burden of consumed fluoride during lifelong drinking.
Summary
The mechanism by which fluoride’s lethal poisoning of man and animals occurs is presented. “Low” level
fluoridation of municipal water exhibits well known alterations in teeth and bone structure and
calcification of tendons and ligaments. ‘Moderate’ doses cause spinal deformities and increased hip
fracture tendency and kidney and gall stones. Higher levels cause death and are responsible for its major
industrial use as a rodenticide. Solubility calculations indicate that fluoride doses required to decrease
calcium below physiological blood levels are comparable to those present in poisoned victims’ tissues and
to those causing decreased beat rates in isolated heart cells in culture. Acute lethal poisoning and many of
the chronic ‘low’ level effects of fluoride are mediated by calcium binding by the fluoride ion.
Introduction
An array of scientific findings indicate that the decision made by many cities as early as 1956 to add
fluoride (a rodenticide) to municipal drinking water, as long as the dose is below a certain level (usually 1
part per million, 1 milligram fluoride per liter or 0.05 mM) to decrease the incidence of something as
minor as tooth decay, was irrational. We now know that precipitates of calcium fluoride occur in
fluoridated water cities when the acidity is low (a pH above 7) depending on the fluoride level used. This
causes scaling of water pipes (1) and numerous biological effects in consumers, the extent determined by
the acidity and the amount of calcium in the water.
Fluoridated municipal water supplies in the United States have been found to contain fluoride levels
ranging anywhere from 0.012 mM to a record lethal accidental 7.5 mM (8). The biologic effects have
been diverse, covering the entire above range. In spite of lethal poisonings from municipal water
fluoridation programs, the Public Health Service retains its mandate to fluoridate all U.S. cities as soon as
possible and to reach out to other cities throughout the world in an effort to minimize tooth decay while
fluoridating the blood of the water consumer as though this were an acceptable alternative to topical
fluoride or to addition of fluoride to one’s own consumed water.
Unfortunately, in 1992 at the mouth of the Yukon River in Hooper Bay, Alaska the unthinkable
occurred. In what is considered an accident, an entire village was poisoned by its own fluoridated water
supply when the system malfunctioned. This represents the first ‘experiment’ in which human beings
were exposed to lethal doses of fluoride. Blood samples were measured for incorporated fluoride and
calcium ion and provided much pathologic information on the effects of high doses of fluoride
assimilated from municipal drinking water supplies (8). 296 residents were severely poisoned with one
fatality. Most had heart malfunction-associated symptoms and severe gastrointestinal pain.
It is now understood that the conversion of fluoride ion into HF, hydrofluoric acid, occurred in the
stomach due to the stomach acid HCl at pH 3 and the HF caused the intense pain. HF cannot be stored in
glass since it dissolves the container; it also dissolves leather and skin. Also blood calcium levels dropped
to 1/3 of normal in one victim, causing a heart attack and the loss of his life. Although the authors of the
study were uncertain whether the fluoride itself caused the effect directly or rather was due to its known
ability to precipitate magnesium or calcium ion, our recent computations indicate that low blood calcium
is responsible for the lethal effect of acute fluoride poisoning, as indicated below.
Precipitation of calcium fluoride into peoples’ bones, tendons and ligaments (9) occurs at typical doses
added to municipal water. The condition known medically as fluorosis is associated as expected with
spinal rigidity and bone fragility (2), the severity depending on the fluoride level present in the blood and
for how long.
If fluoride exposure is sufficiently high or prolonged, formation of kidney and gall stones is known to
occur, due to the low solubility of calcium fluoride (0.2 mM at pH 7 at room temperature) (4,6). People
with hyperparathyroidism or osteosclerosis are more susceptible in this regard to chronic consumption
than others since the calcium fluoride deposits in the soft tissues more efficiently because of lack of
sufficient binding sites in bones for it (1).
Interestingly, in children raised on fluoridated water, teeth themselves are more rigid while at the same
time may be somewhat more resistant to cavities, but no such effect on adult teeth occurs according to
many sources (1, chap. 39, p. 896). Thus fluoridation of adult blood is unnecessary and indeed useless for
this purpose.
The dean of Tulane University in New Orleans indicated that fluoridated water consumption at certain
doses eventually causes gum disease and for this reason New Orleans water was not fluoridated at the
time Chicago and New York and other cities approved it (1). Also, in 1960 under oath in Chicago, the
researcher for the Public Health Service who started the fluoridation idea admitted that his data
constituting the scientific basis for fluoridation were invalid, shattering its foundation (1). The original
observation that people consuming water in Texas that happened to have fluoride into it also had whiter
teeth than usual was insufficient to justify mass fluoride addition to other public water supplies, since no
one was cognizant of the coexistence of other unhealthful effects that also occurred.
The effects of fluoride are subtle enough to go unnoticed for most people at the levels of fluoridation
used currently in Southern California (0.012 mM)(Vallecitos Municipal Water district handouts) and at
the increased levels proposed to be used. But since fluoride is converted completely in the stomach to
hydrofluoric acid (5), the most corrosive substance known to man, it is likely that consumption of fluoride
at levels used in some cities is associated with ulceration of gastric and duodenal tissue (where the pH has
yet to return to basic values that occur in the middle intestine). And many report evidence in rats that it
eventually causes cancer (1),.
Some argue these effects are unimportant if the municipal water supply maintains very low levels of
fluoridation; but the longer the consumption occurs for an individual and the more elderly the person with
less cell division occurring in the gastric mucosa, the more overt symptoms become. Individuals with
ulcers or heartburn are not good candidates for the long term consumption of water containing fluoride,
particularly at doses allowed by the Public Health Service (2-4 mg/L, 0.1-0.2 mM)(VWD handouts).
These high doses can be dangerous depending on the amount of water consumed, the individual’s own
body chemistry, and the ionic composition and pH of the particular cities’ water that would be fluoridated
to this level.
We here determine whether and to what extent blood levels of calcium may be affected by various
fluoride doses that are known to occur in the blood of fluoridated water consumers to attempt to
determine its modes of action. Our calculations are consistent with the notion that fluoride’s lethal effects
on the heart are due to low blood calcium subsequent to saturation of body fluids with fluoride at its
known low solubility in the presence of physiologic levels of calcium.
Analytical Results and Discussion
Sublethal poisoning occurs at 0.1-0.2 mM fluoride in blood (3,7) and lethal poisoning occurs in the 0.2
to 0.6 mM range due to heart failure (3). We investigate the possibility that the margin of safety is so
slight between unnoticed effects (0.02-0.05 mM) to sublethal (0.1-0.2 mM) and lethal poisoning (0.2-0.6
mM) is because below the critical concentration of fluoride in the blood that causes precipitation of
calcium fluoride only chronic, often unnoticed effects would occur. Much like being near a hot electrical
wire, one can coexist next to it for lifetimes without any difficulties. But one false movement too close to
the wire would be a disaster.
With this in mind, we calculated the concentration of fluoride that would cause calcium fluoride
precipitates to first form, from the known solubility product constant (Ksp) for calcium fluoride (Ksp =
3.4 x 10-11 (6)) and the known concentration of calcium ion in normal human blood (3 mM) (5). The
computed dose is 0.1 mM. Here the concentration of fluoride is: [F-] = (Ksp/[Ca2+])1/2 from the definition
of the solubility product constant for insoluble salts where CaF2 → Ca2+ + 2 F- and Ksp = [Ca2+][F-]2 (see
Table I). The concentration of fluoride where the blood calcium level would be lowered to the lethal low
level of about 1 mM is 0.2 mM fluoride.
In Table I the calculated calcium levels that would coexist in fluid with a given fluoride level from
solubility considerations are compared with actual measurements of blood levels of calcium and fluoride
ion in the lethal poisoned human victim from Hooper Bay, Alaska. Note the good agreement between
theoretically calculated fluoride levels, that should lower blood calcium ion to levels below normal, with
the actual calcium and fluoride ion levels measured in the blood of this human victim poisoned with
fluoridated municipal water in Hooper Bay.
Also note the below-normal calculated calcium ion level that would coexist with fluoride doses found
to slow heart cell beat rates in detailed in vitro experiments (10). Isolated beating heart cell preparations
from mammals exhibit beat rates that are proportional to the calcium ion level in the incubation medium
from 0.3 – 3 mM. Calcium chelating agents EGTA and EDTA and the calcium binding site competitor
La3+ ion completely block excitation-contraction coupling in intact beating hearts and in isolated cell
preparations (11). Further, addition of fluoride to beating heart cell preparations slows beat rates in a
dose-dependent manner that Ksp calculations indicate would lower calcium ion levels in the incubation
medium (see Table I).
These calculated doses are fully consistent with other published data indicating that tissue levels of
fluoride in poisoned people are in the 0.2 – 0.4 mM range (5). Also the known human lethal dose is 1-5
grams per adult taken at one time acutely (3,5). Since the average adult contains about 43 liters of body
fluid this corresponds to a concentration of fluoride of 0.5 mM in such a case of instant acute poisoning.
Wang, Zhang and Wang also found the heart cell beat rate in cultured cells in well-controlled
experiments progressively slows with increasing fluoride levels in a regular, concentration-dependent
manner (10). Unlike skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle requires extracellular calcium ion from the
bloodstream to couple electrical excitation of the cell membrane with contraction of cardiac muscle fibers
(11). Each time the heart contracts, calcium fluxes into the heart cells from the extracellular fluid (at 3
mM calcium ion normally). When the heart relaxes, the calcium is pumped back out of the cell, allowing
the fibrils to relax. Lowered extracellular calcium ion levels block contraction of the heart.
These data together suggest that the mechanism by which fluoride ingestion is lethal is by causing
hypocalcemia and blockage of heart contractions. Fluoride levels in blood below 0.1 mM do not lower
calcium ion below normal as no precipitate yet forms in the blood at this or lower doses. But the instant
fluoride exceeds this amount to any degree, calcium ion precipitates and the blood level is lowered,
unable to support normal heart function.
Fluoride acts as an enzyme inhibitor for all enzymes requiring calcium for function by binding the ion
and is used routinely to block sugar metabolism in red blood cells for clinical laboratory analyses of blood
specimens. Fluoride also attaches to calcium anywhere this ion is concentrated throughout the body,
including teeth, bones, ligaments, skeletal muscle and brain. But the most crucial function requiring
calcium that is fluoride-sensitive is the mechanism of contraction in normal beating hearts.
That extracellular calcium is an obligatory requirement for heart cells to undergo contraction after
electrical excitation is well known. Heart cells do not have well-developed sarcoplasmic reticulum to
store calcium for this purpose as does all skeletal muscle, which does not exhibit this extreme sensitivity
to changes in blood calcium level. The cellular uptake of calcium occurs during the plateau phase of the
cardiac action potential and extracellular calcium is necessary for the development of contractile force
(11). The strength of contraction (inotropic state) of the heart depends on calcium, where half maximal
contractility occurs at 0.5 mM calcium outside cells (12).
It is also possible that chronic ‘low’ level biologic effects of fluoride are also mediated exclusively by
binding and sequestration of calcium. Prior to levels of calcium in the blood being lowered (below 0.1
mm fluoride), regions in the body enriched in calcium would still precipitate calcium fluoride, as in bone,
teeth, ligaments and brain. The usual physiologic response to such an insult is to increase levels of
hormones such as calcitonin to mobilize calcium from bone to fight the sequestration.
At higher fluoride doses, precipitates may be directly responsible for the known formation of gall and kidney stones in
fluoridated consumers.
The current level of fluoride in Southern California drinking water is 0.25 mg per liter or 0.012 mM.
The blood level is typically in consumers about 1/5 to 1/8 the water level. This is below the solubility for
calcium fluoride at normal body pH, temperature and prevailing body fluid calcium levels, and it is easy
for many to assume the information in this manuscript is irrelevant. But some cities use up to 1 or 1.5
mg/L (0.05-0.075 mM) or the Federal allowed ceiling of 2-4 mg/L (0.1-0.2 mM) and are near or at the
maximum level that would just begin precipitation of calcium, with hypocalcemia, unless the city water
happened to have so much calcium in it that it precipitated as the fluoride preventing the fluoride added
from entering one’s blood at that level.
Arguments that fluoridated cities have increased per capita heart attack rates because of fluoride’s
effects (U.S.P.H.S. Congressional Record, Mar 24, 1952 reporting 1,059 heart disease deaths in 1948 in
Grand Rapids, Michigan per year after 3 years of fluoridation but 585 per year before fluoridation; N.Y.
News Jan 27, 1954 reported after 9 years fluoridation in Newbourgh, 882 heart deaths per 100,000, 74%
above national rate from unfluoridated cities), rather than because high population density tends to
produce stressful lives, is consistent with this discussion. The Hooper Bay disaster contained its own
internal control, since part of the cities’ water was on a different fluoridated system that did not
malfunction at the time. Obviously the heart attack rate per capita was greater on the fluoridated system’s
water because of the fluoride, not because lives were more stressful in this section of Hooper Bay. As
reviewed in Fluoride Debate, Healthway House, 403 Mason St., San Marcos, 2001 by Anita Baker,
fluoride consumption has many reported direct effects on heart function (Fluoride 30, pp. 16-18, 1997, no.
1, where EKG analyses of patients with fluorosis is reported, and Lancet, Jan 28, 1961, p. 197 and
Tokushima, J. Exper. Med. 3-50-53, 156 where mottling of teeth caused by fluoridation was associated
with increased incidence of EKG detected heart abnormalities).
The fluoride level that would precipitate calcium from Southern California water (where calcium ion is
about 2 mM) would be 0.14 mM fluoride. So before we could reach fluoride levels approaching the
Federal ceiling in water it would precipitate calcium from our drinking water first. To maintain a higher
level of fluoride than 0.14 mM would be expensive, requiring addition of enough to precipitate the
calcium in the water first. More would be required on top of that amount to increase fluoride to a higher
desired level. Fortunately this would be very difficult.
Adding sodium fluoride to public water is paid for by taxpayer adults who will not reap any
measurable benefits from it. It takes resources, time, chemicals and machinery to continue to add it to
drinking water. It is putting the water district in charge of drugging the public and for something as
innocuous as a cavity rather than for serious effects such as infectious illness for which we have properly
chosen chlorination, with the much less electronegative halogen.
It is not in keeping with a free society or with proper health care practice to impose these risks
associated with fluoridating the blood of people, livestock, and pets, and also all agricultural products, not
to mention our lawns and gardens, compared to the less significant problem of perhaps having tooth
decay. Tooth decay should be minimized more efficiently and safely if desired with addition of fluoride
products to children’s teeth carefully without swallowing or better yet by simply brushing more
vigorously and regularly. After the death of the Brooklyn, New York boy in the dentist chair when
fluoride gel was swallowed, and after the Hooper Bay, Alaska incident, it is clear that our blood is more
important than concern for cavities. Teeth are replacable but lives are not. In keeping with the
Hippocratic oath, no physician reserves the right to medicate anyone without their permission, and all
patients must remain free to withdraw from drug or other treatment programs at any time. Forced
fluoridation in public water supplies ironically constitutes a reversal of these Public Health Service
policies. The easy way – fluoridate through the bloodstream by drinking – is unnecessary (since topical
application is possible) and criminal (in light of the above findings). Proper dental hygiene is much safer
and achieves the desired result anyway. The notion recently publicized that ‘antifluoridationists’ are
similar to earlier critics of smallpox vaccination is inconsistent with the facts that smallpox is lethal and
only prevented with blood vaccination, but cavities are not lethal and can be prevented with proper
hygiene and if necessary the bacteria that cause caries in the first place can be quickly destroyed with
simple methods such as hydrogen peroxide washings, etc. without loss of life.
Read Entire 127 Page Report Including Pictures…Click on Link Below.
Toxicity of Artificially Fluoridated Water Richard D. Sauerheber, Ph.D.*
Palomar College**
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