Letter to Arkansas Legislature re SB359 to fluoridate their water system:

2-24-11

Please vote to KILL SB359, “an act to provide for certain water systems to maintain a
level of fluoride.”

SB359 is an unfunded mandate, requiring municipalities to pay tens of thousands of

dollars - and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars - each year for the fluoridation
chemicals, the safety training and certification of their employees, and the maintenance
costs for the fluoridation equipment and infrastructure. Donʼt increase local budgets
substantially with this flawed legislation!

SB359 is a waste of money. 99% of our water gets flushed down the toilet, sprayed on
the ground, used to wash our clothes, cars, and dishes, thereby flushing tax dollars
down the drain!

Fluoride is not a nutrient, nor is it essential for healthy teeth. No study has ever revealed
a diseased state resulting from lack of fluoride, including dental caries. No American is
or ever was “fluoride deficient.” In fact, ask where the fluoride put into water comes
from. The answer is most likely this: the fluoride provided for ingestion is a highly toxic
industrial waste (a by-product)

The “optimal fluoride level” recommended in SB359 may seem small (0.7 part per
million, ppm) until you compare it with the level of fluoride in mothersʼ milk (0.004 ppm).
This means a bottle-fed baby in Arkansas (when parents make up the formula with tap
water) will receive 175 times more fluoride than a breast-fed one! According to the
CDC's latest numbers, 41% of American teenagers already have dental fluorosis, a sign
of overexposure to fluoride, which is the visual for the damage being done to the bones
and soft tissues. According to the CDC, infants are not to be given fluoridated water.
Does this mean the mother is to go out and purchase reverse osmosis water and haul it
home, or somehow afford an expensive reverse osmosis filter in their home?

Once water is fluoridated, there is no one to be held accountable for the "dose" or over-
exposure to toxic fluoride levels.

When considering children-at-risk populations as the "excuse" for fluoridating water

systems, please be aware that the lead leached by fluoride as well as increased arsenic
levels pose far greater health risks -- both long and short-term -- than poor dental health
and poor diet, which should be addressed in ways other than a one-size-fits-all
approach to dental health.

I urge you to watch a 28-minute videotape, “Professional Perspectives on Water

Fluoridation” in which 15 prominent scientists explain why they are opposed to this
practice. It ca be accessed online at (http://video.google.com/videoplay?
docid=7547385139152764985&hl=en#)
Proponents claim that health problems only occur at high doses but a thorough 507-
page review of the scientific literature by the US National Research Council (Fluoride in
Drinking Water: A Review of the EPAʼs Standards) published in 2006 indicates that there
is an inadequate margin of safety to protect everyone and that some subsets of the
population (bottle fed infants, kidney patients and people who drink a lot of water) are
already exceeding safe doses of fluoride in fluoridated drinking water. My question to
you is this: what level of toxic fluoride, toxic lead or toxic arsenic is safe for you or a
child or an infant to ingest?

There is little scientific evidence today of any significant difference in tooth decay levels
between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries, states or cities. Even the CDC now
admits that the predominant benefit of fluoride is TOPICAL not SYSTEMIC (CDC,
1999). In other words fluoride works on the outside of the tooth enamel not from inside
the body. It simply does not make sense to swallow fluoride and expose every tissue of
the body to a toxic substance when topical treatments like fluoridated toothpaste are
readily available. Moreover, such topical treatments allow individuals freedom of choice.
Fluoridating the public water supply removes that freedom.

Full documentation of these arguments can be obtained from “The Case Against
Fluoride” by Connett, Beck and Micklem (Chelsea green Publishers, Oct, 2010) or
visiting the Fluoride Action Network Website: http://www.FluorideAlert.org .

PLEASE VOTE NO ON HB359!

Sincerely,

Charlie White
Health Advocate
art@charliewhitestudio.com