Progress for Plattsburgh Blog - Mike Kelly

Remember that old poster: "War is not healthy for children and other living things!"

Ditto for fluoride. The American Dental Association issued this directive in 2006:

"Essentially, the ADA supports the pediatricians’ recommendations on the benefits of breast feeding and notes that using ready-to-feed formula for bottle-fed babies will keep their fluoride intake under IOM limits. If using a product that needs to be reconstituted, parents and caregivers should consider using water that has no or low levels of fluoride."

You can read their entire directive here.

What this is saying is that if you feed your infant powdered formula, don't use fluoridated tap water for mixing it. In another official publication from 2005 called Fluoridation Facts (p. 18), the ADA again recommends that infants have NO fluoride supplements, even if the amount of fluoride in public water supplies is 0 parts per million. You can read the entire publication here  - this publication has a ton of information, but some of it is questionable in light of recent research on fluoride. It seems the ADA is grasping at straws in this publication. It's fun to read it and see if you can find the faulty logic yourself.

The question I have is this: if the ADA, a huge supporter of fluoridation, recommends that infants shouldn't have fluoridated water, why are we giving it to them in our public water supply? There are many other people that should not have fluoride, yet we medicate EVERYONE. Why?

Someday, and it won't be too long, I predict, fluoride in drinking water will go the way of lead in paint and gasoline. What seemed like a good idea at the time will prove to be a mistake.

Posted by wm1chaelkelly at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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I never intended to become a fluoride crusader. In fact, the last time I heard anything about fluoride was in the 1950's. As a child, I remember when my town decided to fluoridate its water supply. It was a tremendous source of pride for our little southern city. We even had a sign at the city limits that looked like this:

There was a local grocer named Cas Walker who somehow got it in his head that fluoride was bad. He railed against the evils of fluoridation in a weekly television program that he sponsored. He even went so far as to denounce fluoridation as a Communist plot. Everyone wrote 'ol Cas off as just another redneck lunatic.

Forty-five years later, after I became a City Councilor in Plattsburgh, NY, I received an email from a Ms. Carol S. Kopf, denouncing fluoridation, just like Cas Walker had so many years before. Ms. Kopf didn't say anything about Communist plots, however. She pointed out some recent scientific evidence that brings into question the sense of putting fluoride into public water supplies. She was articulate and clearly not a redneck lunatic. I emailed her and advised her that I was looking at fluoride with increased interest as a result of her email. She advised me that a local gentleman, Dr. Paul Connett, might be willing to come speak to the Plattsburgh City Council about the issue. I asked my fellow councilors and the mayor about it, and they graciously agreed to entertain Dr. Connett. Little did I know I had opened up a huge hornet's nest. When Dr. Connett came to speak to the Council in March of 2009, all kinds of fluoride folks came out of the woodwork, both pro and con. A fistfight nearly broke out in the City Hall lobby between the pros and the cons. It was an emotionally charged Council meeting, to say the least.

After nearly ten months of debate, countless emails and reams of research,  I've made up my mind about fluoride. I agree with Cas Walker and Carol Kopf: fluoride is bad. It's one of those things, like lead in paint or DDT to kill mosquitoes, that seemed like a good idea at the time but which turned out to be not such a good idea. As a postscript, it turns out that ol' Cas wasn't as loony as I thought on the whole Communist plot thing. In my research, I found out the Soviets used fluoride on prisoners to make them docile.

I will post a few more blogs devoted to fluoride to help you understand how I'm now in league with the fluoridation opposition. In the meantime, if you want to read what others are saying about fluoride check this link:

http://www.nofluoride.com/quotes.cfm

Posted by wm1chaelkelly at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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