Fluoride in My Water? No thanks!
In my last blog entry, I reported that the American Dental Association alerted its members in 2006 that infants between 0-6 months of age should not drink fluoridated water. Since then, I have discovered that many other people should not drink fluoridated water. These include:
- the elderly (17% of population or about 3400 Plattsburgh citizens)
- people with cardiovascular disease (7% of population or 1400 Plattsburgh citizens)
- people with kidney disease (0.6% of population or 120 Plattsburgh citizens)
- people with Vitamin C deficiency (27% of population or 5400 Plattsburgh citizens)
- people with magnesium deficiency (37% of population or 7400 Plattsburgh citizens)
people with calcium deficiency (44% of population or 8800 Plattsburgh citizens)
If you would like to read more about this, please click here.
It would be erroneous to add the numbers above and conclude that 26,520 citizens shouldn't have fluoride. That's more people than there are in the City of Plattsburgh! There is a great deal of overlap between these groups. For example, many cardiovascular patients are elderly people. Let's assume for the sake of argument that 80% of the people in the above groups overlap in more than one category. That still leaves over 5000 people in our city who should not drink fluoridated water! Here's another interesting fact: about 19% of Americans are of the age when teeth are forming. In terms of Plattsburgh, that's about 3800 citizens - lower than the number of citizens who shouldn't drink fluoridated water! This strengthens the argument that we should not be mass-medicating everyone by fluoridating drinking water. If you want fluoride, it's easy and cheap to get it. If you don't want fluoride in your drinking water, it's really hard and expensive to get it out. It's time to stop this outdated and unsafe practice.
