BY LINDA MARTIN

I thought I should make you all aware of something that has been happening here in Issaquah, WA. I have a 17 year old autistic son who has a communication disorder. We just recently moved from another school district, in part because the staff there refused to respect my request to help him avoid fluoride (eg. they were giving him fluoride toothpaste to brush his teeth after lunch every day even though I had asked them not to give him fluoride due to allergy, and even though he has swallowing issues which would make it impossible for him to control the amount of fluoride toothpaste he swallowed.) He was developing severe gastrointestinal problems and anorexia, so I needed to intervene quickly and get him out of there before his health condition became critical.

I did my research and determined the most sensible place for us to relocate to was Issaquah,WA because the downtown area is not fluoridated and it was close to my workplace. I moved a few blocks from the non-fluoridated high school. Now that we have moved to a new school district and are settled into a new fluoride-free apartment, the new school district is refusing to place him in the non-fluoridated school a few blocks from where we live. They want to bus him to another city within the school district (Renton) that is fluoridated, although it is far from where we live.

The district claims that their reason is that the neighborhood school is overcrowded, and that they can keep him from getting fluoride at the new school. I tried to explain that it would not work and why, but they refused to listen. They have done everything they can to force him to attend the distant fluoridated school, including ordering a bus to pick him up and take him there while ignoring my objections. I called the Transportation department and told them not to bother because I did not enroll him in the fluoridated school and absolutely would not send him there.

This may be an attempt on their part to get rid of us. School districts often do things of this nature to special needs students who they view as unacceptably expensive to serve (although they get federal funding to offset the expense). They made me identify his allergies in the enrollment packet, and I’m sure they talked to the district we just left, so they know I am adamant about my son not being exposed to fluoride. However, it may also just be that they are ignorant of the dangers of fluoride, the fact that some people are hypersensitive to it, and the fact that it can be absorbed through trans-dermal routes as well as orally. Or it may be that they don’t give a damn either way, they just don’t want to serve another special needs student.

Regardless, I know from experience that I cannot trust school staff to prevent contact with fluoridated water, or food and drink prepared with fluoridated water, as they don’t believe anyone is impacted unless they fall over and go into convulsions immediately upon impact. They will let him wash his hands in fluoridated water and watch and if he doesn’t develop gigantic red hives on impact they will consider it all to be nonsense. They do not understand the cumulative effects of fluoride in the body, nor the necessity of a hypersensitive person to avoid all exposure possible.

My son and I have both been hypersensitive to fluorides since were were accidentally poisoned in a sodium fluoride overspill in the town where he was born, Juneau, Alaska, in the late 1990’s, in addition to which they were fluoridating at the level of 2ppm at that time. I cannot prove this happened because, of course, the City & Borough of Juneau did not publicly announce that they had released toxic levels of poison into the water supply – they didn’t want to get sued. But many of us in the office where I worked got violently ill when we drank the tap water, and the water utility claimed when we complained that there was nothing in the water that could give us those symptoms. Actually the symptoms were textbook fluoridosis symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe intestinal cramping. One of my employees even ended up in the hospital for hernia surgery.

I was able to confirm what happened to my own satisfaction by communication with a water utility employee through a mutual friend. He said the employees at the water utility were worried that the sodium fluoride was making people sick. At some point the City Manager quietly had the fluoride turned off, and it wasn’t discovered by the local dentists for over a year. I got word back to Juneau through people I knew to let them know what was going on, so I’m pretty sure that’s why that happened. After a long battle, Juneau is no longer fluoridated as of November 2011.

Although my son went into a downward spiral after a Hepatitis A vaccine obviously triggered the autism in January 1998, I believe being exposed to a high level of sodium fluoride in utero, during infancy and toddlerhood set him up for that vaccine reaction. The Hepatitis A vaccine contains an aluminum adjuvant, and in combination with fluoride would create neurotoxic fluoroaluminate in his system. I wrote to Bill Hirzy about that to see what he thought at the time, and he agreed that this would be a credible scenario.

I have avoided fluoride exposure for both of us to the best of my ability since 2000 when I finally figured out what it was that was causing our debilitating symptoms. Due the behavior of the staff at our previous school district, we are now in an untenable situation. I am being forced to prove that accommodation for my son at the non-fluoridated school is medically necessary. They feel that a bottle of non-fluoridated water is all that is necessary to accommodate my son. And of course, they don’t feel it’s necessary for a child to avoid exposure to fluoride to begin with.

I have been looking for ammunition because this appears to be heading for court. Any evidence that people like us exist (hypersensitive to fluoride) that has been generated by a ‘legitimate’ source such as a government agency would be helpful. Also, any evidence that a person who is hypersensitive to fluoride would be impacted by going to school in a fluoridated school environment would be helpful. Also, if you know of any similar cases to ours, I would be most grateful for that information. And of course, any resources for information of this kind would be most welcome.

Meanwhile, I consulted with an attorney who specializes in special needs and schools and was given the advice to talk to the Education Ombudsman’s office. I did so but discovered that they actually have no power and can only mediate when the school district is willing. This one isn’t. I was also advised to seek a doctor’s statement that my son cannot safely attend a fluoridated school, so I’m looking for a medical doctor who would be willing to do that. If you know of one in NW Washington state, please let me know. I had our naturopath and speech therapist write letters, but apparently that doesn’t count in the minds of some.

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NOTE BY DONNA WESTFALL:  ANYONE READING THIS STORY……. DO YOU KNOW OF ANY DOCTORS IN HER AREA THAT COULD HELP?