It’s so toxic it can’t be allowed to foul the air, it can’t be dumped into a river, stream, lake or ocean, it can’t be dumped on land, but sell it to our city and it can be put directly into our drinking water. I’m talking about hydrofluosilicic acid (FSA). Our city calls it “fluoride” but it’s not the same thing you find in your tube of toothpaste. What you find in your toothpaste or get by prescription from your dentist is pharmaceutical grade fluoride. What we put in our precious water supply is literally unrefined captured pollution; a toxic industrial waste product from the manufacture of phosphate fertilizer.

One would think there are government regulatory agencies to protect us from corporate poisoning of our water supply, but as it turns out, the agency in charge of making sure water additives are safe, the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), is a private corporation. Normally, in order to acquire certification by NSF, the manufacturer is required to submit toxicological data and a list of all contaminants present.

The manufacturers of FSA do not provide any assurances for safety of their product, do not disclose contaminants, and have withheld important toxicological studies that show an increase in children’s blood lead levels when their product is put in the water. The NSF has admitted in Congressional testimony that the producers of FSA do not provide the required information to acquire certification of their product, yet they certify the product despite deficiencies.

Those who wish to defend fluoridation at all cost should consider what exactly we use to fluoridate. If someone showed up at your door asking if they could contaminant your well with toxic waste that doubles blood lead levels in your children, I doubt you would agree. But that’s what is happening on a much larger scale with our public water supply.

If it weren’t sold to us as a fluoridation chemical, FSA would otherwise be classified as a hazardous toxic waste on the Superfund Priorities List of toxic substances that pose the most significant risk to human health. This captured pollution contains about 19% fluorine, but also all the other toxic contaminants that are byproducts of phosphate fertilizer manufacturing: arsenic, cadmium, mercury, lead, sulfates, barium, radium and uranium, and their decay products, radon-222 and polonium-210.

Is this the product you thought you were consuming in your water? In 1968, when fluoridation first began in Crescent city, sodium fluoride was used as the fluoridating agent. In the 1980’s the city switched to the cheaper FSA without really understanding what it was they were buying. Now we know: that it is industrial toxic waste; that it contains deadly and carcinogenic contaminants; that it doubles the levels of lead in children’s blood; that the agency in charge of certifying water additives certifies FSA without proper documentation.

A petition is being circulated to put an initiative on the November ballot to institute a moratorium on our fluoridation program until the manufacturer of our fluoridation product provides a written statement that the product is safe for all water customers to consume, a list of all contaminants in the product, and provide the toxicological studies available. Really, is it so much to ask that a product we are being forced to consume is shown to be safe? And if they can’t prove it is safe, should we continue to consume it? That is a real “no-brainer.”

Katherine Kelly
delnortecleanwater@yahoo.com
www.delnortecleanwater.org