Is Irish tap water safe?

Scientist Declan Waugh has brought the issue of fluoridation to a wider audience in Ireland with a series of articles in Hot Press.  This is a thank you to him, a personal story about poisoning and recovery and a call to support the legal action being taken by the Girl against Fluoride (see below).

But first some background.  98% of Europe does not fluoridate its drinking water on health and ethical grounds.  Ireland still does, despite evidence since the 1930's that industrial fluoride is a poison. As Christopher Bryson writes, it is "originally an industrial waste, "scrubbed" from the smokestacks of Florida phosphate fertilizer mills to prevent it from damaging livestock and crops in the surrounding countryside".

Shane Ross TD questions Fluoridation in the Dail (see video below)

Declan Waugh demonstrates that after 50 years of fluoridation Ireland now has the highest cancer incidence of all European countries.  "It has the highest incidence of neurological illness, the highest incidence of cardiovascular illness and the highest incidence of diabetes".   Nevertheless, despite receiving 400,000 Euro per year from the Irish government since 2004 The Irish Expert Body on Fluorides and Health has sat on the issue of fluoridation in Ireland. It has not commissioned a single scientific study to examine the issue while issuing instead what it calls "information of a condensed and general information nature".

In fact it goes so far as to claim that "there is no...abundance of scientific material in existence, including recommendations from respected international and national bodies that condemn the practice of water fluoridation"

The opposite is true

The facts support the view that fluoridated water is poisoned. In 2006 their counterparts in the US, the National Academy of Sciences, published one of the most comprehensive reports on fluoride, known as the National Research Council (NRC) report. 12 experts from a whole range of medical and toxicological backgrounds spent four years reviewing all the data. Their 500-page report details how fluoride affects the thyroid, diabetes, cancer, neurological illnesses, gastro-intestinal diseases, skeletal and muscular-skeletal pain, lowered IQ and other neurological problems in children.  Irish scientist Declan Waugh has also conducted an extensive independent analysis of the evidence about fluoridation from around the world.  He concludes that Ireland's "record-breaking levels of sickness  are beyond doubt related to our water fluoridation".

Last year Declan Waugh delivered his report Human Toxicity, Environmental Impact and Legal Implications of Water Fluoridation to the Irish government.  The only official response has been from the ‘expert group’ who conclude that "Mr Waugh’s report does not form a basis for a review of current dental health or fluoridation policies".  In the course of their rebuttal they give an astonishing, even facetious, explanation for why they have failed to conduct any trials themselves.  

Experts "unable" to conduct trials

The Irish Expert Body on Fluorides and Health write that "The gold standard type of study for examining cause-and-effect in epidemiology is the Randomised Control Trial, in which at least two sets of individuals are selected at random from the population, with one set being given the test material and the second set typically being given a placebo or a comparison material. It is impossible to conduct RCTs for water fluoridation, as it would require every household in the country to be fit with a dual water supply (one fluoridated, one not) or would require people to be selected at random and then told where they must live for a period of at least 5 to 10 years. In reality, it is impossible to imagine such a scenario".

Fortunately such a scenario already exists. As Waugh illustrates, health records of the populations of Northern and Southern Ireland (one fluoridated, the other not) show the alarming disparity in incidences of major diseases in these two otherwise identical populations. The maps below make the point cleary. Green is low, blue is high.  Northern Ireland is to the right of the red line.

 

Dramatic stories of illness and recovery

Individuals and populations that have abandoned fluoridation have seen immediate and dramatic falls in symptoms of major illnesses.  My own experience is one.  For the past ten years, since moving to Ireland, my breathing has become more and more difficult.  In the past two years my nose and head have been permanently congested.  I found breathing so hard that I was not sleeping, often awake right through the night with a feeling of being suffocated.  My energy levels were low, my thoughts were increasingly unclear, and I sought medical help.  I was given medication and offered surgery on my nose that was not guaranteed to work.  I took allergy tests and experimented with wheat free, dairy free and caffeine free diets.  Apart from a temporary reprieve from a homeopathic remedy, nothing worked.  In February this year I read Declan Waugh's article in Hot Press, stopped drinking tap water and experienced a dramatic and immediate recovery.  Within two weeks I could breathe easily again, and within four I was restored to full health and energy levels, sleeping well and able to breathe, taste and smell for the first time in three years.  A two day spell of drinking tap water in the middle saw an immediate return of all symptoms, which disappeared again a week after I reverted to bottled water.

 

A cumulative poisoning effect

This account from a bronchitis sufferer in Colorado details two even more profound recoveries.  Sondra Links writes:  "In 2003, I was treated with antibiotics for bronchitis and given an experimental asthma drug. I had lost a third of my lung function. For another year, my breathing deteriorated. Then I read about a chemist who had experienced severe breathing problems and who had been diagnosed with psychomotor epilepsy, requiring brain surgery (“Good Teeth Birth to Death” by Gerard F. Judd, PhD, page 60). Instead, Judd stopped drinking his city’s fluoridated water and slowly recovered.

In 2005, I substituted reverse-osmosis filtered water for my cooking and drinking. The gradual improvement was obvious. Later I read that after 40 years of combining fluoridated water with the fluoride or fluorine in pesticides, commercially processed foods and beverages, and dental and medical products, there may be a cumulative poisoning effect, ( “Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life” by neurosurgeon Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., page 111)".

Fluoridation is in fact well known to be implicated in major respiratory diseases.  It causes an inflammatory response in the body linked to respiratory illnesses.  In his book The Fluoride Deception.Christopher Bryson reports that "respiratory disease such as pulmonary fibrosis, emphysema, and dyspnea (shortness of breath) is another obvious sign of chronic fluoride poisoning....Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic fluoride poisoning cause emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis and dyspnea".

Research informs policy 40 years ago

Declan Waugh relates to Hot Press how in The Netherlands,  immediately after the introduction of fluoridation, Dr Hans Moolinburgh "began seeing patients who he concluded were developing health problems because of their exposure to fluoride. The first was a 6-month-old baby who came to him with breathing problems. When he removed fluoride from the baby’s diet, within a week the breathing problems disappeared".

Following this "Moolinburgh set up a team of 12 medical physicians and toxicologists, got a legal team involved, and he did what they call ‘double-blind’ chemical studies in the population with fluoride.  They came to the conclusion that water fluoridation is the equivalent of low-level poisoning of the population. They published their data in a fluoride journal in The Netherlands. There was outrage, and the Minister for Health resigned.   The Dutch parliament changed their legislation almost overnight. That was in 1973".

As Waugh writes, "Ireland has the highest death rate from respiratory disease in Western Europe with death rates at almost twice the EU average".  Yet in 2013 Ireland stands almost alone in Europe in refusing to reconsider its policy of adding fluoride derivatives to drinking water.  Despite the deaths attributable to fluoridation we have yet to see any resignations or legislative changes.

 

The Girl against Fluoride

Aisling FitzGibbon aka ‘The Girl Against Fluoride’ is taking legal action against the Irish Government to prevent them from adding dangerous chemicals such as fluoride to the water supply. Aisling is "taking on this legal battle for the sole purpose of ensuring the right to clean, safe drinking water for the people of Ireland".

If you want to do something about this, support the Girl Against Fluoride.  She really needs your help!  You can donate funds by clicking the link below. Or alternatively if you’d rather contribute your skills, resources or time, you can contact her via her website.

Full information on The Girl Against Fluoride website here 

Watch TD Shane Ross debate the issue in the Dail here