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Truth Decay?

Fluoridation foes say water fluoridation is not a boon to public health, but to the fertilizer and aluminum industries

By Jennifer Davies

Neat stacks of paper consume almost every flat surface in Maureen Jones's Rosegarden home. Black stackable paper trays line her hallway and bedroom wall, some 13 high. The mass of papers spill over onto the bed, in ordered rows. The reams of papers are studies and essays--with titles like "Fraud of the Century" and "Water a Toxic Dump?"--that tell the story of Jones' smission: ending the bureaucratic scourge of water fluoridation.

As Jones speaks about the issue that has intrigued her since 1974, she daintily plucks articles out of the trays to highlight her point. "Oh, you must read this one," she says in her wispy, soft-spoken way, handing me an article about increased birth defects in fluoridated communities. "This is about what this stuff does to little babies."

Jones, with her neat blonde bob and crisp dungarees and colored T-shirts, hardly fits the stereotype of the conspiracy theorist; she looks more like a junior leaguer. She even sprinkles phrases, such as "jeepers" and "gosh darn it," throughout her mannered attacks on fluoridation. But Jones' low-key style belies her virulent opposition to fluoridating California's water supply.

"This stuff is garbage," she says flatly. "And they want to put it in our water."

Jones is by no means alone; anti-fluoridation forces are a vigilant, if somewhat exclusive, bunch spreading their message via newsletters, loosely knit citizen groups and even a site on the World Wide Web. If these groups are right, fluoridation is the biggest public health scam since Dow Industry assured the world that silicon breast implants were perfectly safe.

Fluoridation foes like Jones are more vociferous than ever these days, having recently lost the battle against mandatory fluoridation in California. Local Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo) sponsored a fluoridation bill and Gov. Pete Wilson signed it, requiring municipalities with more than 10,000 people to fluoridate their drinking water.

"Just another unthinking person who thinks he's doing something good for the poor kids," is how Jones sizes up Wilson the Fluoridator. "What a pitch, what a pitch. Jeepers, who wouldn't vote for it? If you say you're doing it for the poor kids, who wouldn't vote for it? It's just a joke."

Down but not out, Jones and her anti-fluoride cohorts are plotting new, somewhat unique ways, to quash implementation of the ambitious but unfunded bill, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 1996. Patrick von Mauck, chairman of the National Health Federation, a self-described consumer health rights organization, says his group has hired two attorneys to challenge the fluoridation mandate, using a legal instrument no less dramatic than the Nuremberg Agreement from the infamous Nuremberg trial. von Mauck says that the Nuremberg statutes prohibit governments from putting any drug or chemical into the water supply without a vote of the people. And if that tack doesn't work, the anti-fluoride forces also plan to attack mandated fluoridation under Proposition 65, which disallows the dumping of toxic waste in the water supply--although public agencies are exempt.

Toxic Cabal?

So, apart from misguided politicians, who's behind the push for fluoridation? To believe Jones and her pure-water confreres, the fertilizer and aluminum industries are big backers of fluoridation. And not because they oppose tooth decay. According to Jones, the captains of fertilizer and aluminum production create fluoride as a byproduct of their manufacturing processes. What better way to rid themselves of this toxic effluent than by persuading a public officials to dump it in the drinking water supply? Jones points to companies such as Cargill Fertilizer Inc., which provides chemical fluoride to municipalities for their water supply, and has a member on the Standing Committee on Fluorides of the American Water Works Association, a non-profit association that works on "safe water" standards and is pro-fluoridation..

This theory isn't as off-the-wall as it might sound. The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which fluoridates its water supply, purchases chemical fluoride for more than 12 cents a pound or about $250 a ton. East Bay MUD purchases it from LCI, Ltd., the middleman for a number of corporations, including Cargill, in the water fluoridation market.

Brenda Menendez, a spokesperson for Cargill, admits that her company sells about 50 percent of its fluorosilicate--the chemical form of fluoride--to municipalities, but stresses that fluorosilicate is not a "waste" byproduct. "Waste," she claims, "is a loaded term that implies harmful effects.

"In truth, it is a byproduct, but it is an important and beneficial byproduct," Menendez says. "A lot of times the general public hears the word chemical and they immediately think its bad. They don't realize the day-to-day uses."

"The rich part is that we have to pay for the privilege to have them dump this junk in our water," retorts Jones.

Robert Carton, an environmental scientist and Ph.D. from Maryland who has written articles about fluoridation, some of which have appeared on the Web, also is worried about lobbying by chemical companies in the name of safe water. Carton argues that public health officials continue to push for fluoridation as a way to save face--and not admit that they've been wrong all these years.

He cites the case of former Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist Dr. William Marcus, who was fired after questioning the honesty of a long-awaited government study on the link between fluoride consumption and cancer in laboratory animals, and subsequently took his former employer to court. After discovering that the EPA had shredded evidence, threatened employees and forged time cards relative to the matter, the court ordered the agency to reinstate Marcus with back pay, legal expenses and $50,000 in damages. Marcus has since become the patron martyr of the anti-fluoridation forces, and the whole incident is described by fluoridation foes as "the cancer cover-up."

"It's too embarrassing to backtrack," Carton says. "It has gone on for years, and no one wants to pay any attention. I think it's a great scandal." In his newsletters, Carton frequently refers to fluoridation as the "Big Lie."

For Jones, the fight is personal. Her father, Clark Bradley, a former Santa Clara Valley assemblyman and state senator, was the first person to introduce legislation prohibiting the government from putting additives into the water supply that would affect the "physical or mental functions of the body of any person consuming the water."

Jones says she won't give up her fight because, revealed in her stacks of information are studies documenting that fluoridation is a poison that causes increased risk of hip fractures, cancer and birth defects as well as the dental fluorosis, which is a discoloration of teeth caused by too much fluoride.

But those studies are not enough to battle the proponents like the Center for Disease Control, the American Dental Association and the California Dental Association, who cast anti-fluoridationists as kooky conspiracy theorists who use scare tactics to confuse the public about the benefits of fluoridation. They point to their own convincing stack of medical studies from mainstream journals as proof that fluoridation of California's water supply is not only safe but an effective mechanism to prevent cavities.

Legislator Speier goes so far as to call "one of the most important public efforts that we can engage in this year and maybe even in this decade," citing her own experience administering fluoride drops to her young child because her local water was not fluoridated.

In the battle over fluoride, it seems there are no shades of gray.

"It's just a matter of philosophy," explains David Spath, assistant chief division of drinking water and environmental management. "Some people are just philosophically opposed to medication in the water supply. They think it's forced medication."

Communist Plot?

Water fluoridation always has been a hot-button issue. In the '50s, anti-fluoridation forces were portrayed as right-wing John Birchers, who called fluoridation a communist plot designed to brainwash the masses. Evangeline Winkler, a member of the Contra Costa chapter of the Safe Water Coalition, a citizen group fighting fluoridation, scoffs at those communist-plot theories, and proposes a kind of counter-conspiracy theory: all those stories about were cooked up by fluoridation proponents in order to discredit those who would dare question their logic.

Far from alleging a Red plot, today's anti-fluoridationists have recast the debate in terms of a capitalist ploy. "It's not about science or people or anything," Jones says. "It's about intimidation." The chemical and fertilizer companies just "don't know where to put this garbage."

Fluoride is a chemical compound that can occur naturally in some water supplies. In fact, the movement to fluoridate water started in the '50s when health officials discovered that populations where the water supply was rich in natural fluoride enjoyed a lower incidence of tooth decay.

Today, fluoridation is accomplished by pumping the liquid or powdered chemical--which happens to be a byproduct in phosphate industries--into the water. It is estimated that introducing fluoride into the state's many water supply systems would cost $35 million initially and about $7 million a year for maintenance.

The fluoridation mandate officially begins Jan. 1, but water fluoridation won't take place until state officials find the funds to finance it. Currently local water utilities, such as the San Jose Water Company, are trying to come up with a cost estimate for the state by July 1996. Initial estimates for the start-up costs hover in the neighborhood of $4 million.

Richard Balocco, vice president of corporate communications for the San Jose Water Company, isn't convinced that water fluoridation will be coming to this area anytime soon.

"It's probably a long way away," Balocco says. "The bill doesn't say you have to fluoridate. It says water fluoridation is required if somebody pays for it. Right now there's no funding source."

Pearly Whites

But Walter Comport, a San Jose dentist for more than 25 years, says water fluoridation can't happen too soon and calls the attacks on it ridiculous. He argues that opponents of water fluoridation have used scare tactics to quash much-needed fluoridation efforts in California for years.

"I don't know where these people come from," Comport says. "They use misinformation to confuse voters, who think to themselves, 'When in doubt, just say no.'"

The American Dental Association and the California Dental Association, the main backers of water fluoridation, point to the studies by the National Cancer Institute that have found no increase in cancer in fluoridated communities and a marked decrease in cavities. Presently from about 55 percent to 60 percent of the American population is already drinking fluoridated water. California ranks 47th among states in terms of cities with fluoridation. As it stands now, individual communities in California can decide about whether to fluoridate drinking water or not. For example, San Jose's water is not fluoridated while Palo Alto's is.

Elise Thurau, Speier's senior consultant, said that all the mainstream organizations and publications have found that fluoride in small doses has no negative effects whatsoever and said those who oppose fluoridation are in the minority.

"It is a vociferous minority that complains about fluoridation," Thurau said. "We hear from the same people over and over again."

John Galbraith, a public relations manager for the California Dental Association, says that fluoridating the drinking supply costs about 50 cents per person, which is extremely cost effective when considering a single cavity costs more than $100 to fill.

"Water fluoridation will save California hundreds of thousands of dollars because it will prevent tooth decay," Galbraith says. "It's really going to affect poor children and senior citizens who don't have easy access to dental care."

Those arguments don't sway Jones. She says that having fluoride in your water is not only a matter of public health but also personal choice.

"Why are they putting something in the water anyway?" Jones asked. "You can't get rid of fluoride. You can't boil it away like chlorine. It just doesn't make any sense."

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