About three hours ago I was tweeting about a song, Stuck in a moment from U2. I was at a U2 show at the university at Minnesota the Golden Gophers Stadium that’s TCF Bank Stadium and it was air huge down our , it was raining , it was h crazy . we thought we were all getting electrocuted kind of crazy but they dedicated that song to Amy Winehouse , Stuck in a Moment . and i was kkind of expecting that Bono would say something about the shooting in Aslow but then again i left early because there were sheets of rain not to mention distant rumble of thunder and i thought I better get while the getting is good so that i can get back and do Coast to Coast but it was an awesome show and it was nice of him to say something both about her and Michael Hudgens . I think it was back in 1983 when the war came out, 1983 was the same year that Paul Connett became a professor at St Lawrence University in Catton New York. After doing work in Dark Mirth and Cambridge this is a guy who is pretty much educated. This is not a guy on the fringe but this is a guy who knows chemistry and he says fluoride is essentially hazardous waste and how it’s ended up in our drinking water and the bad signs and the powerful politics that keep it there. He is part of the fluoride action network and we will talk about the case against fluoride and why we should all be against fluoride in our water, why it i doesn’t do what scientist said it was supposed to do . We know what now and it’s a waste of money and it can actually really hurt people to have it there. I will tell you a little bit more about that coming up next on Coast to Coast this is Ian Punnett. I should probably mention too because people always ask if you want to follow the twitter fen I’m @deaconpunnett. If you want to follow those tweets there’s tuff there in the week that we talk about , stuff that’s coming up on the show on Coast to Coast like that first hour conversation we were having about Amy Winehouse i tweeted about that earlier today and the sad 27 club and the case against fluoride Dr Paul Connett is here . Good evening Dr Paul Connett how are you?
Paul: I’m fine Ian, thanks very much.
Ian: impressive career, great pedigree. Obviously you are well verse to the subject and i think a lot of people when they hear folks talk about fluoride in the water h they still think of it as firing science. people who are against it , they don’t get it , they don’t understand or they are just paranoid people and after reading your book i realize it’s really the other way around . The case against fluoride is much stronger than the case to have it be in our water system.
Paul: i agree with you. i joined with two other scientist to write this book , James Beck an MD Ph. from Calvary in Alberto and Professor Speeding Milam , a biologist PHD from Oxford from Scotland and the three of us wrote this book and its understated rather than over stated . its relatively easy to read but everything is well documented and i must say that 15 years ago when my wife first ask me to read some material on fluoridation , just like most people i thought the people opposed to fluoridation a little crazy and i didn’t want the issue because that stigmatization that you are loony tunes if you talked about it. As soon as is started to read the literature i was appalled and slightly embarrassed because i f i held that view or that impression i would be nurturing that prejudice for many years prior to this reading.
Ian: fair is fair it doesn’t really get a hearing, it doesn’t really get a discussion. The only thing I’ve ever heard is that fluoride is good to help us have strong teeth, put fluoride in the water, more people have strong teeth. That’s all you ever really heard about it.
Paul: that’s right. It’s backed up with the commercial, everybody sees the commercial and yes theirs millions of impressions being made. In fact every time we go to the pharmacy or the supermarkets there it is all those toothpaste have fluoride in it, that and the professional bodies that have come out and said it’s wonderful and safe and effective. If you go back and look at the history and when the united states government in the form of the public health service endorsed fluoridating in 1950 , none of the tail that begun in 1945 had been completed and it was practically no science of the safety of either short term or long term effect of fluoride gave been done .
Ian: why did they want to jump in it in 1950 if they didn’t have the trials yet that backed up doing it? What was the impetus to start putting fluoride in the wart before they had a reason to put fluoride in the water?
Paul: there’s another whole book written on that so we didn’t have to spend too much time on the early history of fluoridation but Chris Branson a former BBC corresponded spend 10 years writing a book about the fluoride deception , explaining that history and how they were many industries that either used fluoride in their manufacturing or produced fluoride as a pollutant . They h were faced with lawsuits from farmers whose farm land have been damaged by fluoride and a concern about what fluoride was doing to its workers every day. They saw this practise as a way of changing the image of loured which in the 1940 was seen as the words air pollutant out there that had caused more damage to agriculture than any other air pollutant and threatened many law suits . They saw this is as a way of changing the image and the collision between the US public health service and The Fluorine Lawyers Association. Those lawyers obviously were defending industry in water. That’s all been documented. There’s a huge economic interest an also throw in the nuclear industry that use a huge amount foo fluoride to make the atomic k bomb and refine the fuel for the process.
Ian: Maybe i need to ask, what is fluoride?
Paul: fluoride is essentially any compound from the element fluorine. Florien is a very active element and we’re not talking about that. No one is putting fluorine into the drinking water but they are putting a compound that either contains the fluoride iron or generates the compound iron when it goes into water . One example would be sodium fluoride. When sodium fluoride goes into water then it separates into the sodium iron and the fluoride iron. It’s not the sodium iron that does anything but the fluoride iron that supposedly helps to reduce tooth decay. Its fluoride iron that we are talking about which again gong back 15 years ago when i started looking g at this from a chemical point of view fluoride is not very reactive chemically. Fluorine is pretty reactive Burt fluoride is pretty be nine from a chemical perspective but the shocker is its extremely active biologically. It interferes with enzymes, with protein and other things going on. It’s a very nasty substance you don’t want it anywhere near your body tissues.
Ian: then why do we want to put it in our toothpaste? What is it about fluoride applied topically to teeth that makes the h teeth stronger and more resilient against tooth decay?
Paul: the theory from chemical perspective and it seems quite reasonable is that the theory that the fluoride iron replaces the hydroxide iron the mineral that makes up the teeth, the calcium hydroxyl appetite. that’s the mineral` that makes up the teeth and the enamel and also the bones and the fluoride gets in there, once it is exchanged with this hydroxide iron it makes the enamel stronger and more resistant to acid attack and its thee acid attack from the acid which are generated with sugar is broken down in the mouth by bacteria , it’s that acid that attacks enamel and so if you can stop it there, if you can make the enamel more resistant to acid attack then you’re going to fight tooth decade. When you have fluoride in toothpaste at very high concentration <inaudible> you also inhibit the bacteria. you make the bacteria less able to survive in the mount . For toothpaste there’s two ways that you fight tooth decay, one you get fluoride into the enamel and two you fight the bacteria.
Ian: i like that. Here’s home I’m liking that , back in the days when i used to buy beater cars i would buy cars that had rust on it that had a couple of bad winters . you have some road salt on the car and it starts corroding at the metal so you get out a good sander and you use either bond or fibre glass and you patch up the corder panel on the car so that it looks good as new and that’s would he sort of how you described it maybe the roll that fluoride would have on my external , the enamel on my teeth and that from the external in it helps to patch up where sugar has been corroding at the tooth on the exterior.
Paul: i think this a good analogy but the key to thing to focus on it’s a topical effect. It works on the outside of the enamel.
Ian: That’s what I’m saying, the other side to this would be saying look see how we can patch up the corder panel on the car by using bond or a fibre glass kit that we get from our local car body shop, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we put the bond in the gasoline and then we pump it right into the gas tank and that will patch up the holes from the inside? That would seem to be the problem with the fluoride on the inside. Is that right?
Paul: I think that’s a very god analogy. the one that we use a lot is that swallowing fluoride makes as much sense as swallowing sun tan lotions which is designed to be on the outside of the skin and if you are someone who swallow sun tan lotion they would look at you a little strangely.
Ian: Back in 1950 they though we have all these extra fluoride we have to find a place to put it , why don’t we rehabilitate fluorides image and at the same tome create a new market for something which otherwise would be expensive to get rid of and lets just converse people that it would be the same as swallowing sun tan lotion and then it would be good for them . If sun tan lotion s good on the outside then focusers its good on the inside and yet there was no science yet available that said that it didn’t work. Is that fair?
Paul: that’s absolutely right. They did not do the kind f of studies that would be required from instances from the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA. of you were bringing a new drag into the market the FDA would have to approve it and that approving prices would require randomized clinical trials to establish it with safe and effective and that’s never been done ,the FDA has never submitted this substance or had companies submitted this substance to randomize chemical trials . The official classification of fluoride by the FDA is that sits an unapproved drug. It’s amazing isn’t it? over 60 years we’ve out this stuff in our drinking water m pliably the most prescribed medication in US history and yet the FDA which is in charge of approving medicine has beaver done this for fluoride.
