EPA to regulate rocket fuel chemical in drinking water for causing the same problems as fluoride

Friday, February 04, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff

(NaturalNews) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified the need to set a limit on the amount of perchlorate, a toxic chemical found in rocket fuel, that is permissible in water supplies. The agency says perchlorates negatively affects the body’s ability to uptake iodine, which in turn alters proper thyroid function and causes disease. Interestingly, this is exactly what toxic fluoride, which is added to most U.S. drinking water supplies, does, yet the EPA has remained silent on this issue.

“There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny of the standard because, again, we are looking at but one of several precursors that can affect iodine uptake in the thyroid,” explained Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, to CNN concerning the agency’s new limits. “It’s the first time we’ve ever regulated a chemical not because of what it does directly to you, but because it has an impact on iodine uptake that might affect your child down the road.”

In other words, these rocket fuel chemicals are implicated in causing endocrine disruption, and are thus a serious threat to public health. And it is a good thing the EPA is taking notice and trying to do something about the problem. But the fluorosilicic acid, also known as fluoride, added to the majority of the nation’s drinking water supplies does the very same thing, except that chemical is deliberately added under the false pretense that doing so protects teeth.

In 2006, the National Research Council (NRC) issued a review of the EPA’s “safe water standard” of 4 parts per million (ppm) for fluoride in drinking water. NRC concluded that “several lines of information indicate an effect of fluoride exposure on thyroid function.” In fact, fluoride was actually used up until the 1970s as a thyroid-suppressing medication because it is known to offset necessary iodine and instead affix itself within the body (http://www.fluoridealert.org/health…).

When the thyroid fails to get the iodine it needs, it can cause a range of serious illnesses including chronic fatigue, depression, weight gain, hair loss, perpetual muscle pain, increased cholesterol levels, heart disease, and many other conditions. So chemicals that disrupt it, like both perchlorates and fluoride, deserve intense scrutiny.

Thyroid dysfunction is just one of the many negative effects of ingesting fluoride, but the fact that it does illustrates an important double-standard taking place over at the EPA. Seemingly concerned about toxic chemicals that impair iodine uptake, the EPA is coming out against perchlorates while saying nothing about the continued poisioning of the population via artificial water fluoridation. Something is definitely wrong with this picture.

To learn more about the dangers associated with fluoride ingestion, visit:
http://www.fluoridealert.org

Sources for this story include:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/02/0…

Petitions lead to EPA ban on toxic sulfuryl fluoride

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson

(NaturalNews) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted a petition filed by the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Beyond Pesticides, to stop the commercial use of sulfuryl fluoride in food. The EPA agreed with the groups’ position that the insecticide and food fumigant is a significant public health risk because it exposes children to excessive levels of toxic fluoride, and because it is a known toxin.

The decision follows a similar one made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reduce recommended maximum fluoride levels in tap water from 1.2 to 0.7 parts per million (ppm), a 42 percent decrease. Together, the two decisions represent a significant landmark victory in helping to rid the food and water supply of toxic fluoride additives.

“For decades, people who raised concerns about fluoride being added to tap water or food were dismissed as crazy,” said Ken Cook, President of EWG. “All of a sudden we have two federal regulatory actions, announced just days apart, that tell us what was really crazy all those years: a government bureaucracy that ignored strong scientific evidence and clear warning signs of the threats fluoride has posed to public health all along.”

Sulfuryl fluoride had been approved as a replacement for methyl bromide to fumigate various food items, including nuts and dried fruits, in order to ward off pests. But sulfuryl fluoride is a known human toxin that can cause hypotension, nausea, pulmonary edema, cardiac dysrhythmia, metabolic acidosis, and even death.

“This step by EPA is not only significant in regard to the particular pesticide tolerances involved,” added Perry Wallace, professor of law at American University, and contributor to the petition efforts. “As a regulatory confirmation of our positions regarding the potential health effects of fluoride, it also has considerable precedential value for future initiatives to address this major area of concern.”

Sources for this story include:

http://www.ewg.org/release/epa-bar-…

http://informahealthcare.com/doi/ab…

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…

An Untested Type of Fluoride Is Used in the Overwhelming Majority of U.S. Water Supplies

Washington’s Blog
Jan 10, 2011Dartmouth University wrote in 2001:

In a recent article in the journal NeuroToxicology, a research team led by Roger D. Masters, Dartmouth College Research Professor and Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government Emeritus, reports evidence that public drinking water treated with sodium silicofluoride or fluosilicic acid, known as silicofluorides (SiFs), is linked to higher uptake of lead in children.

Sodium fluoride, first added to public drinking water in 1945, is now used in less than 10% of fluoridation systems nationwide, according to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) 1992 Fluoridation Census. Instead, SiF’s are now used to treat drinking water delivered to 140 million people. While sodium fluoride was tested on animals and approved for human consumption, the same cannot be said for SiFs.

Masters and his collaborator Myron J. Coplan, a consulting chemical engineer, formerly Vice President of Albany International Corporation, led the team that has now studied the blood lead levels in over 400,000 children in three different samples. In each case, they found a significant link between SiF-treated water and elevated blood lead levels.

“We should stop using silicofluorides in our public water supply until we know what they do,” said Masters. Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency have told Masters and Coplan that the EPA has no information on health effects of chronic ingestion of SiF-treated water.

***

Also requiring further examination is German research that shows SiFs inhibit cholinesterase, an enzyme that plays an important role in regulating neurotransmitters.

“If SiFs are cholinesterase inhibitors, this means that SiFs have effects like the chemical agents linked to Gulf War Syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and other puzzling conditions that plague millions of Americans,” said Masters. “We need a better understanding of how SiFs behave chemically and physiologically.”

Here is Masters’ scientific paper on SiFs (also called “fluosilicic acid” and “fluorosilicic acid“).

Where does this compound come from?

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Toxicology Program, reported in 2001:

Sodium hexafluorosilicate is produced by treating fluorosilicic acid with sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate, or sodium chloride; alkalinity is adjusted to avoid the release of the fluoride. Fluorosilicic acid is mainly produced as a byproduct of the manufacture of phosphate fertilizers where phosphate rock is treated with sulfuric acid.

***
The major use of sodium hexafluorosilicate and fluorosilicic acid is as fluoridation agents for drinking water.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey:

An estimated 40,000 tons of fluorosilicic acid (equivalent to about 70,000 tons of 92%
fluorspar) was recovered from phosphoric acid plants processing phosphate rock. Fluorosilicic acid was used primarily in water fluoridation, either directly or after processing into sodium silicofluoride.

The USGS also noted in a 2000 report:

Fluorosilicic acid is a byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry and is not manufactured for itself alone …

In other words, even though neither the EPA or any other government agency has studied the effects of long-term ingestion of fluorosilicic acid, it is being used instead of sodium fluoride because it is cheaper.

As Edward Urbansky from the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, National Risk management Research Laboratory, Water Supply and Water Resources Division wrote in 2002:

The most common fluoridating agents used by American waterworks are sodium fluoride (NaF), hexafluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6), and sodium hexafluorosilicate
(Na2SiF6) as shown in Figure 1.14 Although 25% of the utilities reported using NaF, this corresponds to only 9.2% of the U.S. population drinking fluoride-supplemented tap water. … The cost savings in using fluorosilicates result in large systems using those additives instead.

***

In the United States, the primary sources of fluoridating agents are rocky mineral deposits containing mixtures of fluorite and apatite; the fluoridating agent itself is produced as a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer manufacture.

***
The EPA is aware of papers positing links between fluoridation agents and lead in the bloodstream or challenging the accepted chemistry. To truly investigate such hypotheses, better chemical knowledge of the speciation is required.