So what about the fact that women drink the water? Doesn't it pass to the
baby via the breastmilk?

--
Andrea mom of 5 - latest addition Kamron David 16lbs 5 (7lbs 9 and a half
born).

"NYSCOF" wrote in message
...
INTERNATIONAL FLUORIDE INFORMATION NETWORK

IFIN BULLETIN: IFIN # 846: Public Health warning #1.

September 15, 2003.

Dear All,

This is the first in a series of 14 bulletins in which I will be focussing
on
public health warnings on fluoridation which are being ignored by public
health
officials as well as many non-governmental organizations otherwise engaged
in
protecting the public health.

1. The very low level of fluoride in mothers' milk.

For our first public health warning, we start at the beginning: baby's
first
meal.

According to the Institute of Medicine (I0M, 1997, page 292), "The
fluoride
concentration in human milk ranges from 0.007 to 0.011 mg/liter (Ekstrand
et
al., 1984; Esala et al. 1982; Spak et al., 1982)." In other words the
level of
the fluoride ion in mothers' milk is approximately 0.01 ppm, which is 100
times
lower than that added to the public water supply where water fluoridation
is
practiced. This means that a baby, which is bottle fed with milk formula
made
up with fluoridated tap water will be getting 100 times more fluoride than
nature had intended.

As far as the practice of water fluoridation is concerned we should be
concerned about this on two fronts. First of all this very low natural
level of
fluoride in mothers' milk is telling us that fluoride is not necessary for
healthy teeth, healthy bones or healthy anything else. Mothers' milk has
been
designed by nature over a huge period of time to present to the baby the
ideal
mixture of nutrients for early growth. As apologists for fluoridation are
swift
to point out the fluoride ion is readily available in nature -indeed it is
the
13th most abundant element in the earth's crust, so it is not through any
lack
of availability which causes it to be so low in mothers' milk. Indeed,
life
evolved from the sea which has an average concentration of fluoride ion of
about 1.3 ppm. This low level further underlines the fact that no evidence
has
been presented to persuade the scientific community that fluoride is a
nutrient. In particular, no disease has ever been shown to be caused by
lack of
fluoride.

Some apologists for fluoridation, like a spokesperson for the Victorian
Department of Heath in Australia, have claimed that mothers' milk does not
guarantee an ideal nutritional mix for the baby. They give as evidence for
this
the fact that in some instances mothers' milk is low in folic acid leading
to
avoidable damage to the baby. However, this is not a good example because
folic
acid cannot be made in the body and if it is low in mothers' milk it
simply
reflects the fact that the mother's diet is low in this substance. There
are
other examples we could cite where a mother on a poor diet, will provide a
poorer quality milk to her baby.

However, in the case of fluoride, a mother on a healthy diet, with an
abundant
supply of fluoride, will not pass more than a miniscule amount of this on
to
her baby in her milk. There is a concern where a mother is getting excess
fluoride in her diet about her passing fluoride onto her baby during fetal
growth because fluoride can cross the placental membrane. In China they
have
found excess levels of fluoride in the bones and the brains of aborted
fetuses.

Dr. Vyvyan Howard, an infant and fetal pathologist from the University of
Liverpool in the UK puts the situation this way:

"Nature appears to have evolved a mechanism of minimizing the exposure
of infants to fluoride. Human breast milk only contains between 5 and 10
parts per billion of fluoride, while adult blood contains between 59 and
640
parts per billion. However chloride, a closely associated halogen ion that
is
essential for life, is present in breast milk at 360,000 parts per
billion.
There must be an evolutionary selection pressure operating for this
selective exclusion of an otherwise highly diffusible anion."

The second reason for concern is the notion that fluoride is so low in
mothers'
milk because nature was aware of fluoride's extremely high biological
activity
and therefore had good reasons for keeping it away from the baby's
developing
tissues. We now know that fluoride can inhibit many enzymes; can interfere
with
the normal fucntioning of several metal ions like calcium and magnesium,
and in
the presence of a trace amount of aluminum can switch on G-proteins,
thereby
interfering with he messaging system of many important messengers such as
water
soluble hormones, growth factors and neurotransmitters.

In 1978, Dr. Arvid Carlsson (Nobel laureate in Medicine in 2000) offered
as one
of his key reasons for opposing fluoridation in Sweden, was the concerns
he had
about the extra exposure to the developing brain cells of a new born baby
bottle fed with formula made up with fluoridated tap water.

This concern appears prophetic now that evidence from China indicates that
children's IQ appears to be lowered by water containing as little as 1.8
ppm
fluoride (see Public Health warning #9, to come).

Paul Connett, PhD, Co-Founder,
Fluoride Action Network
http://www.fluoridealert.org