How Fluoride Kills Human Cells

Researchers uncovering mechanisms behind fluoride's toxicity

Fluoride, the "breakthrough discovery" of dental professionals around the world, seems to have a "dark side" that few outside a very specialized field of the scientific community are aware of.  Fluoride apparently has the ability to cause DNA damage and even "cell death" in human cells.

In a new study, researchers from the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan note that

"Even though fluoride toxicity is increasingly being considered to be important, very little information is available on the mechanism of action of fluoride."

Fluoride is added to water reticulation systems around the world, without enough being known about the effects of fluoride on our health.  You would expect that the chemical and its effects, would be fully investigated prior to it being added to our water and prescribed to our children.

Researchers recently investigated the mechanism by which fluoride is able to kill cells by observing how it affects human leukemia cells.  Cancerous cells are often used in research on toxicity because they are more active than normal cells.

They found that the fluoride induced a form of cell death known as "apoptosis" in a dose-dependent and time dependent manner.

Lead researcher Dr. C.D. Anuradha, in comments to the OptimalWellnessCenter, explains that "fluoride in general is harmful to any type of cell. We have seen that fluoride causes cell death in other non-cancerous cells but however the mode of death has been found to be different." Instead of causing apoptosis, in normal cells fluoride seems to kill cells through a different mechanism, known as "necrosis". 

Cell Death - Murder or Suicide?

Apoptosis, also known as "programmed cell death" in a process governed by genes in which the cell dies from within upon activation by some stimulating factor. It is a useful phenomenon, which occurs often as part of the normal functioning of the human body, as it gets rid of unwanted cells. The term apoptosis is derived from the Greek word that signifies "the dropping of leaves from the trees." The falling leaves are no longer needed, just as is the case with the unwanted cells, so they are gotten rid of, and recycled back into the earth. 

Necrosis, on the other hand, is an externally influenced death, which occurs through some type of local injury (as loss of blood supply, corrosion, burning, or the local lesion of a disease).

A useful analogy between apoptosis and necrosis might be to compare suicide (apoptosis) to murder (necrosis).

But what about at lower doses?

Nobody really knows what happens at lower doses.  Dr. Anuradha states that, although the concentrations are quite low " ... still we expect some amount of damage even at lower concentrations, since at higher concentrations the results are quite clear that the difference is enormous and significant."

She notes that the issue of therapeutic fluoridation is the subject of much debate. Could this be the reason that Japan does not fluoridate ANY of its water supplies? This can't be said with certainty, but after all, doesn't it make sense to keep a potentially dangerous substance out of the water and not FORCE the entire population to consume it?

In the United States currently about 60% of the population drinks fluoridated water, although if the federal government has its way, that percentage will rise dramatically.  This is especially true with states like California MANDATING the fluoridation of the public water supplies over a certain size.

What Type of Fluoride?

Except for readers with strong scientific backgrounds, most people don't realize that there is really no such thing as plain "fluoride". When it said that "fluoride" is added to the water, in reality it is a fluoride-compound such as sodium fluoride (NaF), which is the form used in these toxicity experiments. 

While this may be the most well known and well-studied of all the fluoride compounds, it is actually very rarely used for water fluoridation. In over 90% of the fluoridated water in the US, the chemicals used are one of the silicofluorides (either fluosilicic acid or sodium silicofluoride).

However, these chemicals have been shown to act much differently from the much simpler sodium fluoride. In one study, it was shown that these chemicals enhance the cellular uptake of lead <http://www.fluoride-journal.com/98-31-3/313-s25.htm> (<http://www.fluoride-journal.com/98-31-3/313-s25.htm>).

Being that there is evidence that silicofluorides may be even more toxic than NaF, it is quite possible that the DNA damage and cell-killing ability might be even greater in the type of fluoride used in the water supplies.

What Can I Do About it?

Whether you believe that water fluoridation is a vast conspiracy or simply that it is a possibility that fluoride is a dangerous substance that you would just rather avoid, the question remains the same - what to do about it?

The best advice would be to go to our Fluoride Links Page <http://www.mercola.com/article/links/fluoride_links.htm> and get involved.

 

Woolies the worm in that plastic fruit

By Matt Wade and Michael Bradley
July 9 2002

Australians are eating poorer tasting fruit, treated with increasing amounts of chemicals, because of stringent quality specifications by Woolworths, says the nation's largest citrus grower-packer.

"Woolworths just wants more and more plastic fruit," said Steve Twomey, domestic sales manager for Vitor Marketing in Renmark. "They only care that it looks shiny and beautiful."

He said the response from growers wanting to sell to Woolworths, which buys a quarter of all Australia's fruit and vegetables, had been to increase their use of pesticides and fungicides to reduce blemishes.

Many growers and food experts are concerned about the increasing standardisation of the food supply chain which the big two supermarket companies demand.

As their market share increases, Coles and Woolworths influence what happens to the fruit or vegetables they buy - from the time they are planted.

They insist that suppliers have standard systems which allow them to track when the produce was harvested, who picked it, which batch it was part of, and the temperature during storage and transport.

Small growers must pay thousands of dollars a year to maintain their standards accreditation and this eats into their profitability.

Big retailers believe that their standardised systems protect consumers and help growers to be more efficient. The tracking systems assure quality and allow the source of any contaminated food to be pinpointed.

But some experts are concerned that this increasingly regimented supply chain makes it more vulnerable to disruption and contamination.

Dr Bill Pritchard, an economic geographer at Sydney University, warned: "We are provisioning our population in very new ways. It seems terrific when the systems are working well, but if things go awry we will have a few issues to confront.

"A more concentrated chain with more distances for food to travel means more opportunities for major food scares - this is an issue lurking in the background."

Mr Twomey said the quality demands meant that new varieties of citrus, capable of producing larger, shinier fruit, were being planted.

"We now replace 3 per cent of our trees every year," he said. "They might look better, peel easier, they might be seedless, but they don't taste any better and I don't think they are going to be the saviour of our citrus industry."

Mr Twomey said more than half of Vitor's 50,000 tonnes of produce was now exported because "Woolies are too hard to deal with".

"They will reject fruit if it has three square centimetres of its surface blemished, because they think consumers won't buy marked citrus - even though the fruit is identical under the skin."

Coles was not as stringent, but was "definitely moving in that direction".

Only about 30 per cent of Sydney's food is still grown in NSW. The rest is trucked vast distances to the nation's biggest food market using "cool chain" technology to maximise its life.

Professor Barry McGlasson, a fresh food distribution specialist from the University of Western Sydney, said temperature management was "the most effective tool we've got to slow down loss of quality in fresh food".

The supermarkets are investing millions in their own cost-effective distribution systems.

The latest high-technology addition to the Woolworths fresh-food distribution system is Building X, a huge sealed structure above the rabble at the western apex of Flemington Markets.

As mysterious as its name suggests, Building X is shielded by boom gates, monitored by security guards and under constant video surveillance.

Woolworths bought it last year from the failed Franklins chain, gutting the building and transforming it into a state-of-the-art food distribution centre.

A loading area the size of three football fields processes more than 25,000 boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables each day.

The 80 staff are always dressed for winter. The temperature never rises above 14C, and very sensitive produce, such as mushrooms and lettuce, is cooled to about 2C. Another vast coolroom, kept at 8C, is used for apples.

Electric forklifts ferry pallets of produce through automatic plastic doors that separate the coolrooms from the loading area, where arriving produce undergoes immediate quality assessment. It is sent back if it does not fit Woolworths specifications.

Staff take digital photos of rejected produce and email the images to the grower within hours.

There is evidence the scale of the big food retailers is benefiting consumers and some economists argue that big players are appropriate for the sparsely populated Australian market because they have the economies of scale to keep costs down.

Roger Corbett, chief executive of Woolworths, is adamant that consumers are the big winners.

"We have nationalised our buying and distribution and when you do that there are enormous economies of scale. We pass these lower costs on to customers as lower prices."

Woolworths will spend $1 billion improving its supply and distribution systems over the next five years.

The Australian Consumers' Association says the food and grocery market is still competitive and that consumers are happy.

"Coles and especially Woolworths are obviously appealing to consumers," said ACA's chief executive, Louise Sylvan. "They are offering the sort of thing that consumers want to see."

Although the ACA would become concerned if the market share of the major chains jumped higher, "it's something that we do need to watch".

This story was found at:
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/10/1026185062222.html>

Earth has suffered irreversible changes, study finds

A big scientific investigation into the impact of human activity on the natural environment has concluded that the damage is threatening the ability of the planet to sustain future generations.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is one of the biggest scientific collaborations ever undertaken.

It finds that human activities have caused irreversible changes to the natural world.

Intensive farming is turning land barren and depleting water supplies, and these changes are severe enough to threaten the millennium development goals that include a commitment to halve world hunger by 2015.

The report also tries to put an economic cost on environmental degradation.

The report is unlikely to produce any quick-fix solutions, but it should provide the best view yet of the problem.

-BBC