|
Fluoride and the Phosphate
Connection
by George C. Glasser
Cities all over the US purchase
hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh pollution concentrate from Florida
- fluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6) - to fluoridate water.
Fluorosilicic acid is composed of
tetrafluorosiliciate gas and other species of fluorine gases captured in
pollution scrubbers and concentrated into a 23% solution during wet process
phosphate fertilizer manufacture. Generally, the acid is stored in outdoor
cooling ponds before being shipped to US cities to artificially fluoridate
drinking water.
Fluoridating drinking water with
recovered pollution is a cost-effective means of disposing of toxic waste.
The fluorosilicic acid would otherwise be classified as a hazardous toxic
waste on the Superfund Priorities List of toxic substances that pose the
most significant risk to human health and the greatest potential liability
for manufacturers.
Phosphate fertilizer suppliers
have more than $10 billion invested in production and mining facilities in
Florida. Phosphate fertilizer production accounts for $800 million in wages
per year. Florida's mines produce 30% of the world supply and 75% of the US
supply of phosphate fertilizers. Much of the country's supply of
fluoro-silicic acid for water fluoridation is also produced in Florida.
Phosphate fertilizer
manufacturing and mining are not environment friendly operations. Fluorides
and radionuclides are the primary toxic pollutants from the manufacture of
phosphate fertilizer in Central Florida. People living near the fertilizer
plants and mines, experience lung cancer and leukemia rates that are double
the state average. Much of West Central Florida has become a toxic waste
dump for phosphate fertilizer manufacturers. Federal and state pollution
regulations have been modified to accommodate phosphate fertilizer
production and use: These regulations have included using recovered
pollution for water fluoridation.
Radium wastes from filtration
systems at phosphate fertilizer facilities are among the most radioactive
types of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) wastes. The radium
wastes are so concentrated, they cannot be disposed of at the one US
landfill licensed to accept NORM wastes, so manufacturers dump the
radioactive wastes in acidic ponds atop 200-foot-high gypsum stacks. The
federal government has no rules for its disposal.
During the late 1960s, fluorine
emissions were damaging crops, killing fish and causing crippling skeletal
fluorosis in livestock. The EPA became concerned and enforced regulations
requiring manufacturers to install pollution scrubbers. At that time, the
facilities were dumping the concentrated pollution directly into waterways
leading into Tampa Bay.
A Phosphate Worse than Death
In the late 1960s, EPA chemist
Ervin Bellack worked out the ideal solution to a monumental pollution
problem. Because recovered phosphate fertilizer manufacturing waste contains
about 19% fluorine, Bellack concluded that the concentrated "scrubber
liquor" could be a perfect water fluoridation agent. It was a liquid and
easily soluble in water, unlike sodium fluoride - a waste product from
aluminum manufacturing. It was also inexpensive.
Fate also intervened. The
aluminum industry, which previously supplied sodium fluoride for water
fluoridation, was facing a shortage of fluorspar used in smelting aluminum.
Consequently, there was a shortage of sodium fluoride to fluoridate drinking
water.
For the phosphate fertilizer
industry, the shortage of sodium fluoride was the key to turning red ink
into black and an environmental liability into a perceived asset. With the
help of the EPA, fluorosilicic acid was transformed from a concentrated
toxic waste and a liability into a "proven cavity fighter."
The EPA and the US Public Health
Service waived all testing procedures and - with the help of the American
Dental Association (ADA) - encouraged cities to add the radioactive
concentrate into America's drinking water as an "improved" form of fluoride.
The product is not "fluorine" or
"fluoride" as proponents state: It is a pollution concentrate. Fluorine is
only one captured pollutant comprising about 19% of the total product.
By 1983, the official EPA policy
was expressed by EPA Office of Water Deputy Administrator Rebecca Hanmer as
follows: "In regard to the use of fluosilicic (fluorosilicic) acid as a
source of fluoride for fluoridation, this agency regards such use as an
ideal environmental solution to a long-standing problem. By recovering
by-product fluosilicic acid from fertilizer manufacturing, water and air
pollution are minimized, and water utilities have a low-cost source of
fluoride available to them."
A Hot New Property
In promoting the use of the
pollution concentrate as a fluoridation agent, the ADA, Federal agencies and
manufacturers failed to mention that it was radioactive. Whenever uranium is
found in nature as a component of a mineral, a host of other radionuclides
are always found in the mineral in various stages of decay. Uranium and all
of its decay-rate products are found in phosphate rock, fluorosilicic acid
and phosphate fertilizer.
During wet-process manufacturing,
trace amounts of radium and uranium are captured in the pollution scrubber.
This process was the subject of an article by H.F. Denzinger, H. J. König
and G.E. Krüger in the fertilizer industry journal, Phosphorus & Potassium
(No. 103, Sept./Oct. 1979) discussed how radionuclides are carried into the
fluorosilicic acid.
While the uranium and radium in
fluorosilicic acid are known carcinogens, two decay products of uranium are
even more carcinogenic: radon-222 and polonium-210.
During the acidulation process
that creates phosphoric acid, radon gas contained in the phosphate pebble
can be released in greater proportions than other decay-rate products (radionuclides)
and carried over into the fluorosilicic acid. Polonium may also be captured
in greater quantities during scrubbing operations because, like radon, it
can readily combine with fluoride.
In written communications to the
author, EPA Office of Drinking Water official Joseph A. Cotruvo and Public
Health Service fluoridation engineer Thomas Reeves have acknowledged the
presence of radionuclides in fluorosilicic acid.
Radon-222 is not an immediate
threat because it stops emitting alpha radiation and decays into lead-214 in
3.86 days. Lead-214 appears to be harmless but it eventually decays into
bismuth-214 and then into polonium-214. Unless someone knew to look for
specific isotopes, no one would know that a transmutation into the polonium
isotope had occurred.
Polonium-210, a decay product of
bismuth-210, has a half-life of 138 days and gives off intense alpha
radiation as it decays into regular lead and becomes stable. Any
polonium-210 that might be present in the phosphate concentrate could pose a
significant health threat. A very small amount of polonium-210 can be very
dangerous, giving off 5,000 times more alpha radiation than the same amount
of radium. As little as 0.03 microcuries (6.8 trillionths of a gram) of
polonium-210 can be carcinogenic to humans.
The lead isotope behaves like
calcium in the body. It may be stored in the bones for years before turning
into polonium-210 and triggering a carcinogenic release of alpha radiation.
Drinking water fluoridated with
fluorosilicic acid contains radon at every sequence of its decay to
polonium. The fresher the pollution concentrate, the more polonium it will
contain.
As long as the amount of
contaminants added to the drinking water (including radionuclides in
fluorosilicic acid) do not exceed the limits set forth in the Safe Drinking
Water Act, the EPA has no regulatory problem with the use of any
contaminated products for drinking water treatment.
Big Risks: No Tests
Despite the increased cancer risk
from using phosphate waste to fluoridate drinking water, the EPA nor the
Centers for Disease Control have never commissioned or required any clinical
studies with the pollution concentrate - specifically, the hexafluorsilicate
radical whose toxicokinetic properties are different than the lone, fluoride
ion.
Section 104 (I) (5) of the
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA)
directs the Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the EPA, the Public
Health Service and the National Toxicology Program to initiate a program of
research on fluoride safety. However, after almost 30 years of using
fluorosilicic acid and sodium fluorosilicate to fluoridate the drinking
water, not one study has been commissioned.
The fluoride ion only
hypothetically exists as an entity in an ideal solution of purified water -
and tap water is far from pure H2O. All clinical research with animal models
is done using 99.97% pure sodium fluoride and double distilled or deionized
water. Among the thousands of clinical studies about fluoride, not one has
been done with the pollution concentrate or typical tap water containing
fluorides.
Synergy Soup
The fluorosilicic acid is also
contaminated with small traces of arsenic, cadmium, mercury, lead, sulfates,
iron and phosphorous, not to mention radionuclides. Some contaminants have
the potential to react with the hexafluorosilicate radical and may act as
complex ionic compounds. The biological fates and toxicokinetic properties
of these complex ions are unknown.
The reality of artificial water
fluoridation is so complex that determining the safety of the practice may
be impossible. Tap water is chemically treated with chlorine, soluble
silicates, phosphate polymers and many other chemicals. In addition, the
source water itself may contain a variety of contaminants.
The addition of a fluoridation
agent can create synergized toxicants in a water supply that have unique
toxico-kinetic properties found only in that particular water supply.
Consequently, any maladies resulting from chronic ingestion of the product
likely would be dismissed as a local or regional anomaly unrelated to water
fluoridation.
Technically, artificially
fluoridating drinking water is a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Under statutes of the SDWA, federal agencies are forbidden from endorsing,
supporting, requiring or funding the practice of adding any chemicals to the
water supply other than for purposes of water purification. However, the
Public Health Service (PHS) applies semantics to circumvent Federal law in
order to promote and fund the practice.
PHS states that they only
recommend levels of fluorides in the drinking water, and it is the sole
decision of a state or community to fluoridate drinking water.
Federal agencies are forbidden
from directly funding or implementing water fluoridation but Federal Block
Grants are given to States to use as they see fit. Through second and third
parties (such as the American Dental Association, state health departments
and state fluoridation coordinators), PHS encourages communities to apply
for Federal Block Grant funds to implement fluoridation.
The legality of using of Federal
Block Grant funds to fund water fluoridation, a practice prohibited by
Federal law, has never been addressed in the courts.
Vendors selling the pollution
concentrate as a fluoridation agent use a broad disclaimer found on the
Material Data Safety Sheet that states: "no responsibility can be assumed by
vendor for any damage or injury resulting from abnormal use, from any
failure to adhere to recommended practices, or from any hazards inherent to
the product."
The next time you turn on the tap
and water gushes out into a glass, reflect on the following disclaimer from
the EPA's 1997 Fluoride: Regulatory Fact Sheet: "In the United States, there
are no Federal safety standards which are applicable to additives, including
those for use in fluoridating drinking water."
George Glasser is a Florida-based
writer whose work has appeared in Newlife, Whole Life Times, the Sarasota
ECO Report and the Tampa Tribune.
source:
http://www.earthisland.org
Products to Reduce Fluoride
Order Toll FREE at 866-875-4386
(USA and Canada Only. All others call 503-537-0636
PST)
| 
