Trace elements that may be found in fluoridation chemicals have no observed health impacts

This was given to me in a comment whereby the author attempted to argue against fluoridation. They referred to Hirzy et al (2013) as evidence of this.

That paper, nor the argument, question the safety of fluoridation itself and thus both really are irrelevant. However, there is an important related issue; are we being exposed to carcinogenic substances from trace impurities within the fluoridation compounds?

Within Hirzy et al (2013), we are left with the impression that we are: “pain and suffering of citizens that result from use of the technical grade fluoridating agents. Other countries, such as Ireland, New Zealand, Canada and Australia that use technical grade fluoridating agents may realize similar benefits by making this change.”

The authors chose to obtain estimates of cancer rates due to low level exposure to arsenic from laboratory data rather than population statistics. They make it clear that there is additional “pain and suffering” in the form of lung and bladder cancer due to exposure to technical grade fluoridation chemicals, so why they don’t refer to real world analysis seems a little strange.

I gathered Australian census data on population, cause of death due to lung and bladder cancers from 2001, 2006 and 2011, separated by gender and obtained the percentages to compensate for population variance. See my full analysis here.

Queensland had less than 5% of its population exposed to fluoridated water for 2001 and 2006 datasets while the other states had majority coverage. Queensland did not experience reduced rates of lung or bladder cancers compared to the other states and for the most part, it had near average values.

There is not evidence that fluoridation practices in Australia is exposing us to dangerous levels of arsenic, leading to increased rates of lung and bladder cancers.

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Have you heard of any other anti-fluoridation arguments that I’ve not covered? Feel free to forward them to me via the post submissions forms here and, time pending, I’ll do what I can to provide a strong counter-argument based upon facts.

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