The City of Burlington’s water contains 1 part per million (1 ppm) of fluoride. We keep hearing that the fluoride is diluted so much that its toxic effects are essentially diluted out. But is 1 ppm REALLY such a minute quantity as to be without any effect?
One ppm of fluoride means that every liter of water contains 1 milligram, or 1 mg, of fluoride. So, for every liter of fluoridated water you drink, whether it is in the form of water, or a beverage such as soda, coffee, juice, or beer, that is prepared with fluoridated water, you consume 1 mg of fluoride. And Brita and Pur filters do not filter out fluoride.
People also consume additional fluoride from other sources: toothpaste, processed cereals, mechanically de-boned chicken, tea (the leaves of which accumulate Fluoride), fish, and pesticides residues in wine, fruits and vegetables – all of these foods frequently contain varying levels of fluoride, sometimes several mgs per serving.
So how much fluoride do you ingest per day? Adding up the beverages you drink, the toothpaste you use, and consumption of the many foods that contain fluoride, you are likely ingesting several mgs of fluoride per day, half of which is stored in your body indefinitely, and builds up over time. And a few mgs a day is not insignificant.
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So how do you control this? When your children are drinking city water, juices, brushing their teeth with fluoride toothpaste, eating chicken, and processed cereals? The answer is you can’t, and their largest exposure is coming from the drinking water.
EPA used a “safe dose” for adults of 8 mgs per day in setting its drinking water limit, however, this dose has since been found by the National Research Council to be too high to prevent adverse health effects. A daily dose of 20 mgs of fluoride is known to cause crippling skeletal fluorosis. Safety factors of 10 are normally built in to provide the public with an adequate margin of safety. This would result in an acceptable dose of 2 mg per day, or the amount you consume in only 2 L of water.
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2 years ago
Not that I think one should even HAVE to resort to it. But technically I believe you CAN filter out fluoride with a high-quality reverse-osmosis filter for one's drinking/cooking water. Granted, the systems are expensive, they have a definite carbon footprint for component/cartridge manufacture and they are wasteful due to the fact that for every gallon of pure water produced a good 40% of that volume gets flushed down the drain as wastewater to carry the pollutants away. Not to be a nit-picker, but I am :-p
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