Question: What is a major industrial pollutant, lies between lead and arsenic on the toxicity scale, and yet is continually promoted and being good for us?

Answer: Fluoride, and it's not being promoted as safe anymore, at least not by consumer groups who collect data on its toxicity.

One group – Health Action Network Society (HANS) – is urging its members to stop using fluoride in any form. The organization, based in British Columbia, researches self-care and preventive health issues. In a recent press release, it made the case for avoiding the substance that the dental industry has long touted as a healthful substance which strengthens tooth enamel.

On the contrary, says HANS, fluoride is not a nutrient; it is a toxic industrial waste – obtained from scrubbing the air emissions from smelters and phosphate fertilizer plants. It is causing severe environmental degradation in Canada and may, notes the group, be contributing to the rapid depletion of salmon stocks.

Cited are international studies which have “clearly revealed that fluoride is linked with arthritis, hip fractures, cancer and other diseases, and even premature skin wrinkling.” It has been banned or discontinued in 21 European countries along with Japan and Hawaii.

Supporting this stand against fluoride are some Canadian medical leaders such as Dr. Richard Foulkes, former special consultant to the Minister of Health for British Columbia. One of the recommendations that he says he mistakenly made to the government was to recommend mandatory fluoridation for B.C. Dr. Foulkes has recently written a feature article in Health Naturally magazine, in which he says, “I placed my trust in individuals from whom I received advice. I assumed they had done their homework, studying all sides of the subject thoroughly. This was not so.”

The group also quotes Robert Carton, Ph.D., a former scientist with the US Environmental Protection Agency, who says, “Fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century, if not of all time.”

Source: http://www.life.ca/nl/38/fluoride.html