I am writing to my friends, neighbors and fellow residents in Durango regarding water fluoridation. I am a new doc in town, having moved here from Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. Portland has voted down water fluoridation for decades, while Vancouver has not.
Over the 23 years that I practiced in Vancouver, about half of my patient load was from Portland and the other half from Vancouver. Of the patients presented with thyroid problems, most of them lived in Vancouver, where people drank fluoridated water.
How can this be? A trip down chemistry lane will help all us water consumers better understand this (by the way, I was a chemistry major). If we remember the periodic table from high school chemistry, all of the known elements are listed in stacks of blocks with corresponding numbers associated with them.
The second to last column from right to left are the halogens, and are grouped here because they have similar properties. From the top down they are: fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine. The halogens displace each other from the top down. What this means is that fluorine, chlorine and bromine all displace and compete with iodine for iodine receptors, which creates an iodine deficiency and does not allow the thyroid hormone to become its active form.
A useful lab test to confirm this is the iodine loading test, which will measure the amount of excreted fluorine, chlorine and bromine. Those that are interested can Google “Dr. David Brownstein/Thyroid” to learn more about this testing. If you do, you will find out about the toxic sources of fluoride used for water treatment.
Durango currently gets its fluoride from industrial waste in China. There is also the matter of choice. If after learning about the toxicity of Durango fluoride and how it disrupts our thyroid hormone production you still choose to ingest fluoride, I would ask you to simply buy fluoridated toothpaste and let the rest of us avoid this toxic substance.
Dennis O’Brien, DC
Durango
