IICPH flyer for the Halton Eco-Festival, 17-18 April 2010

We borrow our drinking water from Lake Ontario source water. We clean it and then add fluoridation chemicals. We consume less than 1%. The rest goes back into the environment in municipal effluent.

The fluoride added to our drinking water is hazardous industrial waste called fluorosilicic acid or HFSA. It is pollution scrubbed from the stacks of phosphate fertilizer factories, dribbled into drinking water “as is” with contaminants including arsenic and lead. It requires the addition of more buffering chemicals and more ammonia to drinking water, to reduce its corrosive effect on pipes and fittings.

Fluoridation toxins – fluoride, silicates, arsenic, lead, buffering chemicals and leached infrastructure metals – go into sewage. Some are concentrated in sludge biosolids, and go wherever the solids go: into the air from incineration or into the ground from burial or farm application. Most of the fluoride enters the ecosystem in treated effluent and accumulates downstream in source water.

Some fluoridated waste water enters ground water, creek headwaters and storm sewers far from its Lake Ontario source.

Fluoridation adds one pound of persistent, cumulative fluoride toxin per person per year in waste water, about 9 million pounds annually.

This has dire consequences for the ecosystem and aquatic food chain. Fluoride pollution robs calcium from water and increases the uptake of heavy metals in plants, tiny fish, clams, crustaceans and water fleas.

International Institute of Concern for Public Health wants this to end.

Fluoridation mocks the intent of legislation for environmental protection, conservation, sustainable source water and safe drinking water.

It is time for City Councils to vote it out.