The NSF Seal of Nothing


Today I'm going to talk about the National Sanitation Foundation (a.k.a. NSF) – and its treasured seal of approval behind which fluoridation purveyors – including the City of Austin – hide.  When we had those public forums two years ago:  you remember, the ones at which no public Q & A or challenge to the city's hand-picked authority figures was permitted, the Health & Human Services people parroted the CDC's “safe and effective” mantra, while the Water Utility folks parroted, the “NSF Standard 60-approved” mantra.  

So what is this very special NSF Standard 60 mark of approval that confers a free pass to any fluoride vendor or user sporting it?

A bit of back story here. For years, EPA held the regulatory power over drinking water additives  But in 1988, following an embarrassing scandal in which it caved to Dow Chemical's demands to double the acceptable fluoride level from 2 to 4 parts per million in order to accommodate a new pesticide the company was preparing to unleash on the environment, EPA decided to divest itself of the political hot potato of water fluoridation.  It did so illegally transferring all responsibility for water additives to a private third-party entity outside of governmental reach. That entity was the NSF.  

So again, what is NSF? It's a Michigan-based trade association whose members—mainly chemical suppliers—have volunteered to self-police, by setting standards for their own products.  They have no accountability, nor are their documents subject to public scrutiny.  With protection like that, they needn't consider anyone's interests but their own. They're the fox guarding the chicken coop. That's why we call NSF Standard 60 a sham.

But there's more.  Even if NSF-60 were an honest certification, it would still be applied fraudently because NSF, in issuing it, violates its own rules. NSF-60 requires both safety studies and testing for impurities for every product certified. Safety studies are animal studies. But NSF doesn't conduct any. It relies on the vendors themselves to provide that information—if available.  If it's not available, they simply issue a waiver.

Last January, my wife filed an open records request for those studies with the Austin Water Utility. She received a single document: a 2012 NSF laboratory report  showing measurable quantities of arsenic, lead and mercury in Mosaic's fluorosilic acid. Safety studies were non-existent.  

NSF says this is perfectly OK. We will continue to insist it isn't until we bring fluoridation in Austin to an end.







                                                              

  Friends of Fluoride Free Austin:

After over a year of preparation, we can at last announce that a major local law firm is ready to proceed with a suit against the City of Austin that claims damage to children's teeth due to the city's water fluoridation policies.  Fluoride Free Austin is NOT the plaintiff in this action. It will be a class action lawsuit and we are seeking qualified plaintiffs. Recovery of monetary damages is likely.

We are seeking Austin area children and teens who acquired dental fluorosis due to drinking Austin tapwater at a critical developmental stage. The video below shows you what dental fluorosis looks like.  

The criteria are:

1) Between the ages of 6 and 18 now

2) Raised on City of Austin tapwater between the ages of 1 and 7 (need not be current Austin resident)

3) Have white or brown marks on teeth as shown in the following video:


                    

If any child among your family or friends fits this description, please have his/her parents contact us.  Reach us by email at info@fluoridefreeaustin.com (a digital picture of the teeth is helpful) or call Rae at (512) 371-3786. 
                                                           


                                                     

                                                

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmembers. Nowadays, when people everywhere are struggling to shake off the burden of water fluoridation inflicted on them by others, I like to refer to current events. In Utah, earlier this month, the legislature passed a law which will effectively put an end to fluoridation in that state. Their Safe Drinking Water Disclosure Act requires a batch-specific certificate of analysis, by weight or percentage, for all components—including impurities—of every shipment of fluoridation chemicals bound for public drinking water supplies.

That's something they'll never get. Fluoride suppliers routinely refuse requests for such information. Activists and government officials alike in Florida, Arkansas, Washington and other states have tried in vain: one Florida councilman wrote to 30-plus vendors and received not a single response. Now Utah is saying: “No info, no sale.”

It's obvious why the vendors don't want their product information getting out. If it did, the criminality of selling the stuff for human consumption would emerge. However, they can't entirely prevent leaks. We have this document from Lucier, the direct predecessor of Mosaic Co., Austin's current fluoride supplier. Same operation, same product, different name.. It's exactly the kind of analysis Utah now demands, and it bears the caution: DO NOT SEND OUT. Indeed.

To take just the most obvious example of why they might not want it sent our: here's arsenic, a deadly poison we're all familiar with. It says you can typically expect 0.0035% arsenic in their witches' brew of unpurified scrubber liquor. Using a handy online converter, we see that that translates to 35,000 parts per billion: 3,500 times the what the EPA allows. Of course, it's not drinking water yet; it has to be diluted. If anyone poured it directly into Lake Travis, they'd be arrested. Yet the Austin Water Utility daily dumps it into our drinking water supply, where it's diluted to about 0.3 parts per billion. That might not sound like much. However, EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level GOAL is ZERO. i.e. there is NO safe level for arsenic, and yet here you are adding it day in and day out So people who are aware of this are understandably unhappy.

That's all for now. I'll return to this subject at a future date. Thank you.

                                                           


                                                     

                                   

                                        Philip and Linda Greene speak before the Council
                                        Spelman explains his off-stage laughter. Or tries to.

At citizens communication on December 13, 2012 - the last City Council meeting of the year - an  absurdity unfolded of a sort rarely seen on camera.  Philip Greene was speaking:  he urged the Council to heed the weight of evidence that ingested fluoride is not merely unnecessary but actually detrimental to the health of many. In ending, addressed the Council as to whether they had any studies which showed fluoride to be either safe or effective.

There was no response, of course. While Mayor Leffingwell waited in grim boredom for the buzzer to sound, councilmembers Bill Spelman and Laura Morrison enjoyed a joke together. This is a not unusual occurrence between the two "techies" on the Council, and is reminescent of the days when Randi Shade and Mike Martinez would sometimes put their heads together - literally - under the dais. (Sharing iPhone pictures, perhaps?).  Councilmembers seemingly feel free to behave rudely during citizens communication, perhaps assuming that no one of consequence will notice them. 

But Linda Greene noticed.  And in turn, she called them out roundly on it.  It was then that Spelman, known for his often quirky responses and clearly nonplussed, offered this extraordinary explanation: 

"I wasn't laughing at Mr. Greene's speech. I was only laughing at my own inability to control myself."                    

Whaaaaaaaat???

Spelman, a professor at UT's LBJ School for budding bureaucrats, speaks the most arcane variant of bureaucratese I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot.  But as one of the seven lords before whom we're expected to supplicate, it befits us to understand what he is saying. Did he really laugh at his own inability to control himself? Or was the laughter a result of his inability to control himself?  In either case, what exactly made that so funny to him?  To councilmember Morrison?

He went on to try to explain that he wanted to engage with Philip Greene on the merits, but had to forego the opportunity, implying that rules prohibited Council from interacting with speakers during citizens communication.  While it's true such a state law does exist, the Austin City Council members routinely violate it, especially on pressing matters like dog parks and billboards. 

Here's a YouTube of Spelman requesting more information of another Fluoride Free Austin speaker, Darcy Bloom, nearly a year ago. (the information was provided but no followup ensued).

So will Spelman and Philip Greene have their conversation - and, more importantly, will anything useful come of it?

Who knows? My own observation over more than four years of steady advocacy tells me that this Council has made little to no attempt to deal with us in good faith; that they're supremely uninterested in tackling an issue that holds a combination of scant rewards and great (perceived) political danger for them; and that they're wheel spinning in place, waiting for the clock to wind down and praying that fluoridation doesn't end on their watch. 

But time is running out. The whole nation, not just Austin, is waking up, and they may not get their wish.  

Meanwhile, if Spelman is laughing because...well...whatever that reason was he gave...then I just might be Whistler's grandmother. 


                                                                    

From the Fluoride Action Network, just in time for the New Year, comes this splendid video of Dr. Yolanda Whyte, a young pediatrician who nowadays devotes much of her time to educating the public about the hazards of water fluoridation, telling it like it is.  Please watch it now - and pass it on.


                        
                                                           


                                                     

                                     
                               Like Garlic to Vampires: Pew Shrinks from FFA's Colorful Badge

Good afternoon.  Today I’ll start with a document close to home.  I just came across.this work order history for AWU’s fluoride operations for 2009-10.  Now, when some of us toured the Ullrich plant in summer 2009, we were told in effect (despite the heavy corrosion we noted on-site): “Don’t worry, be happy.  The operation is totally automated and therefore foolproof.”  This report shows otherwise, revealing an ongoing series of problems with both pumps and gauges. True, it can be attributed to everyday industrial wear and tear. However, when the super-corrosive hazardous waste—yes, EPA-designated hazardous waste—added to our drinking water eats away at the machinery,  pump leaks endanger the chemical workers in hazmat suits, while failed flowmeters can lead to overfeeds into the public water supply affecting everyone.  Like one  in Kalamazoo, Michigan earlier this year that made the news. Plus, if the chemical is corrosive enough to damage new, regularly serviced equipment, think what it’s doing to the lead-containing pipes in Austin’s older buildings.

On to another subject: the Pew Trusts.  Pew is one of a trio of immensely powerful bureaucracies—along with the joined-at-the-hip CDC and ADA—that work feverishly to force fluoridation on the entire US population by influencing local governments.  Its effects can be felt here in Austin, where, a year ago, Libby Doggett, acting unofficially and without authority, used the weight of her high level position at Pew to pressure Austin city councilman Martinez.  More recently they’ve meddled heavily in the affairs of Portland OR and Wichita KS--suffering humiliating defeats in both places.

While most of the ADA’s and CDC’s talking points are crafted by nameless bureaucrats, Pew has a communications manager named Matt Jacob in charge of its message.  In a recent presentation to Florida dentists, Jacob lamented the failure of his lobbyists to convince 100% of Americans to embrace industrial waste in their drinking water. And I’m proud to say he gave Fluoride Free Austin partial credit for that failure.

Jacob admitted we—the opposition—will win by talking about the very real health harm fluoride causes, unless his minions can distract the public with a brighter, happier “message wheel”:  healthy teeth, attractive smiles, and all the favorable consequences thereof.  But, we talk about those things too. We want them for everyone too.  The difference is we appreciate that water fluoridation does absolutely nothing to bring them about.  



                                                               

                                         
                       
For the past four years, Fluoride Free Austin has resolutely carried out its mission to educate  Austin's City Council about the dangers of the toxic waste product - fluorosilicic acid - the city uses to fluoridate its drinking water.  We've spoken hundreds of times before the Council and its attendant boards and committees; submitted reams of documentation to support our position; brought in internationally-acclaimed expert Dr. Paul Connett (twice) to plead out case.

For four years, the Council has arrogantly ignored us, taking refuge behind the advertising endorsements of medical bureaucracies (CDC, ADA et al) and setting up public "hearings" carefully rigged to ensure that the truth could never emerge.

But the Council did make one important concession.  In December 2011 - following over a year of pressure from us - they agreed to include an "advisory" (they refuse to call it a warning) about mixing infant formula with fluoridated tapwater to the Drinking Water Quality Report mailed out to customers once a year.  Fluoride and Infants, which also appears on the City of Austin's Water Utilities and Health and Human Services websites though not on the monthly water bill as we had requested, likely amused the Council and their puppet masters at the Department of Health and Human Services, since it actually amounts to a lightly-veiled endorsement of fluoride for babies.  However, from the mix of half-truths and outright lies, a significant admission emerges:

"...some children may develop enamel fluorosis, a cosmetic condition where faint white markings or streaks may appear on the teeth.  Fluorosis can affect both baby teeth and permanent teeth while they're forming under the gums."

The fluoride pushers would have us believe that enamel fluorosis is "only" a cosmetic condition, and one which only silly, overanxious would worry about at that.  We, of course, recognize it as a symptom of poisoning:  the first visible sign of acute fluoride toxicity. 

We are interested in locating Austinites who suffer from this condition due to the city's reckless policy of fluoridation and failure to warn. If you are a lifelong Austinite under the age of 45 whose teeth resemble those shown in the video above, please contact us at (512) 371-3786 or info@fluoridefreeaustin.com.



                                                                          

This stunning documentary, which features scientists, health professionals and activists, was recently released in Portland, Oregon, where powerful special interests - working behind the scenes for a year or more - have influenced the mayor and two of four City Council members (none facing  reelection) to force water fluoridation on an unwilling public.  It was produced, directed, shot and edited by Guy Wagner.  Filming took place during the Fluoride Action Network's (FAN) Citizens'  Conference of July, 2010.   Kudos to Mr. Wagner for his outstanding work.


    
  
 


                                                                          

                                
                                City Milks St. David's Dental Van for Photo-Op but Doesn't Contribute

Good afternoon, Mayor and councilmembers. Throughout our four years of speaking at City Hall against water fluoridation, one element has been conspicuously absent:  the low income children in whose name the practice is implemented.  Theoretically, the city fluoridates to provide “social equity” to economically disadvantaged children approximately 5 to 11 years of age— the period when the permanent teeth are coming in

I thought of this recently when I happened to discover—from the U.S. Census Bureau’s website—that over 20% of Austinites live below the poverty line today.  That’s 162,000 people. This group doesn’t have much of a political voice.  I can’t bring their kids here.  But I can count them—again, from the Census Bureau’s 2010 Austin fact sheets.  Within the age group in question: ages 5-11, there  are 11,842 boys and 8,669 girls, making a total of 20,500 elementary school aged children. The City’s solution to their dental problems is to annually throw a half million dollars’ worth of toxic fluorosilicic acid into the community water supply, for them and everybody else to drink.  That discharges all your obligation to them according to the CDC, whose marching orders you follow. 

Are these kids getting any real dental care?  We know 80% of dentists don’t accept Medicaid.  We also know that you, the City Council, have no idea what—if anything— the city spends on direct dental services for our neediest children, because you’ve admitted it. Outside entities, it would seem, have taken over that responsibility.

The St. David’s Foundation Dental Program is one. They operate a fleet of mobile dental offices that rotate among AISD’s 50 Title 1 elementary schools, providing free dental care.  This includes fillings, X-rays, root canals, extractions and emergency care, plus preventive measures like cleanings, sealants, and  oral hygiene education. In school year 2009-10, they saw nearly 6,000 patients, most from Austin schools, and provided about $4.2 million in services.

80% of the second graders St. David’s personnel screened that year had identifiable oral problems. Yet those children grew up drinking fluoridated water. It doesn’t work.  The city of Austin spent a half million dollars on fluoridation and got nothing.  Half a million would buy and stock one of those dental vans.  Or support the operation of one for a year.  It’s time to put the taxpayers’ money to better use. 

                                                                          

                                            
                               Six Fluoride Free Houston Members Speak Before Their City Council 


Good afternoon, Mayor and councilmembers.  A year ago, on August 2, Mayor Leffingwell asked, while I stood at this podium, why Fluoride Free Austin didn’t simply follow the formal citizens’ initiative/referendum process to bring our issue to the ballot for a public vote. My response at the time was that any such attempt would instantly unleash a torrent of slick, expensive pro-fluoride PR funded by the powerful special interests with deep pockets that keep water fluoridation in place.  We’d be grossly outspent where money talks loudest.  But just last week, you, the Council gave us still another reason. You took advantage of an under-the-radar  “work session” to  vote onto next November’s ballot an 8-2-1 redistricting plan which directly competes with the 10-1 plan Austinites for Geographical Representation—via a petition drive—had successfully labored to place on that same ballot. You let AGR  invest enormous time, energy and resources, then stepped in to undermine it. This hurtful action flies in the face of your own Charter Revision Committee's recommendation. 

To change the subject:  Fluoride Free Houston, founded in June, has already found an ally on the Houston City Council.  He’s Jack Christie, a chiropractic physician who just might know something about health.  A chiropractor's rigorous educational program particularly emphasizes the musculo- skeletal system, including bone.  And bone, as we know, is outstandingly vulnerable to damage by fluoride, which accumulates over time, causing brittleness and arthritis-like joint pain. On August 7 six Fluoride Free Houstonites appeared before their Council making varied points including one voiced by a Whole Foods employee to the effect that great numbers of savvy Houstonites are already abandoning tapwater for better options.  If people aren’t drinking the fluoride anyway, he argued, why continue to pay for it?  A refreshing approach—maybe it’ll fly in Houston.  Here, it would seem, you don’t much care whether people drink the fluoride or dodge it, as long as the city continues to implement it.

The Houston Council listened with an attentiveness and respect rarely seen here. And Fluoride Free Houston members vowed to return and speak regularly for as long as it takes. I’ve posted a video on the www.fluoridefreeaustin.com front page. Please take a few minutes to hear what a medically-trained member of the Houston City Council has to say. Thank you.