Thank you Mayor Wynn and Councilmembers.   Last time, I mentioned Lucier Chemical Industries, Ltd., the Jacksonville Beach, Florida-based company from which Austin purchases its fluorosilicic acid for water fluoridation.  Lucier is a re-seller.  It produces nothing; it refines nothing.  It is strictly a distributor of industrial—not pharmaceutical—grade fluoride byproducts it purchases from such Florida phosphate fertilizer-producers as Cargill and Mosaic. 

 Lucier’s website www.lciltd.com is very spare, even cryptic.  No pictures, no boasts of being green or being a great place to work.  It’s all business:  a list of products and prices.  Lucier bills itself as “The Fluoride Specialists.”    A look at the website is instructive.  Under the header Products, start with fluorosilicic acid, which is the “product” we use in Austin’s water. There are two sub-categories:  MSDS http://www.lciltd.com/msds/msdshfs.htm and Product Data Sheets http://www.lciltd.com/pds/pdshfs.htm.  MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheet; it gives information about the toxicity of an industrial chemical.   As you study it, notice the extreme precautions required when working with this substance, and the emergency first aid procedures outlined.  Note, too, the chronic effects they warn of that can result from prolonged exposure—especially what they call “bone changes” (meaning bone cancer and/or osteoporosis) and the condition termed fluorosis:  a mal-development of the teeth.  The Product Data Sheet provides additional information.  It lets us know that fluorosilicic acid has no uses outside of water fluoridation, and describes the additive as a “colorless to straw yellow, transparent, fuming, corrosive liquid with a pungent odor and irritating action on the skin.”  It also tells us that their product typically contains .02% lead and other toxic contaminants (“heavy metals, as lead” is their way of putting it).  So there you have it.  We’re paying over half a million dollars a year for fluoride, but we get the lead for free. http://www.cityofaustin.org/edims/document.cfm?id=114639

 Now you might say, “But it’s diluted.”  Well, yes, it’s diluted, but do we really want to put it into our drinking supply in the first place?  We’re talking about lifetime ingestion of a cumulative poison, one that builds up in the body, where it bonds with calcium, weakening the bones.  In fact, in 2006 the American Dental Association issued a “guideline” recommending that infant formula for babies up to 12 months be mixed with non-fluoridated water.  That’s right, the same group that supports community water fluoridation as a wonderful public health measure declares it unsafe for infants.  Instead, they helpfully recommend breast milk—as if everyone had the luxury of being able to breast feed.  Alternatively, they advise parents to buy filtered water at the grocery store “for less than $1 per gallon.”   Does this make any sense?  I don’t think so.  More on the subject another time.  Read my blog.  Thank you.