Good afternoon, Mayor Wynn and Councilmembers.  Tomorrow through Saturday, the International Association of Oral Medicine and Toxicology will hold its annual meeting in San Antonio.  This is a worldwide network of professionals—chiefly dentists but also hygienists, physicians and research scientists—who are concerned with toxicity issues. Their mission statement is as follows:  "to promote the health of the public at large by examining and compiling scientific research relating to the biocompatibility of oral/dental materials to insure their informed use in clinical practice.”  In other words, these are dentists who are doing what all dentists should be doing but few are—that’s paying attention to the well-known toxicity of some of the materials traditionally used in dentistry and eliminating them from their practices.. 

The very first talk—tomorrow morning—will be given by by one of our Austin dentists:  Dr. Griffin Cole.  The title is The Bureaucracy in Dentistry:  The “Red Tape” Tale of Mercury and Fluoride.  It sounds very interesting, and I’m happy to say I’ll be attending on a press pass.  So next month, I’ll be back here with a 3-minute summary

I recently decided my anti-fluoride campaign needed a mascot, so I got this little frog.  He’s carved from a beautiful crystalline stone called fluorspar—otherwise known as calcium fluoride. Calcium fluoride is the material which, dissolved, is the usual source of fluoride in naturally-fluoridated water. And whenever you drink the harmful fluoride ion, you’re getting an equal dose of calcium to mitigate the bad effects.  Of course fluorspar has other uses than the ornamental.  It’s utilized extensively in industry for metal smelting and uranium enrichment, and is mined for those purposes.   

The fluoride used for water fluoridation is nothing like this.  It contains no calcium.  Mostly it’s fluorosilicate chemical compounds not found in nature; by-products of the phosphate fertilizer industry, and richly contaminated with lead, arsenic, aluminum and other things you don’t want.  The next time you hear:  “We’re only adjusting the water's natural fluoride content upward," don’t believe it.  It just isn’t so.  Thank you.