Human Toxicity, Environmental Impact and Legal Implications of

HUMAN TOXICITY, ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT AND LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF WATER FLUORIDATION
Kidney and bladder cancer incidences are relatively high for women in Ireland
(9 th & 4 th highest respectively of 31 countries surveyed). It is known that agestandardised
mortality rates from cancer of the kidney have been increasing
steadily for men (by 1.9% a year) and women (by 1.2% a year) since at least the
1960‘s (note Ireland commenced fluoridation in 1967). There has been a
dramatic increase in the percentage of Stage I kidney cancers, from 5% of the
total in 1994-1998 to 37% in 2004-2008 while Stage II cancers increased from 0%
in 1994-1998 to 12% in 2004-2008. For bladder cancer, there has been a small
increase in Stage III and IV cancers while the percentage of unstaged cancers
remained high, at over forty per cent. 277
In a recent study 278 , undertaken in the U.S.A., researchers analysed data from
1,040,381 male and 1,011,355 female incident cancer cases diagnosed
between 2000-2007 and collected by population-based cancer registries in the
National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program.
They found that the level of unstaged disease was greater in more lethal
cancers (e.g., liver, oesophagus, and pancreas) compared with less deadly
cancers (i.e., colon, urinary bladder and female breast).
It was reported that unstaged disease increased with age and is greater among
non-married patients. Blacks compared with whites experienced significantly
higher levels of unstaged cancers of the stomach, rectum, colon, skin
(melanoma), urinary bladder, thyroid, breast, corpus, cervix, and ovaries, but
lower levels of unstaged liver, lung and bronchial cancers. Males compared
with females experienced significantly lower levels of unstaged cancers of the
liver, pancreas, oesophagus and stomach, but significantly higher levels of
unstaged lung and bronchial cancer and thyroid cancer.
There is no reason not to believe, given the size of the database in this study,
that a similar pattern of cancer incidence may exist in Ireland. This being the
case, given that the racial and ethnic demographics of Ireland have changed
significantly in the past twenty years; it is to be expected that cancer incidence
rates will increase significantly in southern regions, particularly County Cork.
This is likely to occur as the number of high risk individuals (including Black
African ethnicity and people of any other Black background) increase in a
geographic location where the incidences of such cancers is already
significantly above normal. In additiont to cancer incidences increasing there is
a risk that the incidence of cardiovascular disease in this region will also
increase due to the interaction of fluoride with low calcium and magnesium
levels in drinking water and its increased toxic bio-availability in the body.
It is reasonable to hypothesise that the addition of silicafluoride compounds to
drinking water with low calcium and magnesium levels only acts a cumulative
additive risk of initiating such cancers, as fluoride interacts with both elements
reducing their bio-availability in the human body.
277 National Cancer Registry, Cancer of the Kidney, Ureter and Bladder, Nov 2011
278 Merrill RM, Sloan A, Anderson AE, Ryker K. Unstaged cancer in the United States: a
population-based study. BMC Cancer. 2011 Sep 21;11:402.
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