Portland's NAACP Publicly Opposes Fluoride on Ballot - List of Portland Medical Professionals Opposing Fluoride - Portland Fluoride Will Cause More Kids to Ingest Lead

Portland NAACP Opposes Fluoridation

Williamette Week, April 17, 2013 (Portland)
http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-30049-portland_naacp_opposes_fluoridation.html

The Portland branch of the NAACP has voted to oppose fluoridating Portland's water supply.

“Children growing up in communities of color already face risks from many different environmental chemicals," NAACP political chair Cheryl Carter said in a statement this afternoon, "and they do not need more chemicals added to their drinking water.”
Portland Branch 1120 of the NAACP made its endorsement decision over the weekend. It says the city should instead focus on providing children greater access to dental care.

Clifford Walker, chair of the branch veteran’s committee, says he believes the vote was unanimous.
"They had been debating the issue vigorously for several months," Walker says. "People with diabetes would be [affected] by adding fluoride to the water. African-Americans have a higher rate of diabetes."
The decision, he says, is "in the best interest of our constituents."

The NAACP announcement is the second major development today in a campaign that has hinged on the dental health of minority and low-income children.
A key narrative of this spring's fluoridation campaign has been that fluoride supporters had gathered a coalition of 80 groups representing low-income and minority Portlanders, while the anti-fluoride campaign had none.
WW reported this morning that the pro-fluoridation campaign, Healthy Kids Healthy Portland, has rewarded that support with cash payments totaling more than $119,000. Groups like the Urban League, the Native American Youth and Family Center and the Latino Network are using that money for "outreach," according to Evyn Mitchell, the campaign manager for Healthy Kids.

Naturopaths And Acupuncturists Lead List Of (200) Medical Professionals Opposed To Fluoridation

OPB | April 18, 2013

http://www.opb.org/news/article/naturopaths-and-acupuncturists-lead-list-of-medical-professionals-opposed-to-fluoridation/

The group includes 6 dentists, 23 MDs, 55 naturopaths, and 58 acupuncturists.

Advocate says lead, fluoride a bad brew

Created on Thursday, 18 April 2013

http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/150620-advocate-says-lead-fluoride-a-bad-brew

 

Tamara Rubin, the Sellwood mom who earned a national reputation as a crusader against lead poisoning, is taking on a new target: fluoridated water.
Rubin says the number of children poisoned by lead could double or even quadruple if Portlanders vote next month to fluoridate the city’s Bull Run water supply, based on studies showing fluoride causes more leaching of lead into the water system and enables more lead to be absorbed by the human body...

David Shaff, administrator of the Portland Water Bureau, says his staff have read the dueling scientific studies on lead and fluoride, and they defer to health experts. Shaff notes that Multnomah County Health Department, the Oregon Health Authority, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and “every reputable health organization” endorses fluoridated water as a health benefit.

Kip Duchon, the CDC’s national fluoridation engineer, says there was a period several years ago when the reputed link between lead and fluoride got a lot of scientific attention, but those concerns have since been allayed.

“There’s a lot of information that ends up never going away, even after it’s been proven to be incorrect,” Duchon says. “I think it’s settled science.”

Fluoride critics and many scientific researchers disagree.

The studies that first set off alarm bells were 1999 and 2000 research reports led by Roger Masters, emeritus Dartmouth College professor at the Institute for Neuroscience and Society; and Myron Coplan of Intellequity Technology Services. They pored over federal blood tests administered to more than 1 million children and found those living in communities with fluoridated water had nearly three times the rate of elevated lead levels as those in unfluoridated communities.

Nearly 2 percent of the Massachusetts children under the age of 6 had 10 milligrams or more of lead per deciliter, a level of concern then used by the CDC. About 0.75 percent of children in non-fluoridated communities had lead levels that high.

The researchers also found that black youth had a much higher rate of high lead levels than white youth.
Lead poisoning has been linked to a host of physical and emotional problems — particularly among children — including lowered IQ, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, even more violent crime.

Rubin argues that no amount of lead is safe, and has long contended that lead levels of 2 milligrams per deciliter or higher should be a gauge for concern. She received some validation last May, when the CDC lowered its lead standard from 10 to five milligrams per deciliter. By that measure, far more children in the Masters and Coplan studies had alarming lead levels.

Debunking studies

In response to the Masters and Coplan studies, federal officials commissioned a report by Edward Urbansky and Michael Schock, scientists at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research laboratory for water treatment technology.
In their published paper, Urbansky and Schock noted the concern that lead in drinking water is more “bioavailable” in the human body, but dismissed the possibility that fluoride adds to that effect...

 

The CDC website notes that lead may leach into water, but says it’s not due to the presence of fluoridation chemicals. “Water fluoridation will not increase water corrosion or cause lead to leach (dissolve) from pipes and household plumbing fixtures,” the agency says.

In 2010, a published study led by Rosangela Sawan of the School of Dentistry at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil tested the impact of fluoride mixed with lead on baby rats. The researchers found rats exposed to a combination of both substances absorbed 1.7 to three times more lead in various body parts than those who were exposed to lead without the fluoride.

That study is being used by people like Rubin to argue that fluoride makes lead more bioavailable in the human body.

Studies cited by both sides in the debate have their limitations — and none have been definitive — says Chris Neurath, research director of the American Environmental Health Studies Project, which counts the Fluoride Action Network, the nation’s leading anti-fluoridation group, as one of its projects.

But Neurath says to argue, as Duhon and other fluoride supporters do, that the issue is settled and there’s nothing to worry about, is wrong. “There’s enough evidence to say this is of concern,” he says. “I’d be very concerned if someone is protecting my health with that attitude.”