Early dental health is aim

It wasn't the fluoride varnish --dabbed on her baby teeth by a medical assistant -- that made little Denisha Myrick cry yesterday.

[Jim Schultz]

Fluoride is not the magic that saves teeth. Good nutrition with lots of calcium and magnesium is required for a healthy tooth with lots of vegtables and fruits. See Burt 2007 review where fluoridated 5year olds all had cavities. Fluoridated water,soda then chips toped the list of food intake with the healthy stuff missing. Most of the kids had dental fluorosis from fluoride overexposure while teeth were forming in the jaw. Hardy Limeback DDS leading researcher says now dental fluorosis damage exceeds any small claimed benefits of cavity reduction. This has become the new epidemic and it is only caused by fluoride overexposure. Most young kids swallow about 2/3 of the toothpaste put on the brush in a sure formula for damaged pourous discolored brittle enamel. The CDC has admitted in many reports that blacks are damaged with double the really ugly moderate and severe damage at about 4% but has chosen not to inform them of the risk or cause of this ugly damage. They instead claim safe for all and everyone benefits. These teeth can be really gross and very expensive to cover up. they can not be fixed only covered. The article is about topical varnish which has some benefit with less risk then ingestion. The last two decades has proven ingested fluorides have big risks but little topical benefit. It is like drinking suntan lotion. The 60 year old theory still survives because there is no other cheap plan. Fluoridation is very cheap as 82% use toxic waste direct from pollution smokestack scrubbers at Phosphate/uranium mines. It has about 20 toxic contaminates with arsenic toping the list and a long lineup of radioactive decay products as they no longer extract the uranium at the mines. Florida did produce 75% of the yellowcake uranium for the US until 1995 until the price fell and they closed down the secret mines. They thought it better to protect our uranium source and the neighbors from knowing the risks. Same reason the cities do not tell what the toxic waste contains. Ask for a specification list at your city. The FDA has never reviewed any ingested fluoride product. The claimed thousands of studies never one studied this different chemical H2SiF6 ever. They use purified sodium fluoride in double distilled water. The FSA is too complex a mix of toxins and is never the same so how could you control the results.Besides it has been shown to be much more toxic and deadly being 34 times more toxic on the LD50 scale. The goal is to promote fluoridation in spite of the risks. They forget to mention that now 19 or the EPA professional unions demand an immediate moratorium and congressional investigations into the fraud. They discovered the fraud in 1985 and filed a lawsuit in 1986 that clearly show that fluoridation violates the safe drinking water act every standard. You can read this and more at fluoridealert.org which has lots of one click videos or leading researchers for the rest of the story.
Jim Schultz

[Linda Zang]

Well-written and addresses an important issue.

[Jennifer Antelman]

I'm proud to hear that Baltimore Medical System gets such strong recognition from the community for their innovative efforts.

[Jim Schultz]

No amount of fluoride can ever make up for a lack of dental care and parential knowledge. In my county only 8 dentists accept medicaid dental out of 200 plus dentists and that means 45,000 of the 49,000 are underserved with many getting no care.We now have one public health dentist bu the last one only saw 6 kids a day with a staff of 3. All the kids could get a visit before they retired at that rate. The dentists refuse to work for the low pay and the ADA prevents other solutions like skilled assistants to run the show. In Alaska only natives are allowed in the two year course and so far their work on simple care is excellent. Root canals and such are left to dentists but now kids are getting care. Cosmetic repairs of dental fluorosis might be a conflict of interest as they have shot dental incomes from below doctors 20 years ago to much higher with half the hours worked. Fluoridation is about 60% of fluoride intake and with topical being the benefit it is just hard to understand forcing a cumulative toxin on people that have no idea of risk. Informed consent can not happen without full disclosure of the hidden risks. Jim Schultz

[Steve P]

Jamaica began fluoridating its salt supply 20 years ago or so and saw an 87 percent reduction in childhood decay across all income levels. The anti fluoride movement would rather see poor children suffer from the worlds most prevalent infectious disease (dental decay) than to admit to fluoride's benefits. As a dentist who has extracted one too many 6 year molars out of eight year olds and front teeth of beautiful 12 year olds on third world volunteer missions I find their holier than thou unscientific rants to be most aggravating. Dental caries has been a scourge on humanity since the development of refined sugar and public fluoridation has reduced immeasurable amounts of pain, disfigurement, and suffering. Just how is it "greedy" dentists encourage fluoride as an adjunct to oral health when it reduces demands for our services across all income groups.In an era where dentists are seeing a resurgence in dental decay due to medications(cause dry mouth) and lifestyle (sugary drinks, sports drinks, and yes fluoride free bottled water) fluoride is more important than ever.Kudos to Baltimore's Public Health system for this program. Early Pediatric visits are the perfect time for this as by the time many of these kids get to the dentist as young as 3 problems have already started. The next step would be to educate parents regarding reduction of exposure to sugar, healthy diet, home care, etc to help get kids off on the right foot.

[ann]

Put the responsibility for children's dental health where it belongs with the parents/family.