IS FLUORIDATED WATER A MEDICINE OR DRINKING WATER OR FOOD?
Two Courts of Law Have Ruled that Fluoride is a Medicine when Recommended by Health Authorities
If we are to consider the medicinal status of fluoridated water, we see that BSEN 12175:2022, p. 19 states that "Hexafluorosilicic acid is used for the fluoridation of drinking water to increase the resistance of consumers to dental decay." Therefore, the practice isn't water treatment (as the title of the BSEN misleadingly states) but fluoridation creates a prophylactic medicine as p. 19 claims to be the case.
Both the Scottish Court of Session in 1983 and the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 2018 ruled that fluoride is a medicine when recommended by health authorities.
Refs:
Opinion of Lord Jauncey in causa Mrs Catherine McColl v. Strathclyde Regional Council. The Court of Session, Edinburgh (1983).
In the Supreme Court of New Zealand SC141/2016 [2018] NZSC 59 Between New Health New Zealand Incorporated Appellant and South Taranaki District Council Hearing: 16 and 17 November 2018. Clause 100. https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2018/nhst_.pdf
With two court rulings that fluoride is a medicine when recommended by health authorities and with the BSEN 12175:2022 stating that it is added to drinking water to increase the resistance of consumers to dental decay, there can really be no valid argument against classifying it as a MEDICINE ...
... or is fluoridated water a food?
The Medicines Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) wants us to believe that fluoridated water is a FOOD!
This is so that they don't have to admit that it's a medicine. Before its dissolution on 30th September 2021, Public Health England maintained that WF is a PUBLIC HEALTH MEASURE. However, this descriptor is not a physical entity, it cannot be quantified and it cannot have quality standards applied to it. Since both PHE and the MHRA refuse to accept that fluoridated water is a medicine, then both must be maintaining that it's a food. As a supposed food, quality standards can be applied BUT ....
Let's just accept for the moment that fluoridated water is a food. That makes it an illegal food because under UK food law, it is not permitted to add Hexafluorosilicic acid, Disodium fluorosilicate and Hydrofluoric acid to food.
(Disodium fluorosilicate is the crystalline form of Hexafluorosilicic acid with the hydrogen and water removed and sodium added. It is not often used in England. )
UK Reg. 1631/2007 which is derived from
EU Reg. 1925/2006, Article 17 and
EU Reg. 1170/2009, Annex III. This is retained law following Brexit.
None of the three fluoride compounds are listed as being permitted in Annex III, although sodium fluoride and potassium fluoride are permitted for school milk and fluoridated salt purposes. (We are planning to write a short article on the adulteration of School and Nursery milk with sodium fluoride. and the adulteration of salt with potassium fluoride.)
Hydrofluoric acid is present in Hexafluorosilicic acid!
The Water Industry Act 1991, s.87 specifies that only two compounds of fluoride can be added to water and HYDROFLUORIC ACID is not one of them!
Hydrofluoric acid (HF) is a Reportable Poison (Deregulation Act 2015, Schedule 21, Part 4). HF is a particularly nasty poison which corrodes flesh and bone. Exposure often leads to amputation and death.
We next have to work our way through the issue of whether or not fluoridated water is compulsory medicine and can you avoid it without incurring extra expense?
You would have to be very strong-willed to avoid turning on the kitchen tap, especially if you're paying for the product. Since there is no alternative offered by the water company, then fluoridated water is compulsory.
Any water which goes down the drain without being drunk is regarded as being "sewerage, drainage or run-off" and the cost of this is approximately half of the total water bill. That includes what goes down the drain into the sewers after you've visited the bathroom. So it can be argued that you ought to pay for these services otherwise you would be in a right stinking mess.
However, if you don't drink the water as it comes out of the point of compliance, then it is difficult for the water company to insist that you should pay for drinking water. In order to make it potable it has to go through a filtration or distillation process so you can argue that you are having to treat it to make it potable and the cost of doing this should be offset against the drinking water component of the water bill. Whether a judge would agree with you is another thing altogether. The judgement might be that what you do with drinking water after it comes out of the tap is your decision and no-one is forcing you to put it through another treatment process.
Therefore, our strongest argument is that since the fluoridated water is a medicine and is not drinking water, we are being supplied with an illegal product since it is not permitted to add hexafluorosilicic acid to food if we accept the MHRA's verdict that fluoridated water is food which needs a legal challenge. Such food is illegal but this needs to be tested in a Court of Law! If, on the other hand, it's a medicine, then we can state that customers are not afforded protection under the Drinking Water Directive. In either case, we ought to win the argument, if there is any justice in this world!
No-one wants to have a medicine deliberately added to their drinking water. Drinking Water ought to be potable without there being any contaminants, heavy metals and pathogens. Fluoridating water companies can more-or-less guarantee that there are no pathogens. The companies are unable to confirm how much of the heavy metals in the raw water remains post-treatment because any heavy metals still present are being augmented when the water company ADDS them when they add hexafluorosilicic acid to the treated water. The concentration of heavy metals are analysed by collecting water from a customer's tap.
BSEN 12175:2022, p.8 lists the heavy metals and contaminants in hexafluorosilicic acid. If water companies are not allowed to add magnesium or calcium to their treated water, there can be no excuse to add undesirable elements just so that fluoride can be added to convert your drinking water into a prophylactic.
Fluoride's medicinal status is denied by Government but it can be nothing other than medicine because the addition of fluoride is intended to act as a preventative medicine to guard us against tooth decay. As noted above, this intention is admitted in BSEN 12175:2022, p.19.
"Hexafluorosilicic acid is used for the fluoridation of drinking water to increase the resistance of consumers to dental decay."
The fluoridating acid is the least expensive method of adding fluoride to your drinking water. To maintain its "value for money" the producers do not refine it before it's shipped. It has not been refined! Why would they do such a thing when there is no policing of the process? That would increase costs and reduce the shareholders' dividend. More importantly, it has not been clinically tested and it doesn't have a medicinal marketing authority which is mandatory for anything for which medicinal properties are claimed. The Certificate of Analysis (or Compliance or Conformity) which accompanies each road tanker-full of H2SiF6 does not go into detail about the ingredients in the acid. How is anyone to know if the acid was analysed before it left the phosphate manufacturing facility? Who is checking that this is being done? Who really knows the concentrations of each chemical [parameter] in the acid? Each batch of the acid will vary in the concentration of the heavy metals because of the location of the excavated ore body to make phosphate fertiliser.
Hexafluorosilicic acid contains:
- Up to 1.5% hydrofluoric acid which is a really nasty acid and which is undoubtedly responsible for causing sore stomachs;
- Up to 25% of maximum allowable in drinking water of arsenic;
- Up to 25% of maximum allowable in drinking water of lead;
(However, because fluoridated water is not drinking water, there is no maximum stipulated and any amount is too much.)
- Traces of heavy metals: antimony, cadmium, chromium, mercury and nickel;
- Still-pond water (aka contaminated scrubbing liquor) containing injurious Aluminium, Barium, Thallium, Tin, Cobalt, Strontium, Molybdenum, Beryllium, and Vanadium
- Beneficial traces of Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium, Boron, Manganese, Copper, Zinc, Phosphorus, Iron, Sulphur and Selenium.
(See the CAL Analysis, viewable via the Resources Tab A - O > Hexafluorosilicic acid analysis.)
The Drinking Water Directive (retained post Brexit) excludes medicinal water from its provisions. Therefore, fluoridated water is not drinking water so Drinking Water Quality Standards (DWQSs) do not apply and consumers are not protected by the DWQSs if a toxin or pathogen accidentally gets into the fluoridated water before it reaches the kitchen tap. Consumers are not receiving the expected drinking water so shouldn't have to pay for it. This is the strongest argument which consumers can use when they tell their fluoridating water company that they are not going to pay for fluoridated water. (See our advice sheet on Resources P-Z > Withholding Water Charges.)
The Drinking Water Inspectorate is responsible for the quality of Drinking Water in the UK. But, since fluoridated water isn't drinking water, that organisation has to pretend that it is responsible when that cannot be the case. We know of one case in England where the DWI failed to act against a water company even though hundreds of fluoridated consumers were experiencing ill health. The DWI was powerless to do anything because the water sold by the fluoridating water company was not drinking water. In this particular case, the water company had switched consumers to borehole water which contained a certain somethings which the company had not detected. People were being made ill after skin contact or after swallowing this substance.
Treated water which contains naturally occurring fluoride (calcium or magnesium fluoride) is paradoxically regarded as Drinking Water and consumers are protected by the DWQSs. This is where the plot thickens!
The pro-fluoridationists' "mantra" is that all water contains varying concentrations of calcium fluoride and this absolves them of turning the treated water into a medicine. But does it absolve them? We have to turn to BSEN 12175:2022, p. 19 once more to reassure ourselves that the act of adding hexafluorosilicic acid to treated water is a deliberate act to turn the treated water into a prophylactic. Even the act of adding more calcium fluoride to treated water would still imply that the resultant water is a prophylactic - a medicinal liquid.
Bizarrely, water companies are not allowed to improve the quality of their raw water by adding beneficial elements such as calcium or magnesium so they could not add calcium fluoride or magnesium fluoride if they are ordered to fluoridate their consumers. This is possibly another reason why the cheap hexafluorosilicic acid has been chosen as a vehicle for adding fluoride. However, even that doesn't satisfy current law because hexafluorosilicic acid contains calcium and magnesium, albeit in tiny concentrations.
Most UK raw/source water has less than 1 mg natural fluoride/litre. The exception is Hartlepool raw water which contains natural fluoride as magnesium fluoride at 1.9mg F/litre reduced down to 1.3 mg F/litre after dilution, and which is hailed by Public Health officials as being really good at preventing dental decay in that Borough. 1.5 mg fluoride/litre is the absolute maximum according to the WHO. We propose that this prophylactic effect is more to do with a sufficiency of magnesium in Hartlepool's ground water than with the presence of fluoride. The lower incidence of dental decay in the Borought could also be a politically-denied mirage: since fluoride delays the eruption of primary teeth, when the teeth finally erupt they will be less exposed to decay-causing agents because they will have had less time to become decayed before the 5 years of age oral health surveys. Even with the protection afforded by magnesium and the delay in eruption factor, Hartlepool children still experience tooth decay. Dental decay is caused by one or more factors (See the article on Resources P - Z > Tooth Decay Reasons.) Decay is most certainly not caused by a lack of fluoride which is not an essential element and is not a nutrient.
The bottom line: the aim of trying to prevent dental decay is negated by the addition of noxious and poisonous substances to drinking water. In particular, the deliberate addition of arsenic to drinking water is scandalous since it's a carcinogen. Water treatment is intended to remove carcinogens - not to add them!
