Re: your Oct. 8 Arts & Living article, “Cavity Crisis: Survey finds big holes in children’s dental care”:

It’s astonishing to see any article attribute the rise in cavities to children not getting enough fluoride, when the truth is that many of us, especially small children, currently ingest more than considered safe.

Due to widespread water fluoridation, the public is already subjected to fluoride from myriad sources, all which form a bioaccumulative toxic threat, leading to a predictable assortment of preventable harms, including hip fractures, cancers, neurological impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney damage and lower IQ.

One sign children ingest too much fluoride is dental fluorosis, which is not just a mere cosmetic issue as the American Dental Association contends, but is rather a biomarker of systemic enzyme poisoning. One- third of all children now suffer from dental fluorosis.

It’s deeply disturbing to know when the Southern California Metropolitan Water District held its only public forum in August on the subject of water fluoridation, its board members heard compelling new scientific research showing that water fluoridation is in fact harmful to the only population group its advocates claim benefits from the mass medication. Nevertheless, the MWD plans to fluoridate the drinking water of some 18 million customers later this month.

Regrettably, the public forum was ignored by most media, but you can view a video showing the presentations by two scientists at http://tinyurl.com/2sgag9.

While many have the impression that a pharmaceutical-grade fluoride is used to artificially fluoridate drinking water, the actual product used is hydrofluosilicic acid, a toxic industrial waste product generated by the phosphate fertilizer industry and considered hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rather than paying for its proper disposal, industry has been allowed to sell it at profit to municipal water districts as a cavity-preventing drinking-water additive. This poisonous compound has never been approved for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.

Furthermore, no suppliers of hydrofluosilicic acid have ever provided any legally required assurances that its product delivers the claimed benefits.

But the MWD refuses to reconsider its decision or even delay implementation. This prompts the question: Whose interest does MWD serve? Its water customers or the corporate interests behind the foundation that provided the $5.5 million grant to fund fluoridation?

History provides the answer and the truth about how and why fluoride was cast a cavity-fighting hero. Thanks to a 10-year investigative effort by BBC journalist Christopher Bryson, we now know about critical information contained in formerly classified documents, personal papers and buried, corporate-owned research and court testimony that shows the harmful effects of fluoride were well understood by scientists with serious conflicts of interest.

Bryson’s book, “The Fluoride Deception,” uncovers a story about industry executives, public relations professionals, lawyers, government officials and scientists involved in the secret plan to make the first atomic bomb, none of whom wanted the harm caused by fluoride to cost lawsuits or impede production.

So, in the name of national security, information on fluoride’s harmful effects was hidden, and a myth about its benefits was crafted, while keeping the real dangers of fluoride exposure and air pollution a secret.

If we allow nonfluoridated water to be blamed for any increase in cavities, as this article suggests, we must illogically ignore the role a high-sugar diet plays in dental, not to mention physical and mental health.

And while it’s not news that polluters may try to dodge costly legal liability for causing widespread harm by avoiding all direct blame, the public shouldn’t be fooled into believing that it can drink diluted toxic industrial waste without suffering systemic physical and mental harm.

More than 50 years later, we are still paying the price for this treacherous dupery. It’s time to stop the insanity and universally end water fluoridation.

— Nicole Johnson lives in Oak Park.