Shocking Information About Carroll Boone Water District
We’ve included three articles written by Becky Gillette, columnist for the Eureka Springs Independent. They show examples of the problems we’re having across the state of Arkansas regarding water fluoridation. For example, on-site testing of chemicals is NOT being performed, especially at Carroll Boone Water District! And let’s not forget how corrosive the fluoridation chemicals are!
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CBWD not testing fluoridation chemicals for contaminants
Expert says failure to test makes it a ‘crap shoot’
by Becky Gillette
Found here: http://www.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Fluoridation started July 15 at the Carroll-Boone Water District plant on Beaver Lake without onsite testing of chemicals as required by the American Water Work Association. Arkansas law states, “All unit processes, equipment, chemicals and appurtenances shall be in accordance with the latest edition of the applicable AWWA!standards.” Cathy Klein, CPA and CBWD office manager, answered in response to an email from the Independent asking if the water district tested the sodium silicofluoride prior to putting it in the water, “We are not aware of this requirement by AWWA. Would you please send me a copy of what you are referring to so I can review it?”
The Independent sent the AWWA standard saying fluoridation chemicals be sampled at the point of destination to CBWD. Klein said the district is not sampling at the plant and is instead relying on the manufacturer’s representation that the fluoride product used will be ANSI/NSF Standard 60 certified.
“The Carroll-Boone Water District will adhere to the Arkansas Department of Health Rules and Regulations regarding fluoride,” Klein responded in the email. “Any fluoride product used will be ANSI/NSF Standard 60 certified per the Arkansas Health Department Rules and Regulations.”
One of the country’s top experts on the issue of contaminants in fluoridation product, Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, said failure to test could mean the district gives people water that contains harmful substances.
“This material comes from overseas because it is not manufactured in the U.S. anymore,” said Mullenix, who authored a recent article in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health that contaminant levels of lead, arsenic, barium and aluminum in fluoride additives can vary widely from batch to batch, which jeopardizes any safe use of fluoridation chemicals. “If the water operators do not test each bag or lot that comes in, then they are just accepting someone’s word. They are blindly fluoridating. There is every opportunity that they can get the concentration wrong in terms of contaminants such as lead. That is a problem because they can inadvertently exceed the EPA allowance for lead or arsenic by not knowing the content of lead and arsenic in the additives. I would think water operators must test every batch that comes in to meet their ethical obligation to provide people with safe drinking water.”
Mullenix said in a telephone interview it is known that Northern Arkansas has significant lead in water from sources such as erosion.
“If they don’t know how much lead is in the water naturally, they are just adding lead from fluoride additives on top of what is there from natural sources,” she said. “It is a crap shoot, really, with water operators having no idea what they are putting in the water. To give up and accept a little stamp on the side of the product staying it is NSF certified is giving up all control. Basically, you are relying on a foreign source. Can you trust it? Don’t you want to know what is in the chemicals you are putting in people’s drinking water?”
The chemicals CBWD uses are imported from a Prayon facility in Belgium. An email to Prayon asking the country of origin for the fluoridation chemicals was not returned.
“Most of the fluoridation salts do originate in China, which is notorious for providing us with contaminated products of all kinds,” Mullenix said. “Before you put something in the drinking water from China or some other place you know hands out contaminated products, wouldn’t you like to know what is in it?”
When Mullenix did the study of fluoridation chemicals, she traced it back to Singapore. She said U.S manufacturers quit making the product because manufacturing was so hazardous for workers.
“Now they get the chemicals from someplace like China that doesn’t care about the health of workers,” Mullenix said. “Also, NSF standards say a customer can request information from manufacturers, but my understanding is that these manufacturers won’t respond.”
Another contaminant of great concern because of its potential impact on dementia is aluminum. Mullenix said the fluoridation chemicals from China she tested were shockingly high in aluminum.
“It was in the thousands of parts per million,” she said. “That is what you would find in electroplating sludge. If water operators don’t even know how much aluminum is in it, how do they know they aren’t exceeding the limits set for it? It is just not good practice to dump in any chemical when you don’t know the content of each and every batch.”
Mullenix headed the toxicology department at the Forsthye Research Institute for 12 years. On its website, Forsthye describes itself as “the world’s leading independent research organization dedicated to improving oral health.”
Mullenix said it is strange that Arkansas is just now proceeding with a fluoride mandate when the most comprehensive recent research said studies fail to support the effectiveness of water fluoridation. A recent report by the Cochrane group found that 97 percent of the earlier studies that showed a benefit to water fluoridation reducing cavities were at a high risk for bias.
“The Cochrane report came out of a study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to look at whether the studies that found a benefit of reducing tooth decay were reliable,” Mullenix said. “The Cochrane study said the scientific literature does not support that fluoridation has a benefit in preventing tooth decay. The point is you have a fluoride mandate in Arkansas at the same time current literature is telling you it doesn’t work. Even the American Dental Association has admitted that effect of fluoride, if it does have an effect, is topical. So why are you drinking this stuff that includes lead and other contaminants that we know potentially cause harm to humans? It really makes no sense. We shouldn’t be putting any chemicals in the water that could cause harm to the public.”
Mullenix said after doing her research, she and her family decided against drinking fluoridated water, and instead use bottled water they had tested for fluoride content. She has sympathies for people in Arkansas who now have the expense of either filtering the water or purchasing bottled water.
“As far as I am concerned, what you are losing there is confidence in the drinking water,” Mullenix said. “It becomes a personal responsibility and that is a very expensive one, I can tell you. Basically it is hurting a lot of people who can’t afford to go out and buy bottled water or purchase a reverse osmosis system and keep it maintained. That kind of diligence is passed on to the consumer and individual instead of relying on the expertise of your water operators. It is strange this mandate came in at a time when so many other locations are backing off fluoridation. You seem to be going backwards.”
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Fluoridation chemical misidentified in lab reports for CBWD
Becky Gillette
Found here: http://www.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Earlier this year, the Carroll-Boone Water District (CBWD) tested a sample of the type of fluoridation chemicals to be purchased from Prayon, a company based in Belgium. When the Independent requested a copy of the testing of the sodium silicofluoride, it found that the lab reports said the product was sodium fluoride.
One July 16, CBWD Office Manager Cathy Klein, after being asked about the issue, contacted the testing laboratory. The laboratory responded that it was a mistake and the analysis should have said sodium silicofluoride. Sodium fluoride is the chemical that was preferred by CBWD operators, who unanimously opposed adding fluoridation chemicals to the water, but said they preferred sodium fluoride if forced to fluoridate because it has fewer contaminants.
Local fluoridation opponent Bill King raised the issue of the lab error at a meeting of the CBWB this past week.
“I was flabbergasted that no one seemed concerned that the chemical analysis was for sodium fluoride (NaF) when in fact they are putting ‘technical grade’ disodium hexafluorosilicate (Na2S;F6) in our water supply,” King said. “I was also concerned at what to a non-chemist appears to be a significant amount of a lead isotope in the chemical analysis. There is no acceptable level of lead additive, according to the EPA. And still no one will tell us where this stuff comes from.”
King also questioned if CBWD has a hazardous waste disposal program. His reading of the label on the packaging is that the packaging needs to be treated as hazardous waste.
The lab error is not reassuring to Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, a top authority on contaminants in fluoridation chemicals, as the two chemicals are supposed to be handled differently.
“Everyone has to be very clear about what they are putting in your drinking water,” she said. “Even if the chemicals are properly identified, they are a hazard to the water operator who has to handle them. If water operators are asked to do anything more than just make water drinkable, you are asking a water operator to become a pharmacist and provide a drug. That is not a water operator’s job. He is just supposed to provide safe drinking water. I don’t think most water operators would be comfortable getting into the business of being a pharmacist and basically delivering drugs through drinking water, especially when the effect of fluoride at this particularly time is so questionable.
“How do we know that the maximum use level listed on the product received at CBWD was correct and for the right chemical? Not only are maximum use levels different for NaF and Na2SiF6, the two salts have different toxicity ratings.
Others problems associated with the NSF standards were pointed out in an article by CBWD water operator Rene Fonseca published a couple of years ago. NSF repeatedly represents on its web site and in the NSF 60 document entitled “NSF 60 Drinking Water Treatment Chemicals – Health Effects” that for fluoridation products to receive the NSF/ANSI Standard 60 mark of approval, they must be subjected to toxicological studies, toxicity studies, assays, and testing of many types,” Fonseca wrote. However, letters from CBWD to manufacturers requesting information about those types of studies resulted in no responses. Manufacturers also did not respond to the CBWD requests for an assurance of the safety or effectiveness for the product.
Fonseca said it is not acceptable that manufacturers fail to disclose information required under NSF/ANSI standard 60.
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Fluoridation testing questioned
Becky Gillette
Found here: http://www.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Just a few days before a major break in a water main on Main St. on August 9, Eureka Springs Public Works Director Dwayne Allen sent an email answering council member requests for information on city water testing since water fluoridation began July 15 that said, “Eureka Springs has, unfortunately, become a test lab for the effects of fluoride on century-old water mains.”
Long-time fluoridation opponent Crystal Harvey of Hot Springs wonders if it is just a coincidence that the city had a big water main break soon after fluoridation began at the Carroll Boone Water District (CBWD). Harvey said fluoridation chemicals are very corrosive, and old water pipes have the potential to leach out significant amounts of lead into the drinking water, which resulted in thousands of children being poisoned by lead in Washington D.C.
“I spoke frequently to the late Jim Allison when he was manager of the CBWD,” Harvey said. “He was very concerned about how corrosive fluoridation chemicals are. He told me the contract between CBWD and the City of Eureka Springs states that CBWD will not add any chemicals to the water that will increase corrosiveness.”
The city’s memorandum of agreement with CBWD states, “The District shall produce a treated water which will neither corrode nor scale the transmission line or distribution systems of the user Cities under the normal range of domestic operating conditions.”
“Of course, it is impossible to know for sure what caused the pipe to fail. The failure occurred at a fitting,” Public Works Director Dwayne Allen said. “When we exposed the area, an eight-inch cast iron pipe had split seven feet along its edge. Most heat-related iron pipe failures are caused by ground shifts and the pipe will split around the circumference of the pipe, which is a pipe break. This was a pipe failure and in the time frame of isolation and repair, we lost 1.4 million gallons of water, just that quick. We log all our leaks and I will keep a record from July 15 forward. I have been in contact with the health department on the status of this.”
Concerns about the corrosiveness of fluoride chemicals were raised by alderman David Mitchell at a presentation to the Arkansas Board of Health April 29. The ABH has not responded to concerns raised by Mitchell on the city’s behalf about potential corrosive chemicals combined with chloramine disinfectants, leading to lead leaching.
“The board has not answered those concerns, and that puts it in violation of the state’s Administrative Procedures Act (APA),” Harvey said. “The court action could ask for an injunction against fluoridation until these concerns are addressed.”
APA states, “In any case of rule making or adjudication, if an agency shall unlawfully, unreasonably, or capriciously fail, refuse, or delay to act, any person who considers himself or herself injured in his or her person, business, or property by the failure, refusal, or delay may bring suit in the circuit court of any county in which he or she resides or does business, or in Pulaski County Circuit Court, for an order commanding the agency to act.”
Harvey cites a recent Arkansas Attorney General’s opinion in regards to questions about fluoridation that the health department can’t pick and choose which laws to enforce. The health department is threatening water districts that have refused to fluoridate with fines, but Harvey maintains it is not enforcing laws regarding testing of fluoridation chemicals at the plant where they are injected into the water.
“State laws says that all drinking water chemicals must be in accordance with the latest edition of the applicable American Water Works Association standards, and those clearly state that testing samples shall be taken at the point of destination,” Harvey said. “CBWD says they are not sampling.”
The sodium silicofluoride being used at CBWD comes from a plant in Belgium, and product specifications on the product show that it contains lead, arsenic, aluminum and barium.
The Independent asked CBWD for results of testing of the drinking water for those contaminants. Cathy Klein, CBWD office manager, said they are not testing for those chemicals in drinking water leaving the plant. “We are not required to test for those chemicals,” she wrote in an email.
Klein also said that they are not required to test the sodium silicofluoride prior to it being injected into the water.
Pharmacologist Dr. Phyllis Mullenix said failure to test could mean people get water that contains harmful substances.
“If the water operators do not test each bag or lot that comes in, then they are just accepting someone’s word,” said Mullenix, who authored a recent article in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health. “They are blindly fluoridating. There is every opportunity that they can get the concentration wrong in terms of contaminants such as lead. That is a problem because they can inadvertently exceed the EPA allowance for lead or arsenic by not knowing the content of lead and arsenic in the additives.”
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