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Everything You Need To Know About Fluoride In Drinking Water

Fluoride is any combination of elements containing the fluoride ion. In its elemental form, fluorine is a pale yellow, highly toxic and corrosive gas. In nature, fluorine is found combined with minerals as fluorides. Fluorine is the most chemically active nonmetallic element as well as the most reactive electro-negative ion. Because of this extreme reactivity, fluorine isn’t found as an uncombined element in nature. 

One form of fluoride, hexafluorosilicic acid or hydrofluorosilic acid, is the substance used to fluoridate the majority Tennessee municipal water supplies, as well as 90% of fluoridated water across the United States. 

This fluoride compound added to your water is not calcium fluoride which appears naturally in underground water sources and even sea water. Hydrofluorasilic acid (the “fluoride” they add to your water) is an industrial grade hazardous waste product generated by the air pollution-control wet scrubbing systems of the superphosphate fertilizer industry (example is Cargill Fertilizer). 

This type of fluoride is commonly contaminated with toxic metals: lead, arsenic, and trace amounts of radioactive isotopes. By law, this waste cannot be dumped into the sea. So to handle the disposal of hexafluorosilicic acid, manufactures sell these waste waste products to independent distributors who then convince municipal governments, under the impression that it prevents dental cavities, to add it to the water. If it weren’t used as an additive to water, these manufactures would have to pay millions of dollars annually to dispose of it properly. Therefore the pressure to keep fluoride listed as a healthy additive to water — is great, and political pressures to keep fluoride in the drinking water are strong.