Bad news for tea drinkers

Here’s a question I received today from Julie:

“I recently learned that green tea and black tea are very high in fluoride because they pull it from the ground… can you say more about this?”

As a tea drinker myself, I wish I could tell you that this is a myth. Unfortunately, it’s all too true. And although medical authorities continue to tell us that fluoride is a harmless substance which prevents dental caries and tooth decay, a large body of scientific research says otherwise.

Fluorides are toxins that accumulate in the body over time. That’s why the Surgeon General has established limits for maximum fluoride content in our drinking water which are regulated by the EPA. This limit was set in order to avoid a condition known as Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis (CSF). The limit of four parts per million (ppl) or 4 mg/liter was designed to prevent only the third and most serious stage of CSF, where the extremities become weak and the vertebrae partially fuse together, crippling the patient. Yet studies published by the World Health Organization (1970) have shown that a daily dose of even 2-8 mg/L of fluoride can cause third-stage CSF!

For a more thorough discussion of the dangers of fluoride, I recommend reading this article by Andreas Schuld, the head of an organization called Parents of Fluoride Poisoned Children (PFPC), and visiting the PFPC website. I have also embedded a video interview with Christopher Bryson at the end of this post. Bryson is the author of The Fluoride Deception, a scathing critique of one of the most damaging public health misconceptions of our time.

Schuld mentions several different sources of fluoride, from foods to prescription drugs. The highest source of fluoride in any edible plant, however, is tea leaves. Fluoride content in teas has risen precipitously over the past 20 years due to industry contamination and other environmental factors. In a 2005 study at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, researchers found that some regular strength preparations contain as much as 6.5 parts per million (ppm) of fluoride, well over the 4 ppm maximum allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency and 2.4 ppm permitted in bottled water and beverages by the Food and Drug Administration. The Public Health Service indicates that the fluoride concentration in drinking water should not exceed 1.2 ppm.

More recent studies cited by Schuld in her article have revealed a fluoride content of 17.25 mg per teabag or cup in black tea, and a whopping 22 mg of soluble fluoride ions per teabag or cup in green tea. The longer a tea bag is steeped, the higher the fluoride content will be. In fact, one study demonstrated that the amount of measurable fluoride almost doubles in just ten minutes.

To put this in perspective, drinking one cup of green tea with 22 mg of soluble fluoride ions is equivalent to drinking 22 liters of water that has been fluoridated to the Public Health Service recommended level of 1 ppm.

Tea is the second most widely consumed beverage in the world behind water. And believe it or not, nearly 127 million (almost half) of Americans drink tea. Tea is consumed in far greater amounts in countries like the UK, China and India. The increasing fluoride levels in our environment pose a significant threat to the health and well-being of literally billions of people around the world. We must urge public health officials to stop fluoridating our water and begin to acknowledge the overwhelming amount of scientific data indicating fluoride’s toxicity and negative impact on human health.

Recommended links

• Fluoride: Worse Than we Thought
• Fluoridation: The Fraud of the Century
• Fluoride levels in tea - USA
• Fluoride levels in food
• The Fluoride Education Project

The video below is an interview with Christopher Bryson, author of The Fluoride Deception. It is an excellent introduction to the history and dangers of fluoridation.