Natural Society – by Barbara Minton
An increasing percentage of the population has been getting smart about the dangers of drinking cola and other kinds of soda pop, and they’re abandoning it in droves. So as an alternative to soda, individuals are choosing boxed and bottled tea as a primary substitute beverage. This is no surprise because tea has a list of health benefits that can’t be ignored. But unless you know which teas to choose, you may be simply trading evils and consuming toxic fluoride.
For those of you who haven’t really read about fluoride before, Fluoride is a toxic industrial waste chemical put into many communities municipal water supplies. While most of Europe rejects water fluoridation and many communities in the U.S. choose to end fluoridation due to activism, most communities still choose to fluoridate their water despite the known health dangers this toxin can have on the human body.
All tea plants have an affinity for fluoride, so indiscriminate consumption of tea can lead to soaring levels of fluoride in the body, especially if it’s brewed it with fluoridated water. The result can be dental fluorosis, a badly damaging discoloration and mottling of tooth enamel.
This is one of the first signs of over-exposure to fluoride, and it can lead to skeletal fluorosis, a painful and debilitating bone disease that rivals the damage done by to the skeleton by drinking highly acidic cola drinks over time. And like cola’s dissolving of bone, skeletal fluorosis comes on insidiously, and can be mistaken for several other bone and joint diseases.
Susceptibility to fluorosis varies throughout the population, and whether it manifests or not depends on the dose and duration of fluoride intake. Heavy tea drinkers and those with kidney impairment are the most likely to come up with this disease.
Tea drinking can cause “lose cartilage (a form of collagen), that cushy connective tissue between bones, discs in the spine, in the elbows, and hips — basically all those places that hurt,” says Doctor of Naturopathy Donna Voetee, also known as Granny Good Food, a more seasoned version of the Food Babe. “In fact, your ‘arthritis’ may not be arthritis at all, but merely an overindulgence in the brown brew.” She notes that tea drinking may be behind much of the parabolic rise in hypothyroidism too.
Adding to this list, natural health advocate Dr. Joseph Mercola says fluoride increases lead absorption and tumor and cancer growth, and causes genetic damage, muscle disorders, and cell death. It has been implicated in dementia and bone cancer as well.
There’s no doubt that tea has a high level of fluoride, but the polyphenols in the best teas are able to mitigate some of this. Polyphenols are powerful anti-oxidants that have given tea the reputation of a healer through its ability to counteract oxidative stress in the body. Experts have reported that one of the ways fluoride causes damage to cells is through oxidative stress. This means the high antioxidant status of top quality teas can stop some of the impact of fluoride.
Are You Drinking Tea with Lower Levels of Fluoride?
The teas that produce the highest levels of fluoride are those that contain the lowest antioxidant levels. The reason is that antioxidant level is lowest in teas made with old leaves, and this is also when fluoride level is highest. Conversely, antioxidant level is highest in teas made with young leaves, and this is also when fluoride level is lowest. This makes the fluoride level of a tea its indicator of quality.
If you are interested in reducing exposure to fluoride and the harm that may come with it, choose white tea, the tea that is made from young leaves. This does not mean you can avoid fluoride in tea by drinking white tea, only that your fluoride exposure may be less than with other types of tea.
Black tea is made from the oldest leaves and the widely researched green tea also has a high content of fluoride. White tea confers almost all of the same health benefits as are found in green tea, and it has a milder, more pleasant flavor.
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/is-your-tea-loaded-with-toxic-fluoride/#ixzz3YMARjJFZ
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I am suspicious about the subject matter presented in this article. Sodium Fluoride, a cumulative neurotoxin added to many communities’ drinking water, is the toxic byproduct of of the production of aluminum. I can understand how teas made with fluoridated water would have this contaminant in them, but how do tea plants acquire the substance from nature?
I suspect, subject to informed correction, that the type of fluoride found in the leaves of tea itself is Calcium Fluoride, a naturally occurring element, and from my limited study on the matter, not a negative health issue for normally healthy people. If anyone has some factually detailed documentation on this, I would be grateful for a post/URL.
Yah Bless the Republic;
No king but King Yeshua.
I’ve given up black and orange pekoe tea for some time and have drastically reduced my consumption of green tea. I’m still trying to convince myself to throw out the organic green tea in my cupboard, and when I find a hot tea substitute that I like, I probably will chuck the organic tea. Besides, I really don’t want to continue “tanning” and reducing my kidneys’ function with tea tannins, either.
Here are some URLs with a lot of information in them, including the comments:
Skeletal Fluorosis in India & Its Relevance to the West
http://fluoridealert.org/articles/india-fluorosis/
Green and Black Teas
http://fluoridedetective.com/green-and-black-teas/
Tea Intake Is a Risk Factor for Skeletal Fluorosis
http://fluoridealert.org/studies/tea03/
Hey Enbe. I never could develop a taste for hot tea. When i was young i drank a lot of iced tea. My mainstay is coffee. I treat myself to organic when i have a few extra dollars. Guess i’m hooked on coffee. Quit pop a long time ago. Cant stand the taste now. Drink lemon in filtered water now.
Thank you, Enbe.
I’ll look into these and hopefully displace some ignorance with knowledge.
Here’s something I found:
How many types of fluoride are there?
A lot. A whole lot. When the element of fluoride is combined with something else, it becomes a fluoride compound. There is a vast range of fluorine-containing compounds because fluorine has the capability of forming compounds with nearly all the elements. Here are some common forms:
Sodium Fluoride is used in most toothpastes, mouthwashes, dental varnish, dental preparations and nutritional supplements. This same form of fluoride is used as an insecticide and pesticide, as a preservative in glues, as a growth inhibitor for bacteria, fungi and mold. Sodium fluoride is also used in making steel and aluminum products. Added to molten metal, sodium fluoride creates a more uniform metal. Other industrial uses for sodium fluoride include glass frosting and wood preservatives. Sodium Fluoride is also used in the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons. Although this form of fluoride can be used for water fluoridation, the next two forms listed are almost always used due to cost.
Calcium Fluoride (CaF2) is compound of calcium and fluorine which occurs naturally as the mineral fluorite – also called fluorspar. Most of the world’s fluorine comes from calcium fluoride. Fluorides in general are toxic to humans, however CaF2 is considered the least toxic, and even relatively harmless due to its extreme insolubility. Moreover, calcium is a well-known antidote for fluoride poisoning. When an antidote exists in combination with a poison, it makes the poison far less toxic to the body. Calcium fluoride is the form of fluoride commonly found in natural, untreated waters.
Cryolite or Sodium Aluminum Fluoride is commonly used for aluminum smelting, though is also a pesticide often applied directly to field crops, resulting in permitted fluoride residues in and on fresh fruits and vegetables. For more information on cryolite. (For more information on cryolite.)
Fluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6) is commonly used for water fluoridation. This form of fluoride is a toxic liquid by-product, acquired by scrubbing the chimney stacks of phosphate fertilizer manufacture. Other names for it are hexafluorosilicic, hexafluosilicic, hydrofluosilicic, and silicofluoric acid. The CDC approximates that 95% of our water is fluoridated with fluorosilicic acid. (http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/fact_sheets/engineering/wfadditives.htm#1)
Sodium Fluorosilicate (Na2SiF6) is primarily added to public drinking water as a fluoridation agent. This same compound is also used as an insecticide and a wood preservative. It is a classified hazardous waste by-product of phosphate fertilizer manufacture which, if not put into our drinking water, must be disposed of at hazardous waste facilities. Other names for it are Sodium Fluosilicate and Sodium Silica Fluoride.
Stannous Fluoride is the popular name given to Tin (II) fluoride. Stannous fluoride is an additive to many toothpastes because it does not become biologically inactive in the presence of calcium, as sodium fluoride does. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin%28II%29_fluoride)
Sulfuryl Fluoride is applied as a gas fumigant to kill insects and rodents. Using sulfuryl fluoride around food products was not allowed due to its toxicity. In 2004 the EPA reversed this policy (following long lobbying efforts by the manufacturer) and allowed its use on food. This opened the doors for food processing companies nationwide to fumigate their facilities with sulfuryl fluoride, leaving high levels of fluoride in and on foods and even food packaging. It has become acceptable for sulfuryl fluoride fumigations to produce fluoride residues of 70 ppm “in or on” processed foods and 130 ppm “in or on” wheat. There have been no labeling requirements for foods treated with sulfuryl fluoride, meaning that consumers have had no way of knowing which foods are treated. (For more information on sulfuryl fluoride.)
In January 2011 this decision was reversed and in about 3 years this fumigation of food reportedly will stop. (Order to cease sulfuryl fluoride fumigation of food products.)
From: http://fluoridedetective.com/types-of-fluoride/
I’m still having a difficult time discovering which particular fluoride element(s) sre the lion’s share in tea leaves.
Well, good luck with finding the various fluoride compound levels in finished tea, and I don’t mean that in a snarky way. If you find articles that lay out the facts in a transparent manner, I would much appreciate your giving us the url links.
My understanding is that most of the fluoride present in soil is in the form of calcium fluoride, the least harmful of the bunch. The problem is, there are no current and repeated testing and published results of calcium fluoride levels in tea finished for consumption, and certainly no repeated testing and published results to show fluoride compound residuals in tea from synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use on Camellia sinensis. Plus fluoride is a halogen that readily combines with multiple elements, one of which is aluminum which is widely used in municipal water treatment plants as a flocculant to produce “sparkling clear” water.
My gut tells me that if the desired data on fluoride is so well hidden that we cannot find it without access to a few particular chemical library databases, then it’s bad news that the Rocke-felon fluoride industry wants to keep from us. JMO.
Oh for cryin’ out loud, what the hell can you eat or drink anymore that’s not toxic or contaminated anymore? I might as well as die of thirst and starvation now. I’ve switched to drinking tea over the past few years after finding out about all of the soda toxicity, coffee giving you kidney disease and the fluoride in water. Now they’re telling me it can make me sick, too. What the hell am I suppose to eat and drink, for cryin’ out loud!??? Why don’t I just poison myself and get it over with. This is ridiculous.
Hey NC sometimes i feel the same way. 🙁
NC, you are poisoning yourself by eating contaminated food and breathing polluted air! I’ll bet they could even measure the Fukushima radiation everyone has accumulated.
I’ve always preferred tea to coffee, I’m 52 and have no health issues (I don’t do business with the medical industry so that may be why), but over the last 10 years or so, as I’ve learned of the fluoride danger, I began leaving the tea bag in for only 15 or 20 seconds, just enough to give flavor. It takes longer for the fluoride soak out of the tea, from what I’ve read. I do think Darzak has a point about sodium fluoride (the industrial waste that the psychos put in the water) versus calcium fluoride. I also began distilling my water some ten years ago now with a simple counter-top distiller, to avoid the sodium fluoride, chlorine, pharmaceutical drugs in the water, etc.