Some facts about fluorides
Why fruit juices contain fluorides?
A certain part of juices on a market is reconstituted from concentrate by adding local water in local/regional packaging/bottling plant.
This can be because shipments of produce may be seasonal and concentrate is produced while the product is available.
Another important reason is because concentrate does not occupy as much space, it is easier to ship it to the bottling plants around the country in steel drums.
It is simply not economical to ship the juice over a thousand miles in the same containers in which the final consumer buys them.
This site has a series of pages with images of labels, which were on steel drums containing juice or juice concentrate, as well as description of technological processes in juice production (pasteurization or "hot fill", acidification, decolorization)
If you look at a label on a bottled fruit juice, you would see the following information:
Ingredients: filtered water, concentrated (whatever type) juice, sugars (naturally present).
But how was that water filtered? With a sand and gravel filter?
Or was a carbon filter used? But it does not remove fluorides!
A bottling factory cannot possibly use a reverse osmosis filter, those are far too slow for industrial volumes.
Besides, this type of a filter removes only about 10 percent of ionized contaminants. If removal of fluorides is the goal, this type of a filter is not going to do the job.
More information about different methods of water purification is available on another page of this site
An informed consumer who cares about his health should make a decision about whether or not to drink reconstituted fruit juices, since in our day and age this means a good likelihood of ingesting extra fluorides.
Why fluorides are in wine?
Grapes are not washed before they are crushed into juice.
Thus, pesticides which were there, get into wine. Many pesticides contain fluorides.
Some pesticides, of course, get inside the produce, which, obviously, means that washing would remove only a part of them.
But still, if you cannot afford organic produce, the minimum you should do is to wash the produce carefully.
Produce with soft skin, like peaches, grapes, strawberries and so on, can be washed in a strainer.
Medical Facts About Fluorides
Below are a few excerpts from the book "The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics", Louis S.Goodman, Alfred Gilman, 4th Ed. Macmillan, 1970.
The fluoride ion is of interest because of its toxic properties and its effect on dental enamel and bone.
[...] Man obtains fluoride from the ingestion of plants and water.
Incidental sources include food additives, [...] and the ingestion of rodenticides and insecticides that contain fluoride compounds.
Fluoride dusts and gases that are inhaled are also absorbed.
Absorption, Distribution and Excretion
The gastrointestinal tract is the major site of absorption.
Certain fluoride compounds are more efficiently absorbed than others.
The degree of absorption of fluoride compound is best correlated with its solubility.
The relatively soluble compounds, such as sodium fluoride are almost completely absorbed, whereas relatively insoluble ones, such as cryolite (Na3AlF6) and the fluoride found in the bone meal (fluorapatite), are poorly absorbed.
The second most common route of absorption is by way of the lungs.
Pulmonary inhalation of fluoride dusts and gases constitutes the major route of industrial exposure.
Fluoride has been detected in all organs and issues examined; however, there is no evidence that it is concentrated in any tissues except bone and perhaps kidney.
Fluoride is preponderantly deposited in the skeleton and teeth, and the degree of skeletal storage is related to intake and age.
This is thought to be a function of the turnover rate of skeletal components, with growing bone showing a greater fluoride deposition than bone in mature animals.
Numerous attempts have been made to determine whether fluoride serves a specific physiological role, and none has been conclusively demonstrated.
The pharmacological actions of fluoride can be classified as toxic.
Fluoride is an inhibitor of several enzyme systems, it diminishes tissue respiration and anaerobic glycolysis in excised organs, and decreases oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production in muscle.
Fluoride is also a useful anticoagulant in vitro (occurring in laboratory apparatus) and is of particular value when it is desired to stop biological activity, such as glycolysis, in erythrocytes.
The same can be found in the book "Tietz Textbook of Clinical Chemistry", 2nd Ed., Ed. Carl A.Burtis, Edward R.Ashwood. p.66.
Fluoride is a potent inhibitor of many serum enzymes.
Acute poisoning is not rare. It usually results from the accidental ingestion of insecticides containing fluoride salts.
Initial symptoms are secondary to the local action of fluoride on the mucosa of the gastrointestinal tract.
Salivation, nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea are frequent.
Systemic symptoms are varied and severe.
The patient shows signs of increasing irritability system, including paresthesias
Hypocalcemia is a frequent laboratory finding.
Pain in various muscle groups may occur.
The blood pressure falls, presumably due to central vasomotor depression, as well as direct toxic action on cardiac muscle.
The respiratory center is first stimulated and later depressed.
Death usually results from either respiratory paralysis or cardiac failure.
Doses as low as 2 grams were reported to have been fatal.
The affected person should have his stomach washed with 0.15 percent calcium hydroxide solution.
Calcium solutions should be administered by mouth and intravenously.
Maintain venous channel for a possible blood transfusion.
Chronic poisoning
In humans, the major manifestation of the chronic ingestion of excessive amounts of fluoride are osteosclerosis and mottled enamel.
Osteosclerosis is a replacement of the natural bone mineral hydroxiapatite by the fluoroapatite, which is denser.
footnote on osteosclerosis
The degree of skeletal involvement depends on the time a person was exposed to fluorides, as well as the amounts being ingested.
It varies from barely detectable radiologically to marked thickening of the cortex of long bones, numerous exostoses (an abnormal growth on the surface of the bone) scattered throughout the skeleton, calcification of ligaments, tendons and muscle attachments to the bone.
In its severest form it is a disabling disease and is designated as crippling fluorosis.
Mottled enamel or dental fluorosis is a well-recognized entity that was first described before the 1920.
The gross changes in very mild mottling consist in small, opaque, paper-white areas scattered irregularly over the tooth surface.
In severe cases, discrete or confluent, deep brown- to black-stained pits give the tooth a corroded appearance.
Mottled enamel is the result of a partial failure of the enamel-forming cells properly to elaborate and lay down enamel.
It is a nonspecific response to a variety of stimuli, one of which is the ingestion of excessive amounts of fluoride.
[...] Mottling is some of the first visible signs of an excessive intake of fluoride during childhood.
Back in 1936 a quantitative relationship was demonstrated between the fluoride concentration in drinking water and mottling.
Continuous use of water containing about 1.0 ppm of fluoride may result in the very mildest form of mottled enamel in 10 percent of children.
The incidence rises to 40 to 50 percent at about 1.7 ppm.
At 2.5 ppm it is as high as 80 percent, with 25 percent being classified as moderate to severe.
Between 4.0 and 6.0 ppm, the incidence approaches 100 percent, with marked increase in severity.
Preparation and uses
Sodium fluoride, sodium fluosilicate (Na2SiF6) and cryolite are the salts commonly used for insecticides.
The fluoride salts presently employed in dentifrices are sodium fluoride and stannous fluoride.
The quoted text above mentions that the natural mineral bone component undergoes pathological transformation, hydroxiapatite changes to fluoroapatite, which is denser.
Here is some additional information about it.
Since it is not a part of a quoted text, it was placed here.
Fluoroapatite does not respond to hormonal stimulation.
For all practical purposes bones becomes physiologically dead.
Organism is trying to do its job of putting minerals, primarily calcium, for storage into the bone and to remove it in times of need, but the bone no longer responds.
The hormonal autoregulation goes out of control, the levels of related hormones, primarily parathyroid, rise to the point that pathological conditions result.
Paresthesia means any subjective sensation - numbness, tingling, "pins and needles", abnormal spasms of the facial muscle, hyperactive reflexes, convulsions.
These actions are thought to be related to the calcium-binding effect of fluoride.
Since calcium is crucial for the proper biochemistry of muscle, including cardiac muscle, its deficiency would be accompanied by certain pathological manifestations.
This eBook is available from my site www.noAccent.NET
A practical guide on accent reduction with comparative descriptions of major phonetic articulation mechanisms.
With this guide you'll be on your way to accent-free English in days, without a single hour spent in a classroom.