Fluorides lead to underweight babies
Hindustan Times - April 9, 2008
By Satyen Mohapatra
NEW DELHI - Is fluoride poisoning a major cause of anaemia in pregnant women leading to the birth of underweight babies? Babies weighing less than 2.5 kg at birth can suffer from a range of physical disabilites: impaired brain development, impaired thyroid function, autism and various deformities.
Studies conducted by A.K. Susheela, Executive Director, Fluorosis Foundation of India, and formerly a professor at AIIMS, suggests that such is indeed the case.
"A link has been established between fluoride poisoning and anaemia in pregnant women," said Dr Susheela in an exclusive interview to Hindustan Times. "What fluoride does is to destroy microvilli in the stomach and intestine thereby preventing absorption of nutrients into the body. Microvilli regenerate once fluoride is withdrawn."
Dr. Susheela noticed that the numbers of anaemic women in India continued to remain high depite decades of effort and investment by government and other agencies to promote use of iron and folic acid tablets to supplement the diet of pregnant women. Anaemia prevalence in India ranges from 50 per cent in Andhra Pradesh to 98 per cent in Rajasthan.
Among the 19 million infants with low birth weight in developing world, 8.3 million are in India according to UNICEF Report 2008.
Pilot studies were carried out in various states on drinking water qualitiy, urine samples, and haemoglobin levels of patients, which showed that people living in areas where the water had high fluoride content also showed higher levels of fluoride in their urine and low levels of haemoglobin.
Controlled experiments shoed that when no longer exposed to fluorides, patients grew healthier with haemoglobin levels in their body rising, and their body mass increasing, Dr. Susheela said.
"To control anaemia in pregnant women and prevent low birth weight babies there must be provision of fluoride-free, safe drinking water,: she noted. "Solid foods containing fluorides should also be withdrawn and healthy foods promoted.
"Street foods like samosa, alu tiki, pani puri, bhel puri, choley bhature, fruit juice with masala which contains black or red rock salt (kala namak) is not good. Black or red rock salt is full of fluorides and killing,"she said.
"With more and more groundwater being drawn and the water table falling, fluoride in ground water is increasing," she noted.
Fluoride poisoning, as is well known, causes other, more deadly ailments as well: dental fluorosis particularly in children, skeletal fluorosis in which all joints and bones are affected and can even lead to crippling and paralysis and non-skeletal fluorosis which affects the soft tissues like muscles.