It has been a mainstay of American public health policy since 1950 and continues to enjoy the support of government health agencies, dentists, and numerous others in the medical and scientific community.Īs with many chemical additives in the modern world, however, few people know much about it. The practice of adding fluoride compounds (mostly FSA and occasionally sodium fluoride) to drinking water is known as community water fluoridation.
An 1892 map of phosphate deposits on the western edge of Florida ( right). This is a practice that the American Dental Association and numerous scientists and public health officials describe as “the precise adjustment of the existing naturally occurring fluoride levels in drinking water to an optimal fluoride level … for the prevention of dental decay.”Ī worker watching the loading of powder fine phosphate in Mulberry, FL in 1947 ( left). Once there, it is drip fed into drinking water. It is in such tanks that fluorosilicic acid has for the past half century been transported from Florida fertilizer factories to water reservoirs throughout the United States. Fortunately, it can be contained in high-density cross-linked polyethylene storage tanks. Breathing its fumes causes severe lung damage or death and an accidental splash on bare skin will lead to burning and excruciating pain. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) cautions that FSA, an inorganic fluoride compound, has dire health consequences for any worker that comes into contact with it.
Prior to the 1970s, these pollutants were vented into the atmosphere and gave central Florida some of the most noxious air pollution in the country.ĭuring the 1960s, however, complaints by farmers and ranchers eventually forced reluctant manufacturers to invest in pollution abatement scrubbers that converted toxic vapors into fluorosilicic acid (FSA), a dangerous but more containable liquid waste.Ī safety instructor checking fluoridation levels at the Fluoride Feed Station on Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, OK in 2016. Highly toxic hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride gases are by-products of fertilizer production. Phosphate loaded by elevator at Port Tampa, FL in 1958.
In the process, the mining industry leaves behind a scarred landscape denuded of vegetation and pocked with vividly colored waste disposal ponds that one writer described as “beautiful pools of pollution.” The so-called Bone Valley of central Florida contains some of the largest phosphate deposits in the world, which supply global agriculture with one of its most important commodities: synthetic fertilizer. While Florida calls itself the Sunshine State, from a geological and economic perspective, it could just as accurately be known as the Phosphate State.
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