Does fluoride accumulate in the body?

Yes.

   Approximately half of each day's fluoride intake will be retained by a healthy adult. This includes intake from ALL sources - food, air, water, dental products, etc.

   Fluorides are cumulative toxins. The fact that fluorides accumulate in the body is the reason that US law requires the Surgeon General to set a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for fluoride content in public water supplies as determined by the EPA.

   This requirement is specifically aimed at avoiding a condition known as Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis (CSF), a disease known to progress through three stages. The MCL, designed to prevent only the third and crippling stage of this disease, is set at 4ppm or 4mg per liter. It is assumed that people will retain half of this amount (2mg), and therefore 4mg per liter is deemed “safe”. Yet a daily dose of 2-8mg is known to cause the third and crippling stage of CSF(1,2) within 40 years.

   In 1998 EPA scientists, whose job and legal duty it is to set the MCL, declared that this 4ppm level was set fraudulently by outside forces in a decision that omitted 90 percent of the data showing the mutagenic properties of fluoride (3).

   All sides agree to the fact that healthy kidneys can eliminate only about 50% of daily fluoride intake. The rest gets stored mainly in calcified tissues, like bones and teeth, but also in soft tissue.

   Children, women in childbearing age, the elderly and any person with impaired liver or kidney function are in the high risk group for fluoride poisoning and must be warned to monitor their fluoride intake. Also at high risk are people with immunodeficiencies, diabetes and heart ailments, as well as anyone with iodine, calcium and magnesium, selenium, Vitamin C and A deficiencies.

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Health Effects of Ingested Fluoride, Subcommittee on Health Effects of Ingested Fluoride, Committee on Toxicology, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council, August 1993, p.59

World Health Organization - Fluorides and Human Health, p. 239 (1970)

Carton RJ, Hirzy JW -  “Applying the NAEP code of ethics to the Environmental Protection Agency and the fluoride in drinking water standard” Proceedings of the 23rd Ann. Conf. of the National Association of Environmental Professionals June 20-24 (1998)GEN 51-61 http://www.rvi.net/fluoride/naep.htm