Portland City Council calendars don't show meetings reported by fluoride lobbyists: Portland City Hall roundup

OregonLive
Brad Schmidt

Portland’s newly elected City Council was all smiles
two weeks after the November 2008 election.
Mayor-elect Sam Adams (second from right) joined (from left)
Commissioner Randy Leonard, Commissioners-elect Amanda Fritz
and Nick Fish, and Commissioner Dan Saltzman for a portrait.

Fluoride lobbyists reported meeting personally with all five members of the Portland City Council in July or August but only one of those initial meetings appears on public calendars -- under a vague heading -- leaving lingering questions about the effectiveness of the city's lobbying and reporting requirements.

Promoted by then-Commissioner Sam Adams beginning in 2005, the lobbying and reporting rules are supposed to preserve integrity in city decision-making. The requirements affect both lobbyists and city officials and are meant to reveal who attempts to influence city leaders -- and on what topic.

Upstream Public Health is behind the push to add fluoride to Portland drinking water. But its plan has since been challenged through a referendum effort that may block the City Council's Sept. 12 unanimous approval.

According to a recently filed disclosure, lobbyists reported meeting with Commissioners Randy Leonard on July 26, Dan Saltzman and Nick Fish on Aug. 2, Amanda Fritz on Aug. 6 and Mayor Adams on Aug. 27 to push for fluoride in public drinking water.

But those same city officials -- who are required to publicly post their calendars on a quarterly basis -- either didn't disclose the meetings about fluoride or left a vague subject heading. Adams and Leonard say they weren't actually present at the meetings.

Leonard, who championed the fluoride proposal, listed four meetings July 26. Two were about the Portland Loo, one was about skateboarding and one was with the police union. But no fluoride.

Saltzman listed three meetings Aug. 2 with the city forester, the police union and one about a homeless camp. But nothing about the fluoride proposal.

Of the nine slots on Fish's calendar, he reported a 30-minute meeting Aug. 2 with "Health Coalitions" but didn't identify the group or the topic.

Fritz, meanwhile, reports her calendar by week instead of by day. She listed 16 meetings or events, none about fluoride or with Upstream Public Health.

And Adams listed six items on his calendar for Aug. 27. They include a meeting with Police Chief Mike Reese, a meeting about Brazil trade, a meeting with Transportation Director Tom Miller, a media event and two blocks for "office time." But nothing about fluoride.

According to city code, elected officials are required to post their calendars "of activities related to official city business" 15 days after the end of the previous quarter. That deadline was Oct. 15. There is only one exception: If an elected official "determines that such posting poses a safety threat." 

Leonard said in an email Friday that he never met with Upstream Public Health on July 26, despite the group's assertion that it had a "personal meeting" with him. Leonard said the meeting involving Upstream Public Health was with Stuart Oishi on his staff. 

Adams' spokeswoman Caryn Brooks said Friday that Adams never met personally with Upstream Public Health, either. She said that Upstream instead met with herself and Amy Ruiz, Adams' deputy chief of staff, on Aug. 27. But Brooks did say that Adams called Upstream about fluoride -- which doesn't appear on the group's report -- and he also ran into representatives at Davis Street Tavern.

Fish said in an email Friday that Kayse Jama, a founder for the Center for Intercultural Organizing, requested the Aug. 2 meeting but told Fish's office it was about a "broad health equity strategy." Fish said he didn't learn the topic until the meeting.

As for Upstream Public Health, it didn't register as a lobbying group until Aug. 16. The Oregonian broke news of the fluoride push, and the group's stealth lobbying efforts, Aug. 9. 

Anti-fluoride group will submit more than 35,000 signatures to Portland in 'confident' bid to force vote

Editor's Note:  Now you know why I live in Portland.

Oregon Live
Brad Schmidt

 An anti-fluoride group said it's been so successful collecting signatures to block Portland's controversial fluoride plan that it will turn them in Thursday -- a day ahead of schedule and with thousands of signatures to spare.

If they succeeded in collecting 19,858 valid signatures from city voters, Portland's already-approved fluoride plan would come to a screeching halt. It wouldn't move forward unless voters approve, with the most likely election date not until May 2014.

Clean Water Portland collected more than 35,000 signatures by Wednesday afternoon, leader Kim Kaminski said, and the group plans to submit them Thursday afternoon, ahead of Friday's 5 p.m. deadline.

"I am confident that we will get this on the ballot," she said. "If I weren't confident, we wouldn't be turning them in a day early."

Portland's long and contentious history with fluoride dates back nearly 60 years, with residents supporting the cavity-fighting chemical once but voting against it three times. Before the City Council unanimously approved its plan Sept. 12, Portland was the largest city in the country that hadn't taken steps to add fluoride to its water supply, which also serves residents in Gresham, Tigard and Tualatin.

City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who pushed the Water Bureau to add fluoride by March 2014, conceded Wednesday that all planning work will stop if the signature-gathering is successful. But he said he isn't disappointed.

"That's why the process exists," he said, adding that he expects a "full and meaningful debate" in the months ahead.

Ironically, that's been a major complaint about Portland's process. Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Nick Fish joined Leonard in announcing their support of fluoridation weeks before public meetings or casting votes. While some residents fervently oppose fluoride, others were upset by city leaders' failure to let voters weigh in.

Since the council vote, Clean Water Portland's referendum committee has collected more than $41,000 and paid dozens of people to collect signatures. Referendums challenge a City Council ordinance but give opponents just 30 days to collect signatures from at least 6 percent of registered voters.

"Given the short amount of time that we have, and given the lack of notice by City Council and the way they railroaded it through, we had really no choice but to hire paid signature gatherers," Kaminski said.

It's been 11 years since a group successfully challenged a city decision. In 2001, the City Council voted to establish street fees, but big businesses -- which would have faced big bills -- helped bankroll a signature-gathering effort. The City Council repealed its decision instead of sending it to voters.

"It's not a typical process for the city, so we don't have a lot of history to go of off," said Deborah Scroggin, the city's elections officer.

Once Clean Water Portland submits its paperwork, city and county officials will have 30 days to certify whether enough of the signatures are valid. From there, the council has another 30 days to consider whether to repeal its ordinance, although that scenario is unlikely.

That means the fluoride issue would head to voters in the May 2014 primary election unless the council pushes for an earlier decision. According to city code, the council can set an earlier date if the "public interest in a prompt resolution of the question outweighs the costs associated with a special election." Among possible options are March, May, September or November 2013.

Fluoride supporters said they want to wait until all the signatures are verified before talking about next steps. But the Everyone Deserves Healthy Teeth Coalition has proved politically savvy through lobbying efforts at City Hall and in a television ad campaign.

"We absolutely will continue to promote fluoridation as the right step for our city to improve the dental health of Portland children and families," said Raquel Luz Bournhonesque, who organized the coalition.

Kaminski said voters deserve a chance to decide for themselves.

"It puts everything on hold," she said, "so that people have time and step back and take a deep breath and figure out what's going on."

Fluoride opponents vow to launch citizen referendum 'within the hour'

The Oregonian
Beth Slavic

Demonstrator China Starshine held up signs outside of City Hall
where the Portland City Council opened public testimony on
Commissioner Randy Leonard's plan to fluoridate the
area's drinking water in Portland last week. The
Portland City Council voted 5-0 on Wednesday to approve the measure.

A group calling itself Clean Water Portland announced immediately after the Portland City Council voted 5-0to add fluoride to the region's drinking water that it would challenge the decision with a citizen referendum. 

Unlike an initiative, which opponents earlier called for, a referendum has the potential to suspend the city's ordinance, which technically takes effect in 30 days even though Portland officials don't plan to add fluoride to the region's water until 2014.

"If the petition qualifies for the ballot, the effective date of the ordinance is suspended until a public vote," said Andrew Bryans of the city auditor's office. The group needs to collect nearly 20,000 valid signatures to push the measure.

Kim Kaminski, a spokeswoman for Clean Water Portland, said around 11 a.m. that she expected to file paperwork with Portland's auditor "within the hour." However, city clerks still needed to file their own paperwork before that could happen, meaning the referendum won't get off the ground until this afternoon at the earliest.

Clean Water Portland says it has 125 volunteers to gather signatures and expects to have more than 25 paid signature gathers by the end of the week.

Opponents in August originally announced they would push an initiative to ask voters to ban fluoride in drinking water in 2014.

A referendum also would put the question to voters in 2014. But fluoride opponents wouldn't have to collect as many signatures. They'd have to do it in 30 days, however. If they're successful, they'd stop the city's ordinance from going into effect, blocking city officials' efforts to plan for fluoridation.

There's another reason opponents switched from an initiative to a referendum.

Commissioner Randy Leonard, fluoride's chief proponent on the City Council, announced after opponents said they would launch an initiative that he would take action to put fluoride in the region's water before opponents could get the ban on the ballot.

Portland voters have rejected fluoride at the ballot box three times, most recently in 1980.

-- Beth Slovic

Portland, Oregon to spend $5 million to poison its residents with toxic fluoride

Natural News
Ethan Huff

Portland Commissioner Nick Fish
plays the "for the children" card to justify
the chemical dumbing down of the population
for the protection of teeth enamel.
Politicians supporting fluoridation refuse to
allow its citizens to vote on the initiative.

One of the last remaining urban bastions of fluoride-free water, the city of Portland, Oregon, is about to join the ranks of most other U.S. cities in forcibly medicating its residents with a drug that has been scientifically shown to impede proper brain development, lower IQ, damage thyroid function, and even cause cancer.

Oregon's Herald and News reports that Portland Mayor Sam Adams has decided to join two other fluoride supporters on the five-member City Council, Randy Leonard and Nick Fish, in voting to support the mass medication of Portlanders via the public water supply. The other two members, Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman, have expressed opposition to water fluoridation.

You can access contact information for all members of the Portland City Council by visiting:

http://www.portlandonline.com/index.cfm?c=28533

At this time, there is no official date for when the council will vote on the issue. But unless the people of Portland and their supporters around the country raise hell to the Portland City Council in the following days and weeks, this three-two majority will eventually force mandatory water fluoridation to become law, despite the fact that Portlanders have repeatedly voted down water fluoridation efforts in the past.


Mayor Sam Adams says he grew up drinking fluoridated water, his hometown's website says otherwise

As part of his argument for why he supports fluoridation, Mayor Adams told reporters that he grew up drinking fluoridated water in his hometown of Newport, Oregon. This, he says, is the reason why his teeth are now white and allegedly very healthy.

But a quick trip over to the City of Newport's Public Works page reveals that Newport, Oregon does not, in fact, fluoridate its water supply (http://www.thecityofnewport.net/dept/pwk/waterquality.asp). The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also confirms this, as its Oral Health Resources page shows that the fluoride concentration in Newport's public water supply is 0.00 mg/L. (http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov)

What this means is that Mayor Adams is lying to his constituents in a thinly-veiled effort to pull a fast one at the behest of aggressive fluoride lobbyists. It is these lobbyists, after all, that approached the City Council back in August to push for water fluoridation, and are apparently responsible for this sudden rush to getPortland fluoridated.

Like most other political decisions, it appears as though Mayor Adams was essentially bribed by the fluoride lobby to pretend as though fluoride is healthy and beneficial. Mayor Adams has even gone so far as to claim that the science against fluoride is based on "emotions and rhetoric," which is clearly not the case when taking even a cursory look at the mountain of evidence.


Mayor Adams, political sellout and industry whore

If Mayor Adams really took an honest look at the science behind fluoride, as he claims he has done, there is no way he could have arrived at the conclusion that fluoride is safe and beneficial for preventing tooth decay. Numerous studies, including a 2010 study out of New Zealand, have proven that ingesting fluoride does not prevent tooth decay, and that it actually causes much harm. (http://worldental.org)

Mayor Adams, Randy Leonard, and Nick Fish need to hear from you. These fluoride shills are either grossly and willfully misinformed about fluoride, or they have caved to industry pressures -- and most likely industry dollars -- to push toxic fluoride in the name of improving health. After all, if these three get their way, Portland taxpayers will be forced to fork over $5 million a year to have themselves poisoned with fluoride, which will be a big financial win for the fluoride industry.

You can contact Mayor Adams, Randy Leonard, and Nick Fish by visiting:
http://www.portlandonline.com/index.cfm?c=28533

Sources for this article include:

http://www.heraldandnews.com

http://www.registerguard.com

http://www.fluoridealert.org/

Harvard Study – Published in National Institute of Health Journal – Finds Fluoride Lowers Children’s IQ

Washington's Blog

Yet Another Government Report Finds that Fluoride Lowers IQ in Kids

The Harvard School for Public Health reports:

For years health experts have been unable to agree on whether fluoride in the drinking water may be toxic to the developing human brain. Extremely high levels of fluoride are known to cause neurotoxicity in adults, and negative impacts on memory and learning have been reported in rodent studies, but little is known about the substance’s impact on children’s neurodevelopment. In a meta-analysis, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and China Medical University in Shenyang for the first time combined 27 studies and found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children. Based on the findings, the authors say that this risk should not be ignored, and that more research on fluoride’s impact on the developing brain is warranted.

The study [click for abstract] was published online in Environmental Health Perspectiveson July 20, 2012.

Environmental Health Perspectives is a publication of the United States National Institutes of Health’sNational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Harvard’s announcement continues:

The researchers conducted a systematic review of studies, almost all of which are from China where risks from fluoride are well-established. Fluoride is a naturally occurring substance in groundwater, and exposures to the chemical are increased in some parts of China. Virtually no human studies in this field have been conducted in the U.S., said lead author Anna Choi, research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health at HSPH.

***

Choi and senior author Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at HSPH, and their colleagues collated the epidemiological studies of children exposed to fluoride from drinking water. The China National Knowledge Infrastructure database also was included to locate studies published in Chinese journals. They then analyzed possible associations with IQ measures in more than 8,000 children of school age; all but one study suggested that high fluoride content in water may negatively affect cognitive development.

The average loss was only half of one IQ point, but some studies suggested that even slightly increased fluoride exposure could be toxic to the brain. Thus, children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas. The children studied were up to 14 years of age, but the investigators speculate that any toxic effect on brain development may have happened earlier, and that the brain may not be fully capable of compensating for the toxicity.

“Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain,” Grandjean says. “The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us.”

Numerous other government reports have shown fluoride’s adverse impacts on intelligence:

[A] 2006 National Academy of Science [report ] reviews the scientific studies which have been performed on fluoride, and concludes:

It is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means. (bottom of page 222).

The NAS report also notes that fluoride may actually impair intelligence, and that more testing should be done in this regard.

Indeed, studies from around the world continue to find that exposure to sodium fluoride – especially in the very young – lowers IQ. See this and this. The same is true for rats exposed to fluoride. See this and this. And see the studies listed here.

Dr. Vyvyan Howard – a PhD fetal pathologist, who is a professor of developmental toxico-pathology at the University of Liverpool and University of Ulster, president of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment and former president of the Royal Microscopical Society and the International Society for Stereology, and general editor of the Journal of Microscopy – said in a 2008 Canadian television interview (short, worthwhile video at the link) that studies done in several countries show that children’s IQ are likely to be lower in high natural water fluoride areas.

He said that these studies are plausible because fluoride is known to affect the thyroid hormone which affects intelligence and fluoride is also a known neurotoxicant. Such studies have not been conducted in countries that artificially fluoridate the water such as the US, UK and Canada, but should be, he said.

And as the International Business Times noted last month on the newest Chinese study on fluoride:

Exposure to fluoride may lower children’s intelligence, says a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Fluoride is added to 70 percent of U.S. public drinking water supplies.

***

About 28 percent of the children in the low-fluoride area scored as bright, normal or higher intelligence compared to only 8 percent in the “high” fluoride area of Wamaio.

In the high-fluoride city, 15 percent had scores indicating mental retardation and only 6 percent in the low-fluoride city. The authors of the study eliminated both lead exposure and iodine deficiency as possible causes for the lowered IQs.

One scientist – Jennifer Luke – alleged in a 2001 scientific article that fluoride accumulates in the brain (specifically, in the structure of the pineal gland) more than it accumulates in our bones. In other words, she implies that fluoride may accumulate more in the brain than in the teeth, doing more harm than good (here’s Luke’s 1997 PhD dissertation on the topic.)

The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report corroborates some of Luke’s allegations:

As with other calcifying tissues, the pineal gland can accumulate fluoride (Luke 1997, 2001). Fluoride has been shown to be present in the pineal glands of older people (14-875 mg of fluoride per kg of gland in persons aged 72-100 years), with the fluoride concentrations being positively related to the calcium concentrations in the pineal gland, but not to the bone fluoride, suggesting that pineal fluoride is not necessarily a function of cumulative fluoride exposure of the individual (Luke 1997, 2001). Fluoride has not been measured in the pineal glands of children or young adults, nor has there been any investigation of the relationship between pineal fluoride concentrations and either recent or cumulative fluoride intakes.

Donald Miller – cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington – alleges:

Fluoride … inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase in the brain, which is involved in transmitting signals along nerve cells.

***

Fluoride also damages the brain, both directly and indirectly. Rats given fluoridated water at a dose of 4 ppm develop symptoms resembling attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. High concentrations of fluoride accumulate in the pineal gland, which produces serotonin and melatonin.

***

People with Alzheimer’s disease have high levels of aluminum in their brains. Fluoride combines with aluminum in drinking water and takes it through the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD, a neurosurgeon, spells out in chilling detail the danger fluoride poses to one’s brain and health in general in his book Health and Nutrition Secrets that can Save Your Life (2002).

Hat tip:  Paul Beeber.

New Study: Fluoride Can Damage the Brain - Avoid Use in Children

Sweet Remedy


PRNewswire, June 21, 2011

"The prolonged ingestion of fluoride may cause significant damage to health and particularly to the nervous system," concludes a review of studies by researchers Valdez-Jimenez, et al. published in Neurologia (June 2011), reports New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc.

Valdez-Jimenez, et al. describe studies that show fluoride induces changes in the brain's physical structure and biochemistry which affects the neurological and mental development of individuals including cognitive processes, such as learning and memory.

The research team reports, "It is important to be aware of this serious problem and avoid the use of toothpaste and items that contain fluoride, particularly in children as they are more susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride."

A different research team (Tang et al.) reported in 2008 that "A qualitative review of the studies found a consistent and strong association between the exposure to fluoride and low IQ."