I think what everyone here needs to remember, and I have written extensively about this in previous posts, is VOLUME OF EXPOSURE. The government is now telling us that saw dust.... yes, wooden sawdust, is a carcinogen. But you need a lifetime of working with it without protection to have it be of consequence to you. We know that nickel is a carcinogen, yet it is in all of our coins that we handle everyday. It is in the plating on tons of the silverware we eat with and put in our mouths etc. I could create a list that would fill this whole page of listed carcinogens that at some level you come in contact with almost every day. But you are unlikely to be exposed to enough volume of any one of them for it to be of consequence, unless you work intimately with it in your vocation 8 hours a day. Please consider the exposure levels of all these things you would like to list as risks to your life, and consider that the government and other institutions in their testing of some of these things, gave the lab animals levels that in the normal course of our lives we would never be exposed to. Many of these carcinogens when they are bound to another molecule are less harmful. Fluoride is one of many that this occurs with. Non-bonded fluoride does not exist in oral care products. It has other molecules such as sodium (and many others) attached to it. As to fluoride, it has been in our water for a long time, but again not pure fluoride. Considering that America consumes as much, if not more, soft drinks as it does water, there is a whole 'nuther argument that could be started here as to which is most likely to be of a health concern to you. You don't want to be swallowing your fluoride treatments; if you do, you'll probably throw it up anyway since your stomach isn't going to like this stuff. But the amounts that we consume, even as oral cancer survivors, are likely not going to change our lives. Getting osteoradionecrosis after losing teeth to caries and periodontal disease is a much greater risk for us. Fluoride combined with good oral hygiene will prevent this. So look at your carcinogen lists and find bonded fluorides on them, and then look at what safe levels of those are, estimate your volume of exposure in the next 50 years, and you will likely find that it is a non issue. You may be more logical to consider this is a choice between two evils...which one has the most likelihood of occurring in your life time, fluoride poisoning, (or even more remotely a cancer caused by fluoride) or ORN?
