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Editor: Brown spots on teeth are a classic sign of advanced dental fluorosis caused by overexposure to fluoride - from any source. Even residents of nonfluoridated communities, like Pasco, are overdosing on fluoride today due to saturation of the environment with the element after more than 60 years of fluoridation in more than 60 percent of the nation.
Major sources of fluoride, besides water, are food and beverages produced and packaged in fluoridated communities, dental products and many drugs and pesticides. In children, overexposure to fluoride causes mottling or fluorosis of the teeth - showing as white, then brown spots on the teeth, which ultimately results in pitting and erosion of the teeth as fluoride accumulates.
This is the first outward sign of fluoride poisoning, which gets worse with time and exposure, and ultimately affects the entire body, especially the bones. Fluoride is the most bone-seeking element that exists. A buildup in bones will lead to skeletal fluorosis, a crippling, incurable disease resembling arthritis (and often mistaken for it) in its early stages.
Dentist Jay Nelson fails to mention that tooth decay rates have declined universally - in nonfluoridated, as well as fluoridated communities, and current dental literature concedes that any decay-reducing effects are the result of topical application of fluoride, not ingestion of it through water.
Well-meaning dentists and newspaper writers aren't getting the true facts about fluoride and fluoridation. Read them at www.aquasafe.us
Editor: Charter schools have been getting a bad rap. Sometimes deserved and sometimes not so. The venture is as much business as it is educational. There is one charter school in the county that is doing it right. That school is Academy at the Farm.
With inclusion and experiential education through the farm, the teachers are dedicated to helping each child reach his or her full potential in an individualized manner.
Recently, Academy at the Farm was awarded a grant of $123,000 to expand its programs. This grant will allow Academy to develop a learning center that will give students very individualized instruction and enrichment. Publicity is swift and furious when things go wrong. But things are going right at Academy at the Farm. It's time to let people know.
Editor: The Sheriff's Office and prosecutors in Pasco County must be very proud of themselves. It's only taken them three attempts to successfully prosecute Richard Paey.
He is a man whose accomplishments to date include graduation from Rutgers University and postgrad work that led to his law degree in the early 1980s. A man with a bright future ahead of him had his dreams dashed by the recklessness of the person who drove a car, at high speed, that rear-ended his stopped vehicle, which disintegrated portions of his vertebrae.
The subsequent botched back operation sealed his fate of constant and extreme pain, loss of feeling in his legs and the inability to do the things that we all take for granted. Richard's relative youth and need for stronger painkillers were a red flag to local officials who felt that this man must surely be a criminal of vast proportions.
But he's not. He's just a poor man in pain now convicted of trafficking drugs. What a travesty.