CHEMICAL IN FLUORIDATED WATER MAY CAUSE VIOLENT BEHAVIOR, COCAINE USE,
SCHOLAR SAYS

A chemical used to fluoridate the drinking water of 150 million Americans
may unwittingly foster violent behavior and cocaine use in some of those who
drink the water, a scholar said Friday at the annual meeting of the
Association for Politics and the Life Sciences.

Communities that use a fluoridation agent known as silicofluoride have
higher rates of violent crime than communities that use an alternative
method or do not fluoridate their water, said Roger D. Masters, an emeritus
professor of government at Dartmouth College.

He based his conclusions on a series of statistical analyses of the
characteristics of communities in Massachusetts and Georgia. Mr. Masters
said that previous work by other researchers suggested that the statistical
pattern may reflect the way silicofluoride in water causes people to absorb
more lead.

The lead blocks the action of calcium atoms in fostering the production of
neurotransmitters in the brain -- such as dopamine and serotonin -- that
appear to suppress violent behavior, he said. Thus, the silicofluoride
ultimately is responsible for more aggressive behavior among people who
drink the water that has been treated with silicofluoride and whose diets
are lacking in calcium, he said.

Calcium deficiency is more common among black people than among white
people, which might help explain racial patterns of violent behavior, he
said.

In one of his studies, Mr. Masters found that residents of 25 Massachusetts
communities that used silicofluorides were more likely to have elevated
levels of lead in their blood than were residents of 25 other Massachusetts
communities that did not. Myron J. Coplan, a retired chemical engineer who
has collaborated with Mr. Masters, told The Chronicle that silicofluoride
was less expensive than the only other widely used fluoridation agent.

Mr. Masters' analysis of 129 rural counties in Georgia also found that
communities that used silicofluoride had elevated rates of cocaine use. Lead
in the brain because of silicofluoride may be the link in that case as well,
he said: cocaine addiction appears to be tied to low levels of dopamine in
the brain, and lead in the brain depresses dopamine levels.

Use of many other drugs is unrelated to dopamine, and the Georgia
communities that had silicofluoridated water had no increase in the use of
such drugs -- such as Valium, marijuana, and PCP -- he said.

Mr. Masters said his study may challenge the common view that drug abuse and
violent behavior are caused by a "moral defect" in the individual. In the
case of silicofluoridated water, he said, the government may share in the
responsibility for violence in society. "It is governments that determine
what goes into our water supply," he said.

Copyright 1998 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Checked-by: Don Beck