Tainted tea leads to fluorosis risk

There's trouble brewing with tea -- and if you love your leaves, pay close attention to this one because you may not love them as much when I'm done.

A new study found that black tea could be bubbling over with dangerously high levels of fluoride, and it's not just from our tainted drinking water.

It's in the tea itself.

Dr. Gary Whitford, professor of oral biology at the Medical College of Georgia's School of Dentistry, had four patients suffering from advanced skeletal fluorosis -- and they all had something in common: They drank a lot of tea, up to two gallons a day for between 10 and 30 years.

So he tested their teas... and found, well, not much. Not at first. Other studies have found small amounts of fluoride in black tea, and he found the same.

But then he found a fatal flaw in the earlier studies: The fluoride in tea can bond with aluminum -- also found in the leaves in small amounts -- making it undetectable by the usual tests.

Once he broke that bond, he got the true fluoride levels. He found more than triple the expected amount of fluoride in some brands, as much as 9 milligrams per liter
-- well above safe levels for regular consumption.

This isn't just a tempest in a teapot -- because despite what the mainstream tells you, no amount of fluoride is safe for regular consumption. It's a toxic waste, and that's not just my opinion. Fluoride was once classified as such by our own government.

Too much of it will actually rot your teeth, not save them. And as those four tea-loving patients of Dr. Whitford can testify, it'll also destroy your bones and joints.

But if you love tea, you don't have to give it up completely. Tea plants suck fluoride and aluminum from the ground slowly, over time -- so the trick is to get the youngest leaves, before they've had a chance to pick up all that poison.

That means out with the black and in with the green and white -- the youngest tealeaves harvested, and also the healthiest. Leaf for leaf, black tea can't touch its younger siblings, which have been linked to everything from cancer prevention to longer lives.

Of course, you'll undo it all if you brew your tea in the fluoride-filled sludge that passes for water in most of the United States -- so make sure you use only clean fluoride-free water, ideally from a reverse-osmosis filter.

Teed off over toxic tea