Kangaroos Dying of Fluoride Poisoning, But Are Levels Safe For Humans?

by Heidi Stevenson

1 March 2010

Kangaroos are starving and dying from tooth and skeletal deformities caused by fluoride poisoning. In a claim that appears to have been pulled from thin and polluted air, Australia's Environment Protection Agency (EPA) says that the emissions are safe for humans, though apparently some animals are more sensitive to fluoride.

Fluoride from nearby industrial plants is absorbed by vegetation eaten by kangaroos. Manfred Zabinskas, a wildlife shelter operator, was horrified at the state of the kangaroos, saying "They were in real pain." Kangaroos are suffering from typical fluoride poisoning: tumors, lesions and abnormal growths on their bones, and tooth and jaw deformities.

Associate professor in veterinary pathology at Melbourne University, Jenny Charles, said that about 90% of the kangaroos living in the area of the Alcoa plant at Portland, Australia showed signs of fluorosis and at least a fourth of the kangaroos had obvious lumps on their limbs.

Australia's EPA was first warned about the problem back in 2005, though signs of lameness in kangaroos had shown up by 2001. Bruce Dawson, their director of environmental services, insisted that they hadn't been slow in reducing allowable emissions. It's expected to take years before research can definitively show an appropriate level of fluoride.

Dawson says, "We are taking this seriously. Clearly the impact on the local kangaroos and vegetation is not acceptable and action is required." However, Dawson and the EPA's best suggestion, so far, is to herd the kangaroos away from the areas most polluted by industrial fluoride emissions.

There appears to have been significant deception in the methodologies for determining what is and is not an acceptable level of fluoride. It also appears that Alcoa, the aluminum conglomerate, has been fairly clever in hiding the truth. Their plant in the state of Victoria is known as the Smelter in the Park. It was sold as environmentally friendly, complete with pastoral spaces around it state supporting wildlife. That wildlife is now suffering from fluoride poisoning, an outcome that was easily predictable.

Ballarat University has helped promote the scheme. In response to concerns that a relatively unspoiled natural environment would be damaged by the Alcoa smelter, a plan was put in place to sell it and the company as environmentally friendly. Even the term, Smelter in the Park, was an invention of Alcoa. A pseudo-park, complete with the awww factor of grazing kangaroos, was created as a buffer zone.

The predictable result was poisoning of the previously near-pristine environment with fluoride, making it uninhabitable by animals, and resulting in gruesome and painful deaths of kangaroos.

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