From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,misc.health.alternative,sci.med,
	talk.politics.medicine,alt.skincare.acne
Subject: Re: Fluoride Skin Absorption
Date: 18 Jun 2005 18:48:16 -0700
Message-ID: <1119145696.878160.99520@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>

>>The lack of information regarding the absorption by skin is
particularly disturbing as recent research has uncovered hundreds of
papers in the European literature regarding the use of fluorides as
effective anti-thyroid medication, including bath therapy. Between 1932
and 1962 Gorlitzer von Mundy cured over 650 patients suffering from
hyperthyroidism (over-functioning thyroid gland) effectively with baths
containing hydrogen fluoride (HF). After first conductiong over 1500
trials on mice and tadpoles, he prescribed 20-minute full baths
containing 30 ccm of concentrated HF per 200 liters of water.
Temperature was mostly 36° Celsius. It took on average 15 baths to
completely cure the patients, who also gained 20 kg of weight as a
result. He warned that such treatment should only be applied to
hyperthyroid patients, for to apply such measures to euthyroid (normal)
people would surely lead to hypothyroidism. <<


COMMENT:

Fluoride (F- ion) is not absorbed through the skin, since it's an ION.
 However, the study above was done using HF (hydrofluoric acid) which
is a well-known and very insidious weak acid, precisely BECAUSE it
stays undissociated to a large extent at pH's lower than its pKa of
3.5, and thus presents significant amounts of undissociated HF. This
molecule is lipid soluble and DOES pass through skin and tissues, where
it causes all kinds of damage by complexing with Ca+2. This is why a
concentrated HF burn to only 2% of your body (a 5 or 6 inch square
patch on your chest, say) can be FATAL. It doesn't happen in an hour or
even a day. But you're dead all the same if you don't get very painful
and specific treatment.

A bath in which 20 grams of HF is added to 200 L of water would give
you a pH of about 3, and only about a quarter of the HF would ionize to
F- and H+. The rest would remain as HF, and be available for skin
absorption at a concentration of approximately 4 mM, or perhaps a bit
less (I'm too lazy to do the exact quadratic). That's 80 mg/L or 80 ppm
of HF undissociated. Not fatal, but (as the article indicates) enough
body fluoride absorption to have systemic effects.

By contrast, at a pH of 5.5 (the lowest you're likely to get in tap
water) things are quite different. Now the log of the ratio of F- to HF
is [pH-pKa] which is 5.5-3.5 = 2, so there's 100 times more fluoride
ion F- than there is HF.  And since the fluoride ion concentration is 1
part per million, that means the HF concentration is one part in a 100
million or 0.01 ppm. Compare with 80 ppm in the medicinal bath. You
could expect HF concentrations in tabwater therefore only 1/8000th or
so of the low pH HF therapeutic baths. And I suppose a correspondingly
smaller effect. But you cannot say that NONE will be absorbed.

SBH

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: HF acid burns
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 12:20:23 -0700
Message-ID: <aficus$6qj$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

Scrimmo wrote in message
<6Z1T8.369112$o66.981862@news-server.bigpond.net.au>...
>For anyone who knows about HF acid burns:
>Can effects of fluoride contaimination into the skin include: swelling,
>redness, pain, bleeding and creation of puss?


Of course. These are all signs of general inflammation, which eventually
follows almost any kind of non-complete tissue damage whatever (dry gangrene
being an exception because there's no perfusion and the tissue is dead, so
there's no way for blood to get into it to cause these reactions).

Hydrofluoric acid burns are particularly insidious, in as much as
non-dissociated HF diffuses into skin farther than the average
(better-ionized) acid, there to wreak havoc by means of both acidic burning
and F- poisoning.  Also, HF kills nerves, so the acid burns are often
particularly and peculiarly painless, and far deeper and nastier than
suspected at first. The stuff not only frosts glass, but also your eyes, and
if you get it into you eyes, you may very well need corneal transplant.
It's horrid stuff, and of course anybody who works with it should know all
this my reading the MSDS. Get enough HF on you, and it's quite possible to
go to the hospital knowing (after a blood fluoride test) that you're dead
already, and there's nothing anybody in creation can do to save you. So say
your goodbyes, and wish you'd signed up for cryonics.

SBH

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