It is interesting that many studies alleging “benefits” of Green Tea completely avoid mention of the words Fluoride or Aluminium. It is also common to find reports dealing with the harms that avoid reference to Fluoride.
As has been pointed out many years ago [Schuld 1999], interpreting the literature on the effects of Green Tea is problematic because some papers consider a hot water extract as might be brewed from the dried leaves, others look at an aqueous ethanol extract, and some cover the swallowing of capsules containing either green tea powder or dried extract.
Further complication arises because some researchers have reported on mixtures or pure isolated polyphenols from Green Tea.
Because Fluoride is a universal toxin that damages all types of mammalian cells, the list of harms from drinking Green Tea will follow those observed by Fluoride from drinking water [Pain 2017a] including cataract blindness [Pain 2017b]. The following discussion covers harms so far identified arising through drinking of Green Tea.
Animal studies
In test animal studies, Green Tea treatment-related mortality attributed to liver failure occurred in male and female mice at a dose of 1,000 mg/kg and changes were seen in both rats and mice in the liver, nose, mesenteric lymph nodes, thymus, Peyer’s patches, spleen, and mandibular lymph nodes [Chan 2010].
Skeletal Fluorosis and other Bone Disorders
The head of the Melbourne University Dental School in the state of Victoria, Australia, warned of the dangerous quantities of Fluoride in Tea in 1953, when industrial interests were planning to dispose of their waste through public drinking water supplies [Amies 1953].
The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council expressed its concern over the toxic levels of Fluoride in Tea in its meeting of 1954. In 1954, the NHMRC was most worried about skeletal Fluorosis which was widespread in Queensland farming communities using bore water as well as workers in hot conditions who consumed upwards of 10 litres of water per day, including up to 4 litres of Tea.
Green Tea and isolated extracts from it are known to disrupt normal bone growth [Vali 2007, Isbel 2009, Iwaniec 2009]. Skeletal Fluorosis is a crippling condition affecting tens of millions of people [Li 2017] and habitual drinking of Tea is recognized as a major factor [Cao 1996, Cao 2005, Whyte 2005, Whyte 2008, Li 2009, Ge 2012, Kakumanu 2013, Chen 2014, Fan 2016, Yang 2016, Li 2017]. Due to instant-tea consumption, a patient developed severe skeletal fluorosis and had a serum Fluoride level of 7 µmol/L [Isbel 2010].
Osteopenia has been induced in mice fed Green Tea extract. Observed weight loss and failure to gain weight is consistent with lower femur length, volume, mineral content, cortical volume, cortical thickness, lower cancellous bone volume/tissue volume and trabecular thickness in lumbar vertebrae [Iwaniec 2009].
Harms Associated with the
Fluoride Content of Green Tea