Fluoride use should be suspended

If there is one thing we have learned from the banking disaster and the horrors of the Magdalen Laundries, it is that we should no longer place passive trust in authorities and regulators.

It is too late to prevent the injustice done to those women, or the economic tragedy inflicted on us by regulatory failure. However, we can question whether preventable, and serious, harm is being done right now by the compulsory fluoridation of our public water supplies.

Fluoride is a poison.

Germany, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Russia, Finland, Japan, Scotland, Iceland and Italy have all discontinued, or banned, water-fluoridation; France, Austria, and others, never used it.

These countries, like ours, have all experienced a progressive reduction in dental decay.

The Irish Doctors’ Environmental Association, professor of chemistry, Dr Paul Connett, paediatric toxicologist, Professor Vivyan Howard, and other researchers warn against it. (See flouridealert.org.)

While adults excrete approximately 50% of the fluoride they ingest, infants cannot, so a greater proportion is stored in their bodies, where it does not belong.

Reports of The Irish Expert Body on Fluoride and Health are old, complacent and inadequate, being mainly focused on dental, rather than health, implications. They advise parents to use fluoridated tap water in infant formula, despite the fact that those infants would ingest 200 times more fluoride than breast-fed babies.

The reports warn that children be closely supervised when tooth-brushing, to ensure they do not swallow a potentially lethal dose of it from the paste. Claimed benefits are topical, but the serious risks identified are systemic.

We call on the Minister for Health, James Reilly, and Dr Séamus O’Hickey, dentist and chairman of the fluoride group, to ask themselves why the incidence of so many conditions, e.g. depression, Down’s Syndrome, autism, hyperthyroidism, cancer, and early onset dementia, is so much higher in the Republic than in fluoride-free Northern Ireland.

As the ethical onus of proof is on them, can they demonstrate that fluoride is not implicated in these alarming statistics? If not, we call for an immediate moratorium on fluoride to safeguard the health of the Irish people.

Rosie Cargin

Kinsale Environment Watch

Co Cork