Daily Echo - Putting new laws to test

Putting new laws to test
AS I usually drink bottled water, the physical aspect of fluoridating the water will not affect me.
However I take my own health seriously, and attach a lot of weight to taking responsibility for your decisions, and to the psychology of good health, and feel that sometimes these factors are not given sufficient consideration.
Even if my own principles are more in line with one side than the other, I do listen to both sides of the argument, and read the judges report in full.
There are people who support fluoridation whom I respect, but in my view the way this debate has been handld has not been psychologically good for the health of the people opposing fluoridation, and I would like to see the law changed.
It appears that the Water Act of 2003 and the Water Fluoridation Consultation Regulations of 2005 are the two most important acts of legislation introduced to allow the South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA) to proceed in the way they did. This is as I understand the first case to be assessed under this new legislation, and with the abolition of SHAs on the cards could be the last. I also believe that prior to this, no new fluoridation scheme had been introduced in the past 20 years. Can I suggest that in the future, if it is decided to fluoridate the water, and there is not public support for the proposal, that a working group is set up to thrash out the most contentious issues.
Even the local MPs who voted for the legislation in Parliament, did not recommend going ahead without greater support for it. It does seem ironic that all local MPs find themselves powerless to' intervene on behalf of the f
constituents who elected them, especially as some of them will have voted to introduce a law which left them in that position.
I half expected the judge's decision as almost from the outset the SHA was assessing how they could overcome any legal challenges. For me if a working group was set up as I recommend there are three things that I would like to see discussed:
• It has been stated that fluoridation has worked well in other parts of the country, but that could be to due other factors such as increasing the dental budget?
• However safe one considers fluoride is, it must still be difficult to set it an optimum level for every person in the country, especially when it could react with other chemicals in the body.
• The idea has been suggested that other means of improving dental health such as fluoride tablets are less effective. Is this due, in part at least to the fact that communication between dentists and patients is not as good as it could be.


He would still have to bathe in it though and it does get through the skin barrier.
The Hampshire County Council did have a scrutiny panel and they rejected fluoridation.