Daily Echo - Fluoride will not turn you into a monster!

Fluoride will not turn you into a monster!
JOY Warren's interventions in the Southampton fluoride debate need to be put into perspective.
Echo readers might like to know the organisation she represents warns people against drinking tea (because tea leaves contain fluoride), as well as against using fluoride toothpaste or mouthwashes, and consuming any food that contains fluoride. If we all did what she suggests, we might as well stop eating and drinking and lie down in a darkened room somewhere.
Her website preposterously claims that full fat milk is better for us than skimmed milk and seems even to question whether people should be taking statins to reduce their cholesterol levels. To cap it all we are treated to the old-age conspiracy theory that fluoridation could all be a plot by wicked industrialists to get rid of waste products. Oh dear, oh dear. What next? Once upon a time the anti-fluoridation brigade were certain it was all a communist plot to undermine democracy in the West. I wish they would make up their minds.
The good citizens of Southampton can rest assured that if they come up to visit the mainly fluoridated West Midlands or fluoridated areas in Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Newcastle, Tyneside, east Cheshire or Cumbria, they won't find monsters with two heads round every corner.
In the West Midlands, where I live, many of our children have some of the best dental health in the country for their age group, and there are no studies or statistics suggesting that we are more susceptible to the almost endless list of nasty things that opponents of fluoride like to frighten us with.
I am very happy to drink fluoridated water myself and have been doing so for over 45 years. Polls show that a majority of people in fluoridated areas are similarly happy to be benefiting from this important public health measure.
JOHN CHARLTON CBE,
Selly Oak, Birmingham.

Daily Echo
Comment

Fluoride project riddled with flaws
THE game would appear to be up for those advocating adding fluoride to some of Southampton's water supply without a true consultation process with the public.
As this paper reports today, the legal hearings into whether the proposal from the Hampshire Strategic Health Authority (SHA) should go ahead with a referendum will now be delayed until next year and any scheme will not be up and running until the summer of 2012.
By that date, the SHA itself may have been abolished under proposals understood to be under consideration by the new Government.
Indeed, the government minister now in charge of such matters, Andrew Lansley, has already made plain his objection to the present fluoride proposals going through without public agreement. And even the Prime Minister David Cameron is believed to be against such measures.
None of this, however, seems to be deterring the SHA from pushing ahead with plans not only to introduce the scheme but spend some £400,000 of public funds to fight its case in court.
This is madness and seems to smack of sheer bloody mindedness in the case of the SHA.
No one doubts dental standards need to be improved in some areas of Southampton, but this whole project is riddled with flaws and should go back to the drawing board.