BDA Supports Communities' Right To Choose Fluoride, UK
Main Category: DentistryArticle Date: 11 Feb 2008 - 1:00 PDT
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The British Dental Association welcomes Health Secretary Alan Johnson's announcement this week that £42 million would be made available for local fluoridation schemes where communities support the initiative.
Susie Sanderson, Chair of the BDA's Executive Board, said:
"Tooth decay is a significant problem in the UK. In socially deprived communities as many as one in three children under the age of five will have one or more extractions of decayed teeth.
"Research confirms that fluoridation helps to reduce tooth decay. The addition of fluoride into water supplies in certain areas could reduce the levels of tooth decay and give children a decent start in life.
"Fluoride should form part of an oral health strategy that considers all effective methods to improve health. This includes healthy eating advice, identifying sugar-free medicines, improving periodontal health, stop smoking guidance, accessing alcohol misuse, and prevention of erosion."
As well as targeting the water supply, fluoride can be supplied in toothpaste, rinses, topical varnishes and in milk.
The BDA welcomes a full and informed debate on the merits of fluoridating drinking water and backs a community's right to choose whether this is implemented.
The BDA also supports the Department of Health's commitment to further research on the effects of fluoridation.
Notes
1. Details of the Health Secretary's announcement can be found here.
2. The British Dental Association (BDA) is the professional association for dentists in the UK. It represents over 20,000 dentists working in general practice, in community and hospital settings, in academia and research, and in the armed forces.
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Professionals Urge End To Water Fluoridation
posted by nyscof on 11 Feb 2008 at 4:15 amIn a statement first released August 9, 2007, over 1,440 professionals urge Congress to stop water fluoridation until Congressional hearings are conducted. They cite new scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks. (http://www.fluorideaction.org/statement.august.2007.html)
Signers include a Nobel Prize winner, three members of the prestigious 2006 National Research Council (NRC) panel that reported on fluoride’s toxicology, two officers in the Union representing professionals at EPA headquarters, the President of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, and hundreds of medical, dental, academic, scientific and environmental professionals, worldwide.
Signer Dr. Arvid Carlsson, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, says, “Fluoridation is against all principles of modern pharmacology. It's really obsolete.”
An Online Action Petition to Congress in support of the Professionals' Statement is available on FAN's web site, http://www.fluorideaction.org/congress .
“The NRC report dramatically changed scientific understanding of fluoride's health risks," says Paul Connett, PhD, Executive Director, Fluoride Action Network. "Government officials who continue to promote fluoridation must testify under oath as to why they are ignoring the powerful evidence of harm in the NRC report,” he added.
An Assistant NY State Attorney General calls the report “the most up-to-date expert authority on the health effects of fluoride exposure.”
The Professionals’ Statement also references:
-- The new American Dental Association policy recommending infant formula NOT be prepared with fluoridated water.
-- The CDC’s concession that the predominant benefit of fluoride is topical not systemic.
-- CDC data showing that dental fluorosis, caused by fluoride over-exposure, now impacts one third of American children.
-- Major research indicating little difference in decay rates between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities.
-- A Harvard study indicating a possible link between fluoridation and bone cancer.
-- The silicofluoride chemicals used for fluoridation are contaminated industrial waste and have never been FDA- approved for human ingestion.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a DC watchdog, revealed that a Harvard professor concealed the fluoridation/bone cancer connection for three years. EWG President Ken Cook states, “It is time for the US to recognize that fluoridation has serious risks that far outweigh any minor benefits, and unlike many other environmental issues, it's as easy to end as turning off a valve at the water plant.”
Further, researchers reporting in the Oct 6 2007 British Medical Journal indicate that fluoridation, touted as a safe cavity preventive, never was proven safe or effective and may be unethical. (1)
Partially, as a result of the professionals' statement, at least one city, Cobleskill NY, stopped 54 years of water fluoridation. See: http://www.fluoridealert.org/news/2998.html
Many communities rejected or stopped fluoridation over the years. See: http://www.fluoridealert.org/communities.htm
On October 2, Juneau Alaska voters rejected fluoridation despite the American Dental Association's $150,000 political campaign to return fluoride into the water supply after the legislative body voted it out.
January 2008, Scientific American published an article, "Second Thoughts about Fluoride,"
showing how the risks of fluoride don't outweigh any perceived benefits.
SOURCE: Fluoride Action Network http://www.FluorideAction.Net
References:
(1) “Adding fluoride to water supplies,” British Medical Journal, KK Cheng, Iain Chalmers, Trevor A. Sheldon, October 6, 2007
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