Fluoride book to be changed after criticism

See the last blog reporting on Hampshire - the good news is that health chiefs have admitted that information due to be given to the public about fluoridating water supplies was unfairly balanced in favour of the scheme.

Anti-fluoridation campaigners have already accused the South Central Strategic Health Authority, which will ultimately decide whether to give the plan to fluoridate water to 20,000 homes in Southampton and Hampshire the green light, of peddling propaganda. Yesterday, the Echo reports that the SHA board agreed to change documents designed to inform residents about fluoride during the consultation, after hearing feedback suggesting they don't fairly represent both sides.

Director of communications and corporate affairs, Olga Senior said focus groups felt the literature gives a good case for fluoridation, but failed to provide reasons against it.
"The feedback told us if what you want to do is give balance, you haven't done that. The pro-fluoridation group bases its arguments on science. The group against also bases its argument on reports and science. What doesn't seem to have come out at this stage is that balance."

The board agreed at the meeting to put consultation back two weeks to change the literature.
Board chairman, Dr Geoffrey Harris said: "We do need to be assured that in the public consultation document we are not closing down one side of the argument."

As revealed in the Daily Echo, Hampshire Against Fluoridation has lodged a formal complaint with the authority, saying the decision to take the issue to a public consultation was based on flawed facts.

Chairman and Green party activist John Spottiswoode has demanded the process be abandoned, because he believes evidence showing negative effects of fluoridation has been ignored. Meanwhile John last night welcomed the move to revise the literature - although it is clear from emails from campaigners there that there are still serious concerns about bias in this consultation.

The consultation will run until December 19, and the SHA board will make a final decision at a special meeting in February.

Latest on Hampshire healthcares undemocratic approach

Here is the latest reported in Southampton's Echo - it is quite astonishing that this is taking place. Good Luck to John and other campaigners there.

Great fluoride debate by Jon Reeve

IT is meant to be the independent body even-handedly navigating the tricky waters of a public consultation over controversial plans that have split opinion.

But the organisation that oversees Hampshire's healthcare has been formally accused of being biased over proposals to add fluoride to the tap water of nearly 200,000 residents.

On the eve of the consultation process being finalised, anti-fluoridation campaigners have lodged a complaint with South Central Strategic Health Authority, saying decisions have been based on flawed information.

Hampshire Against Fluoridation believes failings in the process mean at least £180,000 of public money has already essentially been wasted.

Tomorrow, the authority's board is due to decide on the details of how the three-month public consultation - being conducted at the request of Southampton Primary Care Trust which wants fluoridation - will be carried out.

But ahead of that meeting HAF's chairman, John Spottiswoode has called on the SHA to abandon the fluoridation process before that starts.

"The public consultation is clearly going to be a sham, being run as a propaganda exercise for water fluoridation, with the aim of achieving a pre-determined outcome," he said.

"The whole fluoridation episode is a disgrace to the health authorities and undermines any trust or confidence that we may have placed in their decisions in the past."

As previously reported by the Daily Echo, public views expressed during the consultation could be ignored if they are not based on accepted scientific reasoning and evidence.

That means a majority of respondents could potentially say they do not want fluoride added to the water supplies, but the scheme being given the green light anyway.

The SHA was last night unable to issue a formal comment on the complaints, but insisted the process would be fair, and no decision has yet been made on the plans to add fluoride to water.

The controversial proposals will see 160,000 residents - 67 per cent of the city's population - receiving added fluoride in their tap water in a bid to improve the city's chronic dental health problems. Around 36,000 more living in Eastleigh, Totton and Netley would also get extra fluoride as their homes are covered by the same water distribution centre.

A report going before SHA board members tomorrow says the proposals for the consultation have been checked by solicitors to ensure it is run according to legal guidelines set down by the Government especially for fluoridation.

Although the details have yet to be confirmed, the report says the consultation will include public drop-in events and Question Time style debates to allow residents to voice their concerns and have queries answered.

Leaflets and posters will be displayed in GP practices, dental surgeries, libraries and other community centres to increase awareness, and regular updates will be posted on a special website.

Brown Spotted Teeth protest song uploaded

Rob and Jehanne Mehta singing "Brown Spotted Teeth" - now listed at the Centre for Political Song at Glasgow Caledonian University as a protest song - see our listing here.

Hampshire still fighting to stop water fluoridation

In my view…

Courtesy of John Spottiswoode on behalf of South West Hampshire Green Party and Hampshire Against Fluoridation for publication in Hampshire - a good article that is worth a read.

Photo: Recent Safe Water Campaign meeting in Stroud

Fluoridation is harming many millions

Water fluoridation has been called the biggest medical scandal since thalidomide. Millions of people are being fed a toxic chemical through their water supply. This accumulates over the years in bones, brains, thyroid glands and in kidneys leading to a range of major health problems. According to literally hundreds of research studies water fluoridation is leading to cancers, brittle bones, damage to the central nervous system, mental problems, genetic damage, an increase in miscarriages and hypersensitive reactions. Those in favour of water fluoridation seem to deny all this peer reviewed and solid science.

Why does fluoride have so many negative effects on the body? Well a student of GCSE chemistry could well explain this, shaming some so-called professors. Fluorine is the most electronegative and highly reactive element known. In chemical reactions it will displace chlorine and iodine. Whilst chlorine and iodine are essential for the body, there is no known need for fluorine at all (except perhaps as a rat poison, where it works very effectively). Therefore by putting fluoride in our water we should expect a range of serious health effects in the body and, lo and behold, these have been found by research time and time again.

The defenders of fluoridation then point to places that already have water fluoridation and imply that this means it is OK for Southampton too. Again they ignore the masses of research that shows higher levels of health problem. They may even say that there is ‘no evidence of this in fluoridated Birmingham’, but that it because no-one has done a study to look. No-one in authority is willing to look truth in the eye, fund a study, and say ‘yes serious health problems do indeed affect Birmingham’ as research has found in the other fluoridated areas.

Those defending fluoridation (e.g. Professor Damian Walmsley of the British Dental association on the 10th July in the Echo) claim that fluoride is natural and that ‘all water contains the mineral fluoride’. This is far from the case. Fluorine is so reactive that it has for millennia mostly been safely tied up in the rocks, so only in certain places, where the water comes through these rocks, do we get any significant amount of fluoride naturally in water. Where this happens, in places like India and China, they know the terrible health effects all too well. Why do pro-fluoridation scientists in the UK ignore what those in India, China and the rest of Europe have found, that fluoride is a major toxin, and in some countries is banned completely from ever being added to water.

What is planned for Southampton is to dig up rocks from Spain, smash them into a powder, extract hexafluorosilicic acid and add this to our water, along with other pollutants such as arsenic. For the scientists among you, note that hexafluorosilicic acid has six fluorine atoms for every molecule, a very heavy toxic load.

The defenders of fluoride also do not seem to understand human rights. It is a basic human right to have clean water to drink, and much effort is spent trying to provide this across the world. Polluting our water with fluoride means that people here will be forced to drink this pollutant because most filters will not remove it. It is unethical to medicate people forcibly via the water supply. If people really want to damage their health then they can take fluoride tablets.

What will come next? Would there not be less depression, especially amongst the poor, if Prozac were added to our drinking water? Fluoride is no different as it is being added, however mistakenly, to try to produce a medicinal effect. Those favouring water fluoridation are being highly unethical and have forfeited any trust many may have once had in them, both scientifically and personally.

John Spottiswoode

Reference: 1. Professor A Susheela, world expert in fluoride : Water fluoridation “may well dwarf the thalidomide tragedy”

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