The Safe Water Campaign met today in Stroud and there was anger at the Southampton City Council decision - see last blog - also feedback about one of our members visit to Southampton to join their public meeting. Update - just in - great news here re Hampshire County Council vote.Bernard's letter today to the Southampton Echo in response to yesterdays news:
I was appalled to see the council vote go so substantially in favour of fluoridation when, on the evidence I have followed these last few months, so much of the public opinion in your area was firmly against it. What are we to make of councillors who, instead of conscience in making decisions likely to bring negative health prospects upon so large a section of the community?
Your health chief Andrew Mortimer lied to you when he trivialised the fluoride addition, pretending it to be the same as was all ready in the water you are drinking. The fluoride in toothpaste is usually Sodium fluoride but that is not benign, having been formerly available as an over-the-counter rodent poison in the USA. The water additive chemicals are industrial wastes, diSodium fluorosilcates and Hexafluorosilicic acid, never tested for human consumption; never subjected to the rigorous testing as befits all other drugs whether proprietory or prescribed;and certainly not tested as being safe.
The complex of those chemicals derived from phosphate rock conversion in the manufacture of fertilizer, includes a range of heavy metals including the deadly neurotoxicants lead, mercury and cadmium. The cancer causing agents Silicon, Chromium and even Polonium are also present and in the light of the recent recall of vast numbers of lead-painted toys imported from China, the World Health Organisation has repeated its standard position, namely "There is no safe lead level for children" To establish a measurable standard the WHO maxima for lead is 0.02 parts per million. The NHS claim for safety with fluoride is 1.0 parts per million. Divide the first figure into the second and it will be plain to see that the NHS is comfortable with a compound fifty times the internationally agreed maximum concentration for lead. Are we, as members of the British public, prepared to stand by and watch our elected members conspire to commit an act of criminal attack on us and our children by insisting that fluoride is good for us?
When the fluoride-related amendment to the 2003 Water Act was pushed illegally to a vote in Parliament and passed, I wrote to my pro-fluoride MP Dr Doug Naysmith (Labour Bristol North West), pointing out that the fluoride resistance movement had not been eliminated. The battle for corruption-free public health, at all levels, would continue, and so it has. Your councillor who attempted to intimidate the others should be referred to the Ombudsman for Health under a maladministration charge. Democracy was not well served at Wednesday's council meeting.
Bernard J Seward
National Pure Water Association
Safe Water Campaign for Avon, Glos and Wilts
