USA - Comment
The question of whether or not drinking water should be fluoridated seems to remain controversial, decades after concerns about the practice were mocked in a certain film. For those of you who don’t remember, it was in Dr. Strangelove, that General Jack D. Ripper worried that fluoridating water was a Communist plot.Ha, ha.
Except, lots of people don’t like the idea of having things added to their water.
People in Danville have begun lobbying to have the community’s drinking water fluoridated, but members of the Danville Municipal
Authority aren’t certain it’s something that would be universally-welcomed.
And for familiar reasons.
“We had quite a time with this in the 70s. We had some nasty letters.
One man enclosed a clipping that said (Russian communist dictator Vladimir) Lenin had included fluoridation to soften our brains,” municipal authority member John Corman said in a story in today’s edition of The Danville News.
But there are apparently legitimate concerns about the practice of fluoridating drinking water.
The National Academies of Science’s National Research Council put out a report earlier this year suggesting that the EPA’s maximum levels for fluoride in drinking water are too high. In that report, they suggested that at the maximum levels, the fluoride might actually contribute to tooth problems in children and may make kids more susceptible to bone fractures.
And a group called the Environmental Working Group (an organization that doesn’t seem to like fluoride) suggests that in 25 of the 28 largest cities in the U.S., fluoride levels in tap water alone will put 8 to 36 percent of all babies up to 6 months of age over the safe dose of fluoride on any given day.
So why do they put in the water again?
As the unnamed experts at Yahoo Health note “since the 1930s, health professionals have conducted studies showing that small amounts of fluoride in public drinking water (around one part per million) have reduced tooth decay in children by as much as 50 percent.”
But 40 percent of those who’ve responded to our on-line poll question on the matter agree with General Ripper.
Except, lots of people don’t like the idea of having things added to their water.
People in Danville have begun lobbying to have the community’s drinking water fluoridated, but members of the Danville Municipal
Authority aren’t certain it’s something that would be universally-welcomed.
And for familiar reasons.
“We had quite a time with this in the 70s. We had some nasty letters.
One man enclosed a clipping that said (Russian communist dictator Vladimir) Lenin had included fluoridation to soften our brains,” municipal authority member John Corman said in a story in today’s edition of The Danville News.
But there are apparently legitimate concerns about the practice of fluoridating drinking water.
The National Academies of Science’s National Research Council put out a report earlier this year suggesting that the EPA’s maximum levels for fluoride in drinking water are too high. In that report, they suggested that at the maximum levels, the fluoride might actually contribute to tooth problems in children and may make kids more susceptible to bone fractures.
And a group called the Environmental Working Group (an organization that doesn’t seem to like fluoride) suggests that in 25 of the 28 largest cities in the U.S., fluoride levels in tap water alone will put 8 to 36 percent of all babies up to 6 months of age over the safe dose of fluoride on any given day.
So why do they put in the water again?
As the unnamed experts at Yahoo Health note “since the 1930s, health professionals have conducted studies showing that small amounts of fluoride in public drinking water (around one part per million) have reduced tooth decay in children by as much as 50 percent.”
But 40 percent of those who’ve responded to our on-line poll question on the matter agree with General Ripper.
posted by Bill at
9:55 AM
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