USA - Fluoridation a plan whose time is past
It’s baaack: House Bill 3009, which is working its way through the Legislature, would require all Oregon’s cities with more than 10,000 people to fluoridate public drinking water.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because House Bill 3009 is virtually identical to bills introduced in the 2005 and 2003 legislative sessions that failed to pass into law. As we noted two years ago, fluoridation of drinking water is an idea whose time has come — and gone.
Fifty years ago, before fluoride toothpaste, gum and fluoride treatments in the dentist’s chair became so common, a case could be made for the enamel-strengthening properties of fluoride. Back then, opposition to fluoridation of water systems was associated with right-wing extremism and anti-government paranoia.
Who can forget the anti-fluoridation speech by Gen. Jack Ripper from the 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”? Gen. Ripper launched a nuclear war to stop fluoridation, which he viewed as an “international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids ...” (Of course, Gen. Ripper was both fictional and insane.)
In any case, HB 3009 is not of immediate relevance to Corvallis, Albany or Lebanon — all these cities already have fluoridated drinking water.
But there is an “unfunded mandate” aspect to this bill that we don’t like. Although it provides that cities would not have to implement fluoridation plans until they were financially able, cities without water fluoridation clearly have more pressing priorities and should not be forced by the state to make this choice on the say-so of the American Dental Association. And why stop with fluoride? Wouldn’t it be a universal public benefit to add vitamin C and calcium to our water supply?
Portland’s water remains fluoride-free, and the Ashland City Council last November turned its fluoride opposition into an ordinance that made it illegal to put fluoride — or any other chemical with medicinal properties — into that city’s drinking water.
More cities could take that route if they follow the recommendations of 11 national Environmental Protection Agency unions. About 7,000 environmental and public health professionals in those unions called for a national fluoride moratorium in 2005, after a Harvard study linked a seven-fold increase in a common bone cancer to fluoridated water. It seems that while some fluoride is good, too much can lead to brittleness in bones. Exposure to fluoride in drinking water, toothpaste, mouthwash, gum and fluoride treatments might add up to too much of a good thing.
Instead of drinking it with every sip of tap water that we take, we’d rather see the money used to fluoridate our water go to funding child dental education and care.
We hope that legislators recognize that more pressing issues await them, and allow HB 3099, like its 2005 and 2003 predecessors, to die a quiet death.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because House Bill 3009 is virtually identical to bills introduced in the 2005 and 2003 legislative sessions that failed to pass into law. As we noted two years ago, fluoridation of drinking water is an idea whose time has come — and gone.
Fifty years ago, before fluoride toothpaste, gum and fluoride treatments in the dentist’s chair became so common, a case could be made for the enamel-strengthening properties of fluoride. Back then, opposition to fluoridation of water systems was associated with right-wing extremism and anti-government paranoia.
Who can forget the anti-fluoridation speech by Gen. Jack Ripper from the 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”? Gen. Ripper launched a nuclear war to stop fluoridation, which he viewed as an “international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids ...” (Of course, Gen. Ripper was both fictional and insane.)
In any case, HB 3009 is not of immediate relevance to Corvallis, Albany or Lebanon — all these cities already have fluoridated drinking water.
But there is an “unfunded mandate” aspect to this bill that we don’t like. Although it provides that cities would not have to implement fluoridation plans until they were financially able, cities without water fluoridation clearly have more pressing priorities and should not be forced by the state to make this choice on the say-so of the American Dental Association. And why stop with fluoride? Wouldn’t it be a universal public benefit to add vitamin C and calcium to our water supply?
Portland’s water remains fluoride-free, and the Ashland City Council last November turned its fluoride opposition into an ordinance that made it illegal to put fluoride — or any other chemical with medicinal properties — into that city’s drinking water.
More cities could take that route if they follow the recommendations of 11 national Environmental Protection Agency unions. About 7,000 environmental and public health professionals in those unions called for a national fluoride moratorium in 2005, after a Harvard study linked a seven-fold increase in a common bone cancer to fluoridated water. It seems that while some fluoride is good, too much can lead to brittleness in bones. Exposure to fluoride in drinking water, toothpaste, mouthwash, gum and fluoride treatments might add up to too much of a good thing.
Instead of drinking it with every sip of tap water that we take, we’d rather see the money used to fluoridate our water go to funding child dental education and care.
We hope that legislators recognize that more pressing issues await them, and allow HB 3099, like its 2005 and 2003 predecessors, to die a quiet death.
posted by Bill at
9:53 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home