UK Yorkshire - letters

WITH regard to the intent to put fluoride in the water supply, how will this affect myself and others who are diabetic?
I have to drink a lot of water and Yorkshire Water is the finest that I have tasted.
Bernice Fleming
Huddersfield

ONE problem I have with fluoride in the water is what happens in a drought? Is water sent from other sources in Yorkshire which doesn’t have fluoride?
What if they have a drought? Do they get toxic water and would they be informed?
Yorkshire Water can pipe water to anywhere in the region but I fail to see how they can ensure it doesn’t come out of my tap in Brighouse when someone 200 yards down the road in Fixby gets it.
Iain Spencer
Brighouse

Toxic chemical alert
I AM against adding fluoride to our water supply.
Our bodies have enough to content with without yet another foreign chemical which is also very toxic.
Mrs N Gledhill
Skelmanthorpe

Fluoride debate goes on
REGARDING the article ‘Fluoride debate is back on’ (Examiner, August 11).
The definitive British study into fluoridation was the Systematic Review carried out by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York.
A statement on the CRD’s website entitled ‘What the York Review on the fluoridation of drinking water really found’ says: “We were unable to discover any reliable good-quality evidence in the fluoridation literature world-wide.
What evidence we found suggested that water fluoridation was likely to have a beneficial effect, but that the range could be anywhere from a substantial benefit to a slight disbenefit to children’s teeth.
This beneficial effect comes at the expense of an increase in the prevalence of fluorosis (mottled teeth). The quality of this evidence was poor.
An association with water fluoride and other adverse effects such as cancer, bone fracture and Down’s syndrome was not found. However, we felt that not enough was known because the quality of the evidence was poor.
The evidence about reducing inequalities in dental health was of poor quality, contradictory and unreliable.”
The York scientists called for further studies into possible adverse health effects of fluoridation but these have not been carried out.
A report on the toxicology of fluoride by the (US) National Research Council deals mainly with fluoride levels in water of two to four times the level (1ppm) usually proposed for fluoridation in the UK. It concludes that 4ppm is unsafe for long-term ingestion and that some people are more susceptible to fluoride’s toxic effects than others. This indicates that fluoridation affords no adequate safety margin to protect vulnerable groups such as babies and kidney patients against long-term adverse effects.

Elizabeth A McDonagh
Chairman, National Pure Water Association