Ireland

Minister using 'erroneous data for flouride exposure' warns West Cork scientist

Declan Waugh

MINISTER for Health James Reilly is basing his justification of mandatory fluoridation of Irish water supplies on erroneous data, according to Bandon-based scientist Declan Waugh.

Mr Waugh has written a number of reports that are highly critical of this public health policy, and the concerns raised prompted Minister for Arts Jimmy Deenihan to write to the health minister last October in relation to the matter.

In November, Minister Reilly replied by saying that the exposure of Irish consumers to fluoride from food and beverages represented 7.5% of the safe upper limit. If exposure to fluoride from drinking water is included, he added, it represents 23.9% of the upper safe limit.

The basis of this opinion was a report by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), the Total Diet Study published in 2011, which measured the fluoride contend of certain foods and beverages in Ireland.

On receipt of the letter from Minister Reilly, Mr Waugh wrote to the Minister for Health and his cabinet colleagues on November 11th last to outline that these statements were ‘scientifically and factually incorrect.’ In the interim seven months, Mr Waugh told The Southern Star, no response has been provided.

Mr Waugh, a native of Skibbereen, said that the Minister for Health was suggesting that the total dietary intake of fluoride by the average Irish consumers was 1.65 mg per day from all dietary sources.

However, he contends that this level of fluoride would be the same as what an individual would consume in a single cup of tea using fluoridated water and nothing else. Irish adults are the world’s largest consumers of tea, drinking on average between three and six cups of tea per day. The dietary intake from tea as a beverage on its own would be in the region of 5 mg of fluoride per day or more, excluding all other sources of fluoride......