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UK Against Fluoridation

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Pat McNair from Fluoride Free NZ

If anyone is thinking of sending a written submission to the NZ Government, we would urge you concentrate on arguing against the changes in the decision-making responsibilities RATHER than just arguing against fluoridation.

The reason for this is that the Select Committee will be deciding on this ALONE. So we need to convince them NOT to give the responsibility to the DHBs - and they need to hear why that is not a good idea. This is not a time to be educating them about fluoridation. If your submission only covers your concerns about fluoridation you will be wasting your time as it is not the issue here at the moment.

Some background: the proposed legislation does not allow for DHBs to consult with the community and it only allows a very narrow scope for the DHBs to evaluate the subject - as they will only be ALLOWED to compare the dental health in the community against the cost of fluoridation.

They are being advised to only consider the 2009 Oral Health Survey rather than to study much more comprehensive data. They are not given ANY leeway to consider the overall health effects.

So basically they are only allowed to look at COST and not at HEALTH.

The DHBs will be hamstrung. This is what most people don't realise. Under the law the DHBs will not be able to advise against fluoridation - even if 90% or more of the population does not want it - or even if they did evaluate other health effects (neurotoxicity for example) - and deemed the risks not worth the benefits.

They will only be able to add up the dental decay in the area, calculate how much saving would be created by a 40% reduction (a totally incorrect but much quoted statistic) and compare that against the cost of fluoridation equipment and on-going cost of the chemicals.

The information given to the Select Committee to backup their claim of a 40% reduction comes from the Sapere Report which rests on the 2009 Oral Health Survey. This survey is the most unreliable piece of data they could use to ascertain the effectiveness of fluoridation - but it suits their agenda.

The two studies prior to that survey which looked at life-time exposure and compared children of the same age in the same area, found no difference in decay rates - but they did find a doubling of dental fluorosis.

Or they could use the NZ study published last year which showed no difference in decay rates for all non-Maori children. Even if fluoridation did reduce dental decay by a small amount for Maori children - that would still not be cost effective against the cost of fluoridation.

Or they could use the NZ School Dental Statistics which also shows no difference. Non-fluoridated areas often have better dental health than fluoridated ones because, really, the biggest predictor of dental health is socio economic.

So - we need to argue that the proposed legislation removes community input, does not allow for consideration of other adverse health effects, and does not steer the Select Committee or the DHBs towards looking at all the available data.

Cheers!

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