USA - Consent is at the center of fluoride issue

This April, I’m voting for a ballot initiative that would ban city of Durango officials from dosing our drinking water with sodium fluoride.

Sodium fluoride is not needed to make our water drinkable for safety reasons. It is also not a nutrient. Officials have been putting sodium fluoride in our water for medical reasons – to prevent tooth decay.

The problem with city officials making medical decisions on our behalf is that they have not obtained consent from those who are drinking the city’s water.

Usually, those in a position of medical authority ask their patients beforehand for permission to treat them with medications or substances.

Aside from sodium fluoride’s use for preventing cavities, it has also historically been used as an insecticide and rat poison. On the front and back of the bags of fluoride that the city has at its water treatment plant are numerous warnings that the product is toxic.

It seems like the uses of this product have conflicting outcomes for humans. How can we be assured that city officials are giving us a low enough dose not to poison us, but a high enough dose to help prevent cavities among those who are drinking it?

Either way, I do not consent to city officials medicating my water.

Lastly, city officials need to be more transparent about where our sodium fluoride comes from: China. Because our sodium fluoride is made in China, we will most likely never know what the factory looks like or what impacts it has on the community where it operates. So, why are we outsourcing our sodium fluoride to a company that produces their product in China, which is ruled by a one-party communist dictatorship?

This Chinese connection is something that city officials have not yet admitted to, despite their claims of “transparency.”

Please join me in voting for this important ballot initiative in April.

Shoshana Lowenthal

Durango