Australia - Take a closer look at validity of fluoridation

Fluoridating municipal drinking water is a significant annual cost for council.

The realisation that fluoridation is not delivering the dental benefit claimed by State Health, Federal Health and the NHMRC raises financial and ethical concerns for council and informed residents.

Additionally, the possibility that fluoridation may be harming residents' health is an alarming prospect and has prompted the current administration to seek assurances of 'safety' from NSW Health and the NHMRC.

Unsatisfactory responses from these bodies have prompted PMHC to obtain authoritative legal opinion after lawyer Michael Lusk identified existing illegality.

The opinion given by S.C. Timothy Robertson confirmed that fluoridation has been illegal since 1989 (i.e. since establishment of the Federal Therapeutic Goods Act 1989). It thus emerges that fluoridation of the Hastings LGA in February, 2012 was illegal and that NSW Health shamelessly deceived the council back in 2004. Many residents were bitterly disappointed by this abusive behaviour.

PMHC's wide publicity of S.C. Robertson's legal opinion has prompted the Morrison federal government to exclude fluoridated reticulated drinking water (FRDW) as a therapeutic good from the TGA's list of therapeutic goods.

The recent exclusion of FRDW from federal TGA 'regulation' has presented very serious legal challenges for federal and state governments alike.

It now appears to be illegal for state and federal governments, all health departments and councils to make any therapeutic claims of benefit from the fluoride added to drinking water. Further legal opinion is needed to confirm this assertion and to clarify other important legal questions.

So what are councils to do? Without TGA protection or claims of therapeutic benefit, fluoridation chemicals become illegal toxic water additives, or poisons, that pollute the receiving environment. Councils thus currently function as unregistered toxic waste disposal outlets for dumping industry's toxic waste.

Perhaps injunctions could be applied to stop water fluoridation at state or even the federal level?

There is no doubt that water fluoridation is a reckless policy that is harmful to health.

The NHMRC's biased attempts to defend water fluoridation have become unsustainable as more scientific evidence accumulates, particularly evidence relating to children's IQ decrements due to fluoride exposure.

Regrettably, our federal and state governments remain in denial and continue to parrot the NHMRC's claims that water fluoridation "is safe, effective and equitable".

It is presently evident that conscientious and informed grass roots opposition to water fluoridation, via approaches to federal and state health ministers and politicians, has stalled miserably, and there is little prospect for reversing this situation.

Furthermore, it is reasonably predictable that federal and state governments may do nothing and will attempt to live with illegality, so long as the public is ineffective in forcing political change or in overturning fluoridation in the courts.

The United States National Toxicology Program (NTP) released its draft report in September, 2019 stating "that fluoride is presumed to be a cognitive neuro-developmental hazard to humans."

Another high level US Health Agency, the National Academies of Science, is reviewing the NTP's draft report, with the final NTP report due in September, 2020.

A court case against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently well advanced in a Californian Federal Court. The focus of this case is on the neurological harm that fluoride inflicts on the human brain and on children's IQ.

A possible visit by retired chemist Professor Paul Connett?

Anti-fluoridation advocate Professor Paul Connett (President of Fluoride Action Network (FAN, USA) could be invited to visit Port Macquarie in April, 2020, during his planned visit to Australia and New Zealand. Andrew Parry, President of Fluoride Free Australia Inc., has communicated that the EPA court challenge, in which FAN is a principal applicant, may be finished before April, 2020.

An April visit by Dr Paul Connett would be ideally timed if PMHC agrees to sponsor a Fluoridation Forum and subsequent poll of electors poll at the September, 2020, Council election.

A poll of electors poll on water fluoridation was conducted by Port Macquarie Council coinciding with the 1991 council election when fluoridation was voted down by 71%. On this occasion, LGA residents had a democratic expectation that their wishes would be acknowledged, respected, and acted upon. And they were.

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that PMHC:

1. Seeks further authoritative legal opinion, and

2. repeats Port Macquarie-Hastings Council's 1991 experience involving a public pro- vs con- fluoridation forum in the first half of 2020, followed by a poll of electors poll coinciding with the September, 2020 council election.

John Lusk and Paul Jones