Act on fluoride study now
Why wait another three years before John Gormley's fluoride safety study is ready (Irish Independent, February 13) when he, like the rest of Europe, has already found fluoridation to be both unsafe and ineffective?
It took him years of researching the international evidence (because no independent studies have ever been done here), and he brought many outside experts to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, before he produced in late 2006 a report that won the approval of many committee members.
However, for political reasons, it was blocked by the usual built-in Fianna Fail/PD committee majority. Fortunately, www.fluoridereports.com has made it available to the public on the internet so people can read its main conclusion.
Fluoride in drinking water is not safe for bottle-fed babies and fluoridation should therefore stop. Since we have the lowest level of breast feeding in all of Europe at 40pc this advice was, and still is, very relevant to tens of thousands of parents.
And, as if to highlight how urgent the issue remains, last December both the American Dental Association and the US Centres for Disease Control re-issued their original advice that parents should not make up formula with fluoridated tap water because of the risk of dental fluorosis.
Our Health Minister, however, securely back in the Fianna Fail fold, recently issued a progress report on fluoride which described the permanent and untreatable disfigurement that is obvious dental fluorosis as "a cosmetic condition but not a health problem".
With John Gormley's 2006 fluoridation report confirming that more and more Irish teenagers are now affected by this irreversible condition, a continuing cover-up of yet another health system failure is totally unacceptable.
Robert Pocock
DUBLIN 2
Irish Independent
