PROTESTERS were due to stage a rally later today after health bosses announced plans to take a step towards the fluoridation of Greater Manchester's water supply.
Demonstrators from all over the region planned to target the offices of Leigh MP Andy Burnham, a supporter of the plan, to raise concern over what they claim is the "mass-medication" of the region.
The march is in response to the appearance of a job advert seeking to recruit a '40,000-a-year director of the Manchester Fluoridation Alliance.
Steve Clark, of Manchester Against Fluoridation, has called the move to create the new post a "slap in the face for the people of Greater Manchester."
He said: "Manchester is being targeted as the next place to fluoridate, even though we were told there would be a full consultation on this issue before any go ahead.
"Fluoridation is illegal under the 1972 Poisons Act and is taking away our choice. Dentists are using scare mongering tactics by telling us that non-fluoridation is harming our children's teeth, but this is just a scam."
Campaigners say that fluoride - its chemical name is hexafluorosilicic acid - is an industrial toxic waste and poison that has been linked to osteoporosis and bone cancer.
Advertised
The '40,000-a-year job has been advertised by bosses at Ashton, Leigh and Wigan Primary Care Trust, which represents all 19 PCTs across the region on the issue.
They say all the PCTs support fluoridation of the region's water supply, believing the move can only be beneficial. .
They want to encourage the addition of fluoride to reduce and prevent dental decay amongchildren and adults across the region. Julie Hotchkiss, director of public health at the trust, said: "We are very committed to improving dental health across Greater Manchester.
"It is amazing how anti-fluoride lobby groups have stirred this up. There is absolutely no evidence that fluoridation of water causes ill health. "
Andy Burnham, MP for Leigh, said: "I am a staunch supporter of the fluoridation of the water.
"People have the right to express their view, but the evidence overwhelmingly shows that water fluoridation is 100 per cent safe and an effective method of improving dental health."
A spokesman for water company United Utilities said: "A strategic health authority, following public consultation, can instruct a water company to fluoridate supplies and the company will have no choice in the matter, assuming it is feasible. To date we have not received an instruction."
Should flouride be added to water? Have your say.
Comments
Login or Register to comment
If anyone cares to look, fluoridation is a dismal failure in the United States.
My town stopped 29 years of fluoridation in 1983, with no consequences to teeth.
On the other hand, tooth decay crises appear all over the U.S. - in fluoridated cities.
"Rotting: Damaged teeth," was the caption under a color photo printed in your newspaper on January 2nd, 2004. The caption should have read, "This classic Baby Bottle/Sippy Cup tooth decay is easily avoidable if a cup is used from 12 months of age onward."
In The Denver Post (4-13-04), one dentist reports seeing 300 cases a year of this preventable syndrome and a pediatric dentist called the Sippy Cup "the worst invention in history." Denver, Colorado has been fluoridated since 1954.
Bottle and Sippy Cup decay is easy to identify because for the first two years it primarily effects only the upper teeth....beginning with the middle teeth where the tongue holds the sweetened saliva against the backside of those teeth.
The "Effectiveness" section of www.Keepers-of-the-Well.org lists summaries from at least 12 published dental studies showing repeatedly that fluoride is a flop with this common tooth decay of poor children.
Hawaii has a wonderful program wherein parents of newborns cannot exit the hospital without education of this issue. Honolulu, Hawaii also banned fluoridation on February 12, 2004.
Remember, the Utah hip fracture study, Journal of the American Medical Association, Aug. 12, 1992, shows us (p. 2 & 3) that it only takes 20 years to double the hip fracture rate for women at age 75 when that 20 year exposure to fluoridated water is BEFORE menopause when bones are remodeling far more rapidly than in post menopause years.
Photos of bottle decay have been used for decades in the US to sell water fluoridation. We also have the highest hip fracture rate of any country that keeps records. Truly, an unnecessary loose - loose situation.
As it is nigh impossible to find a fluoride free toothpaste I object strongly to our water being fluorinated.I myself don't suit flouride and my mouth never feels clean after using toothpaste with fluoride in.I'M 60 YEARS OLD AND HAVE HAD ONE FILLING IN 35 years. I put it down to regular brushing and eating properly.money would be better spent on educating young mothers
I don't know what people are brushing their teeth with, if fluoridation is so ineffective.
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
The Flouride topic seems to always attract comments from the U.S, its very suspicious.
Of course mass medication is totally unacceptable, maybe the drive to flouridate the water supply is an attempt to make the diminishing dentistry proffession completely redundant.
Flouride does work, but we have a choice, as ive said before, parents should be offered flouride drinks at school for their children.
NO mass medication just because certain sections of society refuse to care for their teeth.
Andy Burnham is wrong to say fluoridation is safe when many large scale studies in the USA show that it is linked with dysfunctional thyroid problems and other serious medical conditions over long term periods.
Like I asked Graham Stringer who tried to cloud the issue by saying "Calcium Fluoride is safe" If fluoride added to water inhibits the growth of water cress compared to that grown in normal tap water and 48% of children are shown to get Dental Fluorosis.... a Toxic Poisoning of the bodies enzyme systems then how can they claim it is safe when we simply DO NOT KNOW what other damage is being done to our bodies?
More information is available from our website www.bafg.org.uk
People need to lobby their councils to vote against fluoridation like I did in Bolton when Bolton Council Voted against Fluoridation.
Are the Primary Care trust going to take the councils views into account of 250,000 people?
Ian Upton
Chairman Bolton Against Fluoridation Group.
01204-704850
Fluoride - bad idea! Nobody seems to be looking at the fact (i.e. our so called Government) that fluoride is a thyroid suppressant - it was used in the US until about 1959 to treat overactive thyroid disorders - this information is freely available on the web. Fluoride already occurs naturally and of course is added to toothpaste which is our choice to use or not. I myself have an underactive thyroid and I am very aware that there are a great many things that can have a detrimintal affect on the thyroid. In an effort to try (supposedly) to prevent tooth decay, the Government may in fact be creating a bigger problem in the future by potentially causing people to develop underactive thyroids due to the fluorination in the water. Now what's cheaper - dentist's bills or the prescriptions to thyroxine needed to treat underactive thyroid's (which I might add is for life, since they have no way of correcting the problem), the blood tests that need to be done on a regular basis to keep a check on the levels, not to mention the doctor's time spent in dealing with patients with this problem. Get real, fluoridation is a bad thing and I for one definitely do not want it in the water supply. By putting it in the drinking water, the Government would be taking away our right to say no. Now would Tony Blair like to have something pushed on him that he doesn't want? I don't think so!
Fluoride makes your teeth brittle; it is unnatural to replace calcium with Fluoride. It is the big Co's that want to pump Fluoride into the environment and they pay dentists to say Fluoride is good for teeth. Every dentist should now know it is bad for you. Like smoking, however, it takes decades for it to give you cancer. There's no need for it. Just reduce your swet intake & keep your teeth nice & your weight lower.
An article from "the Source water bulletin", June 2005:
The latest American research has suggested that fluoride in tap water can cause bone cancer in boys but there is no evidence of a link for girls. According to the research boys exposed to fluoride between the ages of five and 10 will suffer an increased rate of osteosarcoma, or bone cancer, between the ages of 10 and 19. In the UK, fluoride is added to tap water on the advice of bodies such as the British Dental Association. The Department of Health maintains that it is a cost-effective public health measure that helps prevent tooth decay in children.
About 10 per cent of the population, or six million people, receive fluoridated water, mainly in the Midlands and north-east, and the government plans to extend this, with Manchester expected to be next. About 170 million Americans live in areas with fluoridated water. The increased cancer risks, identified in the new study conducted at the Harvard School of Dental Health, were found at fluoride exposure levels common in both the US and Britain. It was the first examination of the link between exposure to the chemical at the critical period of a child's development and the age of onset of bone cancer.
Although osteosarcoma is rare, accounting for only about 3 per cent of childhood cancers, it is especially dangerous. The mortality rate in the first five years is about 50 per cent, and nearly all survivors have limbs amputated, usually legs. Currently there is no understanding as to why males should be affected rather than females. A Department of Health spokesman said that the latest evaluation of research in the UK had identified no ill effects of fluoride.
Visit the Lancashire Campaign Against Fluoridation www.goldplanet.co.uk
According to research carried out in British Columbia in which the study compared the cavity rates of two different communities: 'The prevalence of caries decreased over time in the fluoride-ended community while remaining unchanged in the fluoridated community'. This has also proved to be the case in other countries where fluoridation has been discontinued, including Finland, Cuba and E Germany. Such findings stand in stark contrast to the American Dental Associations assertion that: 'Dental decay can be expected to increase if water fluoridation in a community is discontinued for one year or more'. On the Fluoride Action Network website they state that: 'There have been numerous reports of dental crises in US cities (eg Boston, Cincinnati, New York City) which have been fluoridated for over 20 years. There appears to be a far greater (inverse) relationship between tooth decay and income level than with water fluoride levels'.
Julie Hotchkiss, the director of public health at Ashton, Leigh and Wigan Primary Care Trust, says that: "There is absolutely no evidence that fluoridation of water causes ill health". And the MP for Leigh, Andy Burnham, says: "I am a staunch supporter of the fluoridation of the water". Can I suggest that they and their colleagues read The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson. Mind you, it sounds to me like they are very much a part of it. The 'Deception' that is.
Julia Hotchkiss and Co should read what Professor Dr A K Shusheela has to say about the effects of fluoride. But then I expect they have already.
"Water fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud this century, if not all time." Dr Robert Carton, former President of the Union of Government Scientists at the US Environmental Protection Agency.
One of the main arguments that destroys any notion that fluoride is necessary for good teeth (or anything else for that matter) is the very low level of fluoride in mothers' milk. The average level is between 0.005 to 0.01 ppm in breast milk, which is up to 200 times lower than that added to water in fluoridation programs. If fluoride was needed for healthy teeth why would nature have been so incompetent as to have virtually excluded it from breast milk?
Do you all realise that the calciun flouride which occurs naturally in water and is good for our teeth is a completely different substance from the toxic fluorosilicates that they want to dope us with?
Do you all realise that adding sodiun Fluoride to th water was an essential part of the Nazi's plan for wold domination, because it lowers I.Q, causes docility and causes sterility. (Ref. book: "The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben" by Joseph Borkin.).
We should of course oppose flouridation, but we should worry why our governments want to do this to us. Try looking into how ASPARTAME CAUSES TUMORS and then go and see how aggressively it is sold TO THOSE WHO WANT TO IMPROVE THEIR HEALTH!
You should also consider how these and other genuinely serious issues are ignored bt the press while stories of no genuine import are dressed up as being all-important. (I don't care what drugs a particular celebrity takes but I would like to know if I am being sold a poison disguised as food).
Check out what happened to Dr Phyllis Mullenix when her research into fluoride concluded that it causes IQ deficits in children. The article I came across - I dare say there are others - was entitled: The Dark Odyssey of Dr Phyllis Mullenix.