Gran wins fluoride battle

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 4

Gran wins fluoride battle

NZPA London A grandmother, aged 69, with no teeth of her own has won a long legal battle to stop Strathclyde Regional Council adding fluoride to the public water supply which it claimed would help dental care. In a test case which has broken all records and has already cost the taxpayer £I.IM ($2.3M), Lord Jauncey ruled that it was beyond the power of the local authority to add fluoride to bring it up to one part per million.

Sitting in the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Lord Jauncey delivered a 120,000word judgment and granted a court order to Mrs Catherine McColl, of Glasgow.

' Mrs McColl had petitioned the court for an

interim interdict banning the use of fluoride, which she alleged was a “horrible poison.” The hearing, which ended last July, lasted 204 days, the longest legal action in Scotland.

In his reserved judgment, Lord Jauncey said that the issue depended on the construction of the words “wholesome water,” under the Scottish Water Acts of 1946 and 1980. A formidable reason for construing “wholesome” as the petitioner contended was that it was unlikely that Parliament in 1946 conferred on water authorities a power to supply water treated not only to render it safe and pleasant to drink but also to serve as a convenient means of achieving a beneficial effect on the health of consumers generally.

He did not consider that Parliament intended that water authorities should be clothed with power to treat water for general health improvement purposes as they might from time to time think appropriate. The individual’s right to choose how to care for his own body should only be encroached on by statutory provisions in clear and unambiguous language, said Lord Jauncey.

Fluoridation would inevitably involve the ingestion of the added benefit because they were either toothless, or of an age when the fluoride no longer performed its preventive role in relation to tooth decay.

Such a situation would necessarily involve a restriction on the freedom of choice of the individual, who would have little alternative but to consume the fluori-

dated water whether he liked it or not.

In 1982, millions of people in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were drinking water fluoridated to about one part per million. In England and Wales, among areas fluoridating water were Birmingham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Watford, Anglesey, and parts of Leeds.

In Scotland, water was fluoridated only in parts of Wigtownshire, although the Kilmarnock water supply had been fluoridated for 6% years.

Fluoridation took place in the Netherlands for a number of years, but was stopped by Parliament.

Lord Jauncey held that fluoridated water to one part per million substantially reduced dental decay and it was not surprising

that most of the dental profession in the United Kingdom favoured it.

Dental health in Strathclyde will be likely to benefit from fluoridation.

Lord Jauncey said that Mrs McColl’s case on fluor-ide-cancer death rates in Birmingham and in North America had failed completely. He strongly criticised the granting of legal aid to Mrs McColl and said that she was enabled to pursue her case of unprecedented length and expense which only an individual of unlimited means could afford.

She was passionately opposed to fluoride but was conspicuous by her absence after the first day of the 201-day hearing. Lord Jauncey ruled that both Mrs McColl and Strathclyde should pay their own costs.