FLUORIDATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 782, 16 July 1954, Page 5

FLUORIDATION

Sir,-Mary I. Stroobant (Listener, June 18), is partly correct in saying that poor teeth in New Zealand are due to lack of willpower to say no to sweets. I have spent years trying to persuade mothers and children in New Zealand and elsewhere to say no more often, but the instinct to seek sweet food cannot be eradicated. It is this fact, however, that makes so necessary the inclusion of adequate fluorine in the diet. Fluorine exists in water in the ionised state, and is exactly the same whether it has been removed from the rock at an aluminium works or has been leached out of undisturbed rock by percolating water, as in the case of some springs and artesian wells. The American Dental Association is emphatically in favour of fluoridation and can be fairly taken to represent the profession there. There is nothing undemocratic in leaving experts to determine proper health standards for the water; on the contrary it would be a disgraceful bureaucracy that neglected its duty in deference to a noisy and ignorant minority. We are in any case obliged to use the water supplied, but why should the proper proportion of its various elements be decided by "Adit" and "Water Drinker?" It is misleading to call fluorine a medicine since it prevents, but does not cure, disease, and a disease that is almost universal in civilised peoples. It is better regarded as a food; most foods help to prevent disease in some way, and many of them (including chemically + pure triple-distilled water) are "poisons" if taken in great excess. Just as they cannot say no to sweets, so most mothers cannot be bothered with doling out tablets to each child every day for 10 or 15 years. This method has been tried in Australia, but the cost of propaganda to make it reach the mass of children woutl be prohibitive, In places without a public water supply it may be feasible.

R. B. D.

STOCKER

(Sydney)