FLUORIDATION
Sir.-Whatever the merits or demerits of fluoridation may be, the fact remains that most of the residents of Hastings and Havelock North are being compelled to use and pay for artificially fluoridated water without their consent and against. the better judgment of many of them. And so, as individuals, they have been deprived of a basic right to choose what they shall not take into their own bodies. Sodium silico fluoride (so named on the bags and marked poison in large letters) is the medium being used here to bring the fluorine content of the public water supply up to one part per million. If that proportion of fluorine is the answer to caries in children’s teeth, there would seem to be an ample quantity of that chemical readily available in the tea beverage so commonly drunk in this country. For that arch-fluorida-tionist, Dr. F. A, Arnold, speaking at Hastings, said that dry tea (tea leaves) may contain up to 100 parts per million fluorine, 150 p.p.m. and even more, but that "tea as drunk did not contain more than one part in a million." Another pro-fluoridationist, G. M. Will, M.Sce., A.N.Z.1.C., writing to the local press, said that "an ordinary cup of tea will contain at least one part per million fluorine; that is the same concentration as is being added to the water supply. A‘ strong infusion may contain up to 20 p.p.m." With more than enough fluorine naturally present in tea (as distinct from the artificially produced sodium silico fluoride), the anti-fluoridationist is tempted to ask "Why not drop the compulsory mass medication and encourage the practice of cleaning teeth with tea minus milk and sugar?" It is not at all certain that artificially fluoridated water will improve children’s teeth under the conditions prevailing in this district. And when, as Drs. Arnold and Parfitt well know, the main causes of dental decay are wrong food, wrong combinations of food and wrong eating habits, it is scarcely likely that the ingestion of fluoridated water will at best do more than postpone the onset of dental trouble.
C.E.
G.
(Havelock North).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 790, 10 September 1954, Page 5
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353FLUORIDATION New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 790, 10 September 1954, Page 5
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