So heard an invited audience to the BBC TalkBack program in Downpatrick on 14th May 2009. What they were not told by the BDA’s Claudette Christie is that Hampshire, the North West, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Gloucestershire even the Isle of Man have also been rated by BDA statistics in recent years and months as having ‘the worst teeth in the UK’. In the other UK regions targeted, the statistics were for 5 yr old children, while in N. Ireland 12 year olds were chosen but the common solution to this alleged dental crisis is fluoridation of local drinking water. Currently only UK water in the West & East Midlands and the North East of England are fluoridated, affecting some five million people.
 
“This latest absurd BDA claim is simply an excuse offered by Department of Health officials for the UK government’s push for fluoridation in N. Ireland, just as it was in Hampshire and elsewhere,” said invited guest, VOICE’s Robert Pocock from the Republic of Ireland, which has been fluoridated for many years.
 
When asked by program host David Dunseith why he and others in the audience did not accept the BDA claim that the teeth of 12 yr old children in the South (70% fluoridated) were much better than for 12 year olds in the North, Pocock described the statistics as ‘highly dubious’ since they did not mention the epidemic of fluorosis in children in the Republic, caused by swallowing too much fluoride.
 
Pocock then presented David Dunseith with visual evidence of dental fluorosis from the North South Survey of Children’s Oral Health 2002 (1). After first saying he couldn’t describe it, Dunseith then said they were ‘pitted in places’ before commenting to Claudette Christie, ‘these teeth are pretty appalling’ to which he received no response from the BDA representative.
 
David Dunseith allowed to go unchallenged the claim by the Chief Dental Officer that ‘fluoridation is safe and endorsed by the World Health Organisation.’ In reality, the WHO, after five long years, has still failed to issue its promised risk assessment of the fluoride chemical used in the Republic of Ireland, fluorosilicic acid.
 
Pocock had earlier said that the reason fluoridation of drinking water had been rejected in France in the 1990s was because dosage is uncontrollable. He added that only a fraction of the 500 million people in the European Union allowed water to be fluoridated, yet EU children’s teeth were just as good as in Ireland.
 
VOICE has lodged a petition with the European Parliament appealing to the EU Commission to enforce several directives infringed by the government fluoridation policy in Ireland.
Please see VOICE’s Petition (No 0217 of 2007) for details of the key directives infringed, at
http://www.voiceireland.org/campaigns/toxic_industrial_fluoride220607.html
 
ENDS More info on (353) 086 811 3071
 
(1) North South Survey of Children’s Oral Health 2002 by Oral Health Services Research Centre in UCC.