Dublin 14th February 2011,
Pyrrhic UK court victory exposes fatal flaws in water fluoridation.
The UK high court confirmed on 11th Feb, 2011 that water fluoridation can lawfully be imposed on an unwilling English community, in a decision that simply underlines how ill-informed and irrational English health policy is on this issue (1).
Dublin, Wed 9th February 2011
Calgary’s ending of fluoridation highlights risks to children in still fluoridated Ireland.
The 10 to 3 vote by Calgary City councillors to stop fluoridating the drinking water of 1.1million residents raises yet more doubts about fluoridation in Ireland, the only EU member state to permit widespread fluoridation of drinking water (1).
A review of the case against fluoride: how hazardous waste ended up in our drinking water and the bad science and powerful politics that keep it there by Connett P, Beck J, and Micklem HS summarises the historical, political, ethical, toxicological, and epidemiological scientific data behind drinking water fluoridation. The book concludes that, if proposed today, fluoridation of drinking water to prevent tooth decay would stand virtually no chance of being adopted, given the current status of scientific knowledge
Click here to read the full review.
Despite US government climb down, lower fluoride levels will not protect kids from spotted teeth.
Four in ten American kids have spotted or splotchy teeth due to excessive fluoride, says the US health watchdog and fervent promoter of fluoridation, the Center for Disease Control (‘CDC’). On 7th January 2011 it proposed nearly halving the amount fluoride added to US drinking water, mirroring the response of the Irish government in 2007 to similar risks to children in fluoridated Ireland(1). Read More
Dublin, 21st September 2010
EU Commission hearing exposes fatal flaws in water fluoridation.
Tuesday 21st September 2010
“VOICE, along with other environmental and health campaigners and international scientists, have presented detailed evidence of the adverse effects of adding fluoride to drinking water at an EU public hearing held in Brussels” said VOICE spokesperson Robert Pocock, who made a presentation to the public hearing in Brussels. “Its effects on bone and tooth enamel, the brain, kidney, thyroid function and the endocrine system regulating the body’s hormones were confirmed by reference to extensive scientific research” continued the spokesperson. Read More
Press release, Dublin July 12th By describing fluoridation as ‘crude and ineffective systemic fluoride treatment without a detectable threshold for dental and bone damage’ to prevent dental caries, Europe’s scientific committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER) has confirmed the claim of European doctors in June 2009. They stated that fluoridation is medical treatment and therefore should be subject to medicinal risk assessment, as has been demanded of the European Commission by MEPs and European Parliament committees for years.
Press release
Dublin, 11 June 2010
Clane GP, Dr Andrew Rynne, alerted the European medicines regulator (EMEA), and all other national competent medicinal authorities across the EU, on 1st June 2010 to the adverse reaction of dental fluorosis in the paediatric population in Ireland. The alert was issued under rules governing adverse reactions to medicines in Europe (EudraCT) and is linked to the use of the industrial chemical hydrofluosilicic acid in drinking water. Administration of hydrofluosilicic acid is not medically authorised and continues despite flagrant infringement of theClinical Trials Directive (2001/20/EC). Recital 18 of this directive requires the Irish medicines regulator to issue a notice of suspension to cease the trial because its continuation involves an unacceptable level of risk. Read More
Press Release, Dublin The risks to children exposed to fluoridated Irish water are highlighted in a scientific review just published in the peer-reviewed journalToxicology [1]. It adds more weight to the call by the report of the Oireachtas Joint Health Committee in 2007 (www.fluoridereports.com) to stop fluoridation to protect children from the irreversible damage to tooth enamel by dental fluorosis.
Press Release 26 February 2010
Its competence already queried at inception in June 2009 by International Society of Doctors for Environment(ISDE) (1), the EU’s Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER) which is investigating fluoridation chemicals, has now been accused of a conflict of interest. SCHER’s credibility is thus further compromised by one of its members having actively co-promoted fluoridation in Switzerland. Read More
Eilish O’Regan, Health Correspondent (Typed from hard copy as not available in e-version of Irish Independent of 13/02/2010) Followed by response by VOICE Stop- Fluoride campaigner Robert Pocock
A study on the safety of fluoride in public drinking supplies will not be available until 2012 – more than five years after Green Party leader John Gormley promised to outlaw the chemical if elected to government. It is already nearly three years since the study was promised in the Programme for Government. Read More
Monday, January 25, 2010
THE recent hardship caused by burst water pipes highlighted the precarious condition of our water supply network. That approximately 40% of all water in Ireland is lost in leakage was widely publicised in recent weeks when so many pipes failed in the freeze. Though many people were previously unaware of the dire condition of the national network of water pipes, the rate of leakage – the highest in the EU – has been criticised by Brussels for some time. The excuse we are being given for this level of leakage is that the pipes are old, but this is not the whole story.
Press Release, Dublin, Wednesday 25th November 2009
The formal dialogue session on Risk Assessment between stakeholders and the EU’s scientific committees on Nov 20th in Brussels heard criticism of the Commission, as the risk manager, for failing to protect children from fluoride risks. Only in Ireland and parts of the UK are fluoridation chemicals allowed in drinking water, where there is now an epidemic of dental fluorosis in children.“ It’s a sad day for European science” said VOICE’s campaigner against fluoridation, Robert Pocock, when the EU’s Scientific Committee on the Environment and Health(SCHER) is accused of being unqualified for its task. Yet the 20,000 member International Society of Doctors for Environment (ISDE) made just such a claim, when the Commission asked SCHER for scientific risk assessment of fluoridation chemicals.
ISDE declared that since fluoride chemicals act pharmacologically, SCHER’s lack of expertise in assessing medicinal substances is a serious impediment. In light of this major defect, the VOICE spokesman told the meeting, SCHER members should re-consider their role in this whole affair. Pocock also said that it was six long years since the 2003 EU Drinking Water Seminar in Brussels, that the World Health Organisation in Geneva had promised within four months a similar risk assessment of the fluorosilicic acid in Irish drinking water, before he added “We are still awaiting it”.
Another yellow card was shown to the Commission for failing to abide by its own rules requiring Rapid Advice when an urgent public health threat demands it. With some sixty children in Ireland each month (plus another 120 in the UK) getting moderate or severe dental fluorosis, there is ample reason for the Commission to invoke Rapid Advice in order to protect childen from this unnecessary risk. The Scientific Committee on New and Emerging Health Risks(SCENIHR) reported how it had engaged other EU agencies including the European Medicines Evaluation Agency(EMEA) in assessing antimicrobial risk, an initiative fully endorsed by the Commission.
Yet when faced with the official Irish evidence of an epidemic of dental fluorosis in children in Ireland (and pro rata in the UK) caused by an unlicensed medicinal substance in these two member states, the Commission refuses to engage with EMEA, surely cause for another yellow card? VOICE has already called for the CEO of EMEA to stand aside for this blatant failure to enforce pharmacovigilance in Ireland and the UK, one possible explanation for EMEA’s inaction being that its CEO Mr Pat O’Mahony is also CEO of the Irish Medicines Board. As the risk manager and medicines regulator within the Commission, EMEA should have enforced the relevant directive years ago.
Instead the Commission has passed the buck to an EU scientific committee unqualified for the task. The clear losers in this regulatory failure are at-risk children and the credibility of EU science.
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