[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATER QUALITY - 8/21/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

August 21, 2007

 

4. Water Quality -

 

 

Fluoridation plan draws protest, support

North County times – 8/21/07
By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer

 

LOS ANGELES -- Decades-old and still-roiling debates about fluoridating water supplies spilled over Monday as a Metropolitan Water District committee was updated on the agency's plan to add fluoride to Southern California's drinking water in October.

Proponents -- including the California Department of Health Services and the California Dental Association -- applauded the move at Monday's meeting, saying it was a proven, safe, effective way to prevent now-rampant cavities and dental disease.

Vocal opponents -- including the San Diego-based Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, a number of people who identified themselves with backgrounds in chemistry or science, worried mothers and others -- said adding fluoride to community waters amounted to mass medication or mass poisoning that could cause cancer or other ailments.

Board members for Metropolitan, Southern California's main water supplier, actually voted in 2003 to fluoridate the agency's supplies. However, the agency has not actually done so yet because it has had to complete multimillion-dollar upgrades of its five water treatment plants.

Committee members at Monday's meeting said they appreciated the public input, but indicated they had no intention of asking the agency's full board to reconsider the 2003 vote to fluoridate.

Metropolitan's representatives from the San Diego County Water Authority -- Encinitas Mayor James Bond and San Diego representative Joe Parker -- said they heard nothing from fluoridation critics that would change their votes.

Parker, who is a chemist, saidÝof the critics, "I think there is a lot of misinformation out there."

Metropolitan's action would mean that most San Diego County residents would get fluoridated water supplies starting Oct. 29.

Water Authority spokesman John Liarakos said that only five of its 24 member agencies buy only raw, "untreated" water that would not be fluoridated -- parts of Camp Pendleton, parts of San Diego, the Santa Fe Irrigation District, the city of Poway and Chula Vista's South Bay Irrigation District.

Currently, just one San Diego County city has fluoridated its water, the city of Escondido.

Water Authority board members are scheduled to get their own update on Metropolitan's fluoridation plan Thursday morning at their monthly meeting.

David Nelson, an oral surgeon representing the California Department of Health Services, started out the public comments Monday by congratulating Metropolitan on a public health victory.

Nelson displayed huge pictures of children's gaping mouths and rotten teeth, saying that California had a worse epidemic of dental disease than any other state in the United States other than Arkansas.

"Why?" he asked. "Because there's no fluoridation in California. We're now at about 28.7 percent of our water supplies. Almost two-thirds of all children in California by the second grade have tooth decay. The cornerstone to preventing disease like that is community water fluoridation."

Nelson said that the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- which named fluoridation as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th Century -- the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society and "150 more" health organizations endorsed fluoridation.

But critics, who jeered some of Nelson's comments, said Nelson used his photos as visceral propaganda that should not be trusted. They said cavities could be avoided with fewer sodas and better nutrition.

Critics also said Monday that they did not trust the studies Nelson cited, that a more recent critical study from the National Research Council should be deeply investigated, and that the fluoride that Metropolitan planned to inject into its water supplies -- fluorosilicic acid -- was a dangerous waste product.

All said Metropolitan should slow down its plans to fluoridate.

"On the back of the toothpaste tube it says it's poison, and that my parents are supposed to call the poison center if I swallow it," San Diego resident Allen Andrews said. "Now you propose to give people more of this chemical. Interesting. This issue has been fast-tracked. Member agencies like my San Diego County Water Authority have had no opportunity to poll their own constituent water districts."

Fluoride, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' agency for toxic substances and disease registry, fluoride is a naturally occurring compound.

Flourides have been used for decades in toothpaste to reduce cavities. It has also been put into water supplies of Americans across the nation since the 1940s.#

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/21/news/top_stories/1_02_088_20_07.txt