In order to follow state and local news, I scan The (Baton Rouge) Advocate and The Daily Advertiser, but, for more local happenings, I must go elsewhere. Somehow, I still missed the 2008 mandatory fluoridation legislation that was slipped through in Baton Rouge.

Not until February 2009 did I learn from Dr. James Reeves (retired UL professor of engineering) and Carroll Boudoin that Louisiana passed legislation in 2008 that requires every community with more than 5,000 people to fluoridate its water supply.

Both men came to the Acadian Sierra Club meeting to explain what had occurred and asked for our support in opposing fluoridation of our precious water supply. I simply suggested they invite Dr. Paul Connett from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., to come here. Connett, as a retired chemistry professor and director of the Fluoride Action Network, could provide the disturbing facts about what we would be doing to our water.

Connett spoke for 90 minutes April 21 at UL. That same afternoon, he visited our local officials. The City-Parish Council voted 8-1 for an ordinance urging the repeal of the flouridation requirement. Among their concerns is the $530,000 cost associated with flouridation.

Still, health matters more than economics.

To further your education, you can find 50 Reasons for Not Using Fluoride on Connett’s Web site, www. www.fluoridealert.org, and locally you can contact join citizens opposing fluoridation@gmail.com.

It is time for all of Louisiana to join Lafayette in rejecting fluoridation of our water supplies.

The fluoride dumped into public water supplies is a byproduct of the wastes from the phosphate and aluminum industries. If it is too toxic to be dumped into the ocean or our bayous, then how can fluoride be sold to cities for disposal into our water supplies?

Vic Hummert is a Lafayette resident with a longtime interest in the environment.

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