Environment group VOICE has accused the government of denying the EU right to a safe drinking water to almost 3 million people in Ireland. This is contained in a letter the Group has sent to EU Environment Commissioner Wallstrom asking her to intervene to protect EU citizens in Ireland whose health and safety have been effectively abandoned by government inaction and evasion of responsibility. Most at risk are babies because the Food Safety Authority(FSAI) scientific committee recommends that infant formula should not be reconstituted with fluoridated (tap)water for which there is of course no real alternative.

“How can our drinking water be safe when one of the substances added — toxic fluoride compound (hydrofluosilicic acid) — failed a formal safety vote last year in the EU? Even worse the same chemical has never been subjected to any toxicological tests whatever, which would certainly show it is unsafe for human consumption” said VOICE spokesman Robert Pocock.

The government was accused of buck-passing and evasion by failing to assess the risks of this compulsory form of medication ( water fluoridation) which has been rejected by all other EU states. The Minister of Health has been sitting on two reports which are now six months late and the warnings which the scientific committee of FSAI issued to parents in October have also been suppressed.

“When a scientific committee specifically recommends that infant formula should not be made up with tap-water because it is fluoridated, then that advice should be immediately conveyed to parents” said the spokesman “however if this recommendation is then omitted from the minutes of the meeting on the FSAI website parents rightly ask what other information about fluoridated water is being withheld. The FSAI and the government must clean on this at once” he demanded.

“With new scientific evidence now emerging on the toxic combinations formed by fluoride with other minerals present in Irish drinking water such as aluminium, iron and lead, EU citizens are at unacceptable risk in this country. That is why we have asked Environment Commissioner to intervene to protect our health, not to mention the ecosystem which has 2,000 gallons of this imported toxic waste dumped into it daily” said Pocock.

Ministers Dempsey ( Environment) and Treacy ( Enterprise, Trade & Consumer Affairs) have also failed to act on the routinely illegal levels of fluoride as well as aluminium each of which are implicated in many forms of brain disfunction ranging from impaired IQ to Alzheimers.