Artificial fluoridation will stay out of Amherstburg’s drinking water after town council passed a moratorium against adding fluoride Monday night.
Town council was unanimous in passing a motion put forward by Councillor Carolyn Davies that called for the moratorium to be put into place. Her motion read “that a moratorium be put on future purchase and installation of new municipal water fluoridation equipment and future purchase and use of fluoridation chemical known as hydrofluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6) containing silicofluoride and further that administration be directed to request from government jurisdictions including Health Canada, the Ontario Ministries of Labour and Environment, evidence ensuring that town employees and any others working with the hydrofluorosilicic acid process are not put in harm’s way, as required by the Ontario Health and Safety Act (1990).”
Fluoride is the legal and financial responsibility of municipal governments, said Davies and that more information is now available that when fluoride was first introduced roughly 60 years ago.
“I think we’ve heard more peer reviews and scientific reviews that didn’t exist in the ‘40s or the ‘50s,” she said.
The town had already suspended artificial water fluoridation last April awaiting information repairs were made to the system and methodology in providing fluoridation was provided by the town’s consultants CH2M Hill. However, Davies said that becomes a “moot point” with her motion now passed.
“Why spend taxpayers’ money on something that has proven evidence of human harm?” she asked.
Davies added she is confident there will be no evidence to the contrary to come forth proving there is are no safety risks to adding fluoride to drinking water.
“I think we should go through with it,” said Councillor Bart DiPasquale of the moratorium. “Other communities have done it. Let’s go through with it and move on.”
Kimberly DeYong of Fluoride Free Windsor and Heather Gingerich, director of the International Medical Geology Association, told council of their research in respect to potential risks fluoride poses to both human health and environment.
DeYong said Amherstburg was the only town not served by the Windsor Utilities Commission to still use fluoride in its water. She added that 13 Canadian municipalities in the last 15 months to stop putting fluoride in its drinking water.
“Our water is something that should be pure. It should not be used to deliver medication,” said DeYong.
Gingerich recommended that council not resume artificial fluoridation, noting that it would comply with environmental regulations, protect people including the unborn and elderly and allow provincial public health care dollars to be targeted in other ways. She noted that people begin to show negative impacts in the third generation of exposure.
Several local residents also urged council to eliminate artificial fluoridation.
“As a private resident, I would like to be able to be confident that the water we are drinking is water,” said Lorene Clayton.
If water is fluoridated, she said people couldn’t even make soup without being exposed.
“I’d love to be able to make that choice,” she said, of being able to choose water that hasn’t been fluoridated.
“I would like to urge council to take the time and review what has been presented tonight,” said Pat Andrews. “I’d like to be able to drink water that is just water.”
Christine Moody quoted from a Nov. 15, 2011 letter by Dr. Hardy Limeback, professor and head of preventive dentistry at the University of Toronto.
The letter read, in part, that Limeback has “personally conducted years of funded research at the University of Toronto on the topic of fluorosis (fluoride poisoning) and bone effects of fluoride intake. A bone study, for which we received national funding, comparing hip bones of people who live in Toronto (fluoridated since 1963) to the bones of people from Montreal (Montreal has never been fluoridated) suggests disturbing negative changes in the bone quality of Torontonians. This is not good.”
Limebeck’s letter also stated that fluoride has not been shown to be safe and effective and that the pendulum is shifting to where fluoride is being considered “not safe, and no longer effective.”