A university professor is to address concerns about fluoride overdosing in water supplies.

It follows an incident which affected the supply to more than 40,000 homes in August 2009 for two weeks.

The overdosing, which was only revealed in a report published recently by the chief inspector of Drinking Water, was due to a lack of adherence to the code of practice.

Monitoring equipment at the Newspring works, supplying Biggleswade and Potton, used for dosing water with fluoride was not set up correctly.

Sue Pennison, spokeswoman for the Drinking Water Inspectorate, described it as a ‘minor breach of a standard with a wide safety margin’.

She said: “It was over a short period of time where the control system allowed the level of fluoride to exceed by a small amount, namely 1.7 milligrams instead of the 1.5 per litre.

“The public were not affected.” It is one of the issues being discussed by Prof Paul Connett during his talk at the Ent Shed, Castle Road, Bedford, on Saturday at 7pm.

He is a world expert on water fluoridation – the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay.

Cynthia Bagchi, from Bedford, who helped organise the talk, has been alerting people to the ‘dangers’ for years.

She said: “This overdosing of fluoride for two weeks in August last year is serious, especially for babies drinking formula milk as it should not be made up with fluoridated water let alone water that has been overdosed.

“Alarm bells should be ringing.

“It’s time to put an end to this outdated and dangerous practice in Bedford, for good.” Entry is £2.

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