SYDNEY — The debate over water fluoridation in Cape Breton is about to continue at regional municipal council.
Several health professionals and scientists will make presentations Tuesday on both sides of the controversial issue.
Community activist Marlene Kane has pushed for an end to water fluoridation in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality over the past few years.
It’s her second attempt since 2009 to reverse a decades-old policy of injecting the municipal water systems in Sydney, North Sydney, Glace Bay and New Waterford with fluoride to prevent tooth decay.
Many people believe overexposure to fluoride can cause dental fluorosis, which leaves pits and white marks on teeth, and alters the development of growing teeth in children.
Kane said it comes down not only to a health issue, but an ethical one because no one has the right to force medication on anyone.
Dr. James Beck, a University of Calgary biophysicist who played a key role in convincing politicians to end water fluoridation in that city, will present his case to municipal council.
Beck said there is no discernible proof that water fluoridation prevents tooth decay.
“It is true that cavities in poor children in industrialized countries has decreased over the past decades,” he said in a letter in letter published in the Calgary Herald in February. “But that has happened to the same extent where water is not fluoridated as where it is fluoridated.
Print 
PDF