Paddy Casey, one of Ireland’s leading singer songwriters, has come out strongly in support of the campaign against the fluoridation of the water supply in Ireland. The facts about this long-standing practice were exposed for the first time in the current issue of Hot Press.

The singer-songwriter – whose debut album Amen (So Be It) was a celebrated double-platinum hit in Ireland – denounced the practice in a statement issued to Hot Press today.

“It’s insane,” Paddy Casey said, “that the government of any country would allow what is essentially an experiment in mass medication – through something as fundamental as our water supply – to continue for so long.”

Singer Damien Dempsey has also indicted his support for the campaign opposing the mandatory fluoridation of the water. “It is a campaign that is really gathering momentum,” Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said. “A lot of people took the fluoridation of water in good faith and assumed that this was a standard practice all over the world, and especially in Europe. They will be very upset to hear that quite the opposite is the case,”

Meanwhile, campaigning scientist Declan Waugh, whose research is at the heart of the Hot Press article, written by Adrienne Murphy, has pointed out that the fluoride in the Irish water supply is sourced in Spain, rather than in China as indicated in the article in this issue of magazine.

“It’s a really powerful piece,” he said, “which exposes the horribly damaging effects of what is an extraordinary and thoroughly discredited public policy here in Ireland. But I’m not sure how the suggestion that we were getting our fluoride in China came about. While China are the world’s largest exporter of Fluorspar, the raw material used for the manufacture of hydrofluorosilicic acid, the chemical used for fluoridation of water in Ireland, the fact is that we are getting the chemical from Spain, so this is happening within the EU.

“The EU sources Fluorspar from China for use in the steel and aluminium industry. The bizarre thing is that the EU banned hydrofluorosilicic acid for use as a biocidal product in 2006, because the Spanish would not provide the EU with any toxicological data to demonstrate that this chemical was safe for humans or the environment. Spain was requested, as a manufacturer of this biocide, to provide a dossier of information to the EU on the toxicology of the substance. The Spanish authorities did not provide the information, so it is now listed as a banned biocide under the Biocides Directive.

“So a chemical that is no longer deemed safe to use as a biocide is the same chemical that we are adding to our drinking water, to be consumed by every citizen in this country! It is mind-boggling, really.”

The suggestion about the sourcing of the fluoride was in fact based on information on www.thegirlagainstfluoride.com

Aisling Fitzgibbon, who runs the Girl Against Fluoride site, explained to Hot Press that it had been believed that Spain was no longer in a position to supply the chemical but that the site had now been updated with the latest information. “It’s great that there has been such a positive reaction to the Hot Press story,” she said.

Concern about the force-feeding of fluoride to the Irish population has intensified hugely since the publication of the article on Thursday. Hot Press has been inundated with expressions of support from members of the public.

“I’ve been concerned about this issue for years,” one reader told Hot Press. “I just didn’t have the evidence, chapter and verse, to support what I felt. Now I do. I think this is a potential game-changer in terms of public opinion.”

Hot Press has been amassing further information on the fluoridation of the water supply, which will be published in the next issue of the magazine.

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