Far from specifically targeting children at risk of tooth decay, water fluoridation is highly inefficient as it compulsorily medicates the entire population.

There is also no control over the doses consumed. People who live active lifestyles, such as those who take exercise or play sports, inevitably drink more water than those who don’t.

Those who prepare meals at home, rather than relying on convenience foods bought from the supermarket, also consume more.

Fluoridation means every time we turn on our taps, be it to drink water, heat it for tea or coffee, cook with it or wash our food with it, we would be exposing ourselves to the chemical.

Beer drinkers who enjoy real ales produced by the area’s fine local breweries would also be affected.

Locally brewed beer would no longer be as real as it once was, but would instead contain synthetic chemical fluoride.

Fluoridation could well result in the town’s discerning real ale drinkers eschewing beers produced by local brewers in favour of those from outside the area produced with natural non-fluoridated water.

The real cause of tooth decay in children isn’t a lack of fluoride in our water, but poor diet.

Fluoridation avoids focusing on the chief causes of poor diets in children, such as low wages and poverty.

Instead, it naively pretends that compulsory mass medication of the entire population can solve the problem.

The people of Darlington, and our children, deserve better than this.

Paul Anthony Taylor, Darlington

*Original letter online at https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/opinion/letters/17563341.letters-plan-to-add-fluoride-to-darlington-water-defies-common-sense/