Thank you New Tecumseth Council for moving forward on the cessation of fluoridation issue.
As a water quality teaching master for the past 35 years, I’ve spent the last 10 righting the wrongs about the water fluoridation myth that I had condoned for the previous 25.
Since my active involvement, I, along with others have had a direct hand in reducing the water fluoridation rates in Canada to its current low of 32.5 per cent. The latest municipality to cease was Windsor in 2013 along with the four other major communities of Essex County in 2012. No new water fluoridation scheme has started in Canada since 1999. The sun setting trend for this outdated public health practice is clear.
New Tecumseth Council had it right several years ago but were bullied into reversing its decision.
What’s egregious is that Ontario’s local MOH’s are ordered by the Chief MOH for the province to defend water fluoridation ‘policy’ with all possible zeal. Surely, if a public health policy is sound one must ask, why the need to defend it so vehemently?
The height of hypocrisy is that Simcoe County’s own Dr Dick Ito, gained an academic credential for his master’s thesis based on a finding of no effect by water fluoridation on decay rates in children of Brampton and Caledon after controlling for variables in the data. Yet this same individual stumps around the Province promoting water fluoridation for which academically he found “no effect.” See ito-caledon-and-brampton-study-peel-region. One must question the veracity of his “professional” endorsement and certainly his motive.
Regardless, it’s heartening to know that there are councils with ‘Stone’s’ enough protecting drinking water quality first. Congratulations.
Peter Van Caulart, Dip.AEd.,CES,CEI
Director, Environmental Training Institute
Ridgeville (Niagara) ON
etivc.org