Just in case you may have read about the Tea Party-inspired vote in Pinellas
County to quit fluoridating drinking water and wondered about whether this show was coming to Polk County, relax.

Polk County Utilities doesn’t add fluoride compounds to the water supply. The reason has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with geology.

Utilities Director Gary Fries told me there’s enough naturally-occurring fluoride here to make adding it unnecessary

The fluoride compounds (the chemical element is fluorine) are related to the presence of phosphate deposits here. That’s one of the trace elements along with other less benign elements such as arsenic, radon and uranium.

I get mailings from time to time from anti-fluoridation activists, which was what prompted to ask the question earlier this year.

The anti-fluoridation campaign has been going on for some time. Earlier actions were carried out by some of the beta versions of the Tea Party,. such as the John Birch Society, which was more visible in the early 1960s. I remember reading literature when I was a teenager that claimed that fluoridation was some kind of plot linked to the international; Communist c0nspiracy to turn us all into mongoloid idiots or something like that.

That sentiment is still alive, based on the press accounts of the Pinellas meeting.

By the way, the medical establishment from the Surgeon General on down supports fluoridated water.

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