To the Editor:
I am appealing to all who currently serve in local leadership and those who seek to be decision-makers to please do something about the practice of adding fluoride to the public drinking water provided by the Great Salt Bay Sanitary (Water) District.
We can thank Amy Lalime and Stephanie Nelson (and friends) for pointing out a concern with ramifications for public health, the environment and possibly homeland security. Those of us who are not customers of the water district, those with private water supplies or wells, may not be aware of a need to be concerned. Why? The source of the fluoride added by the local water district is China.
An engineering report for the city of Boulder, Col., recently claimed that the chemicals used for water fluoridation coming out of China, used by many water districts, may contain arsenic and lead levels of 50 and 40 milligrams per bag, and that there is non-existent monitoring or regulation of the salt and acid compounds from imported fluoride.
This information is jarring when Lalime and Nelson reported they saw the additive at the Damariscotta facility in containers marked “Made in China.”
Where we have worked hard protecting the land and watersheds of the Pemaquid, Sheepscot and Damariscotta rivers, we have been unknowingly allowing this chemical to flow out where lobster, fish and oysters live because fluoride is not removed by typical sewage treatment.
While there are those who will continue to argue the merits of fluoride (“prevents tooth decay, etc.”) and that fluoride has been added to our public drinking water since 1970 by vote of the local citizenry, it is an obsolete practice in many communities across the country and Canada. Kodiak, Alas.; Clearwater, Fla.; Barnstable, Mass.; Brattleboro, Vt.; Santa Barbara, Cal.; Jackman, and cities and towns in Nebraska, Montana, and Minnesota have banned fluoride in public drinking water for a variety of reasons. Why can’t we?
Just this summer, the Canadian government was petitioned to ban fluoride since the toxic level of fluoride in the Great Lakes has exceeded what salmon, caddisflies and daphnia can tolerate. The Pure Water Committee of Western Maryland, a grassroots citizens group that formed 50 years ago, has educated people about “the complete fraud of the practice called fluoridation,” and now is working to emphasize this additional compromise by the sourcing of fluoride from a country known to put lead paint on toys, antifreeze in cough syrup and melamine (plastic) mixed in baby formula.
Finally, imagine that a water district, entrusted for the benefit of public health, could put any prescription in drug water. It cannot be regulated by dose, since people drink different amounts of water, use it to make ice and coffee, for cooking, for pets, for watering gardens. It is in our schools, restaurants and at the hospital. In other words, there is no choice whether or not to drink Chinese-fluoridated water when the public water is treated with fluoride; it cannot be taken out by ordinary means.
Please share your concerns with state and local representatives and candidates for office. It is not just a local problem but locally we can begin to address it by declaring a moratorium on GSBSD adding fluoride imported from China.
Fluoride – if it comes from China, let’s leave it out now. Later we can continue the debate about adding it at all. If you are interested in this topic, there is a new book coming out Oct. 7 – “The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up In our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There” by Paul Connett, James Beck and Speddy Micklem.
Martha Frink, Newcastle
