The Public and Fluoride |
Does the public want fluoridation?
BFS suggested answer
Yes. National opinion surveys conducted by NOP and Gallup consistently show that around 70% of the public believe that fluoride should be added to water supplies to prevent tooth decay.
In addition, statutory local consultations conducted by over 60 health authorities have demonstrated a high level of public support.
BFS suggested answer refuted
We have exhausted every democratic avenue and it is out of frustration that we are knocking on Tony Worthington’s door. More than half of the adult population concerned has asked for fluoridation to stop. They are over 18 and taxpayers and they don’t want fluoridation – even if it were good for them.
Walter Graham
In November 1996, John Hunt, chief executive of the British Dental Association, reported:
A majority of MPs, the general public, and all the major public health organisations support water fluoridation as a safe and effective way of defeating tooth decay. At present only 10% of the population receive fluoridated water: a target of 25% by the end of the century must be set so that people all over the country are able to benefit from improved dental health.1
British Dental Association poll of members of parliament
Tom Braithwaite, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on water, stated at the British Fluoridation Society’s meeting in Westminster in November 1997 that the Liberal Democrats were in favour of fluoridation (despite the fact that no party has a policy on fluoridation) and that ‘as 70 per cent of all MPs were in favour, legislation would succeed’. John Hunt seemed to confirm this when he gave figures for the three major parties. Putting to MPs the question: ‘Do you believe that fluoride should be added to water if it can reduce tooth decay?’, he reported the following answers:
•Of 256 Labour MPs who answered, 77 per cent were in favour of fluoridation.
•Of 113 Conservative MPs who answered, 62 per cent were in favour of fluoridation.
•Of 34 Liberal Democrat MPs who answered, 65 per cent were in favour of fluoridation.
This is the origin of the 70 per cent figure. But this survey of MPs was misleading: the 70 per cent figure related only to those MPs who answered the question – and that was only about half of the total who had been asked. In other words, it was 70 per cent of 50 per cent, which is in reality only 35 per cent known to be in favour of fluoridation.
The Green Party, on the other hand, is 100 per cent opposed to it, calling for the repeal of all existing legislation permitting water fluoridation.
Polls of the public by BFS
The 70 per cent figure is also remarkably consistent when public polls are conducted by the BFS. But as any trained interviewer or pollster knows, the answer to any question can be influenced by the way the question is worded. For example, early in 2000, in a demonstration of people’s willingness to sign petitions, passers-by in New York were asked to sign a petition calling for an end to women’s suffrage. ‘Suffrage’, of course, has nothing to do with suffering; suffrage is the right to vote. Yet hundreds of people, including women, signed the petition.
The question the BFS asks is: ‘Do you believe that fluoride should be added to water if it can reduce tooth decay?’ The addition of the words ‘if it can reduce tooth decay’ ensures that those questioned will be more likely to give an affirmative answer. Such a question would never be allowed in a court of law. Most people are not very knowledgeable about the fluoridation issue because of the secrecy surrounding it. If the question were alternatively worded – ‘Do you think that people should be medicated without their consent?’ – what would the answer be?
Contrast the polls by pro-fluoridationists with a survey carried out in Britain in 1993 by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys,2 which asked people how one attains good dental hygiene. The majority mentioned things like brushing teeth, visiting the dentist, and limiting sugar in the diet. Less than 5 per cent mentioned fluoride as a key factor.
A survey published in the British Dental Journal in May 2000, asking whether people wanted to be involved in the decision-making process when water fluoridation was mooted for their area, demonstrated the public’s lack of knowledge.3 You might expect that people who value their health, and who are being prescribed a drug whose sole purpose is to change their bodies’ chemical composition, would want to be involved in the decision about whether or not they take that drug. Yet the study found that the public did not want to be involved in the decision-making process. The study concluded that they ‘do not see themselves as being the appropriate implementation arbiters’. In this, they show far more sense than the dentists asking the questions.
Other polls of the public in Britain
The British Dental Association and the British Fluoridation Society are not the only ones to conduct polls about fluoridation. Local councils have done it, as have newspapers and TV. These polls have come up with quite different findings: not 70 per cent in favour of fluoridation, but as many as 98 per cent against it.
The only British referendum
The level of fluoride occurring naturally in the drinking water of the residents of Bolton, Lancashire, was 0.1–0.2 ppm in 1965. In that year the Bolton Borough Council agreed that fluoride should be added to bring the total up to 1.0 ppm. In 1968 the Waterworks Committee made preparations to add fluoride to two reservoirs that supplied Bolton’s drinking water. But because an ‘extraordinary controversy’ had been aroused by the proposal, Bolton’s Health Committee met on 24 July 1968 to discuss ‘fluoridation of the water supplies’. When the full council met on 7 August 1968, Bolton Borough Council decided to defer fluoridation for the time being and ordered a referendum to be held on the question of fluoridation. The results, announced to the Health Committee on 23 October 1968, were:4
For fluoridation |
23,596 (27 per cent) |
Against fluoridation |
63,290 (73 per cent) |
This referendum is important as the only referendum ever carried out in Britain to assess the wishes of the population on the matter of fluoridation. It was also important for another reason: the 82 per cent turnout was one of the highest ever seen in the town for any purpose, even higher than most turnouts for a general election. This demonstrated the strength of feeling about, and overwhelming distrust of, fluoridation.
In 1998, after the British government published its Green Paper, Our Healthier Nation, there was again widespread concern among the people of Bolton. As a consequence, the Bolton Evening News conducted a telephone poll of its readers. This time, a staggering 95 per cent of callers were against fluoride.5
North-west England
Calderdale was to be fluoridated in the 1970s. In 1978, Dennis Edmondson alone collected 23,000 signatures on a petition against fluoridation in that town. As a result, Calderdale Town Council obtained an injunction preventing the addition of fluoride. Since then, almost every local council in the north-west has voted against fluoridation. Feeling was so strong that, on an initiative of Barrow-in-Furness Town Council, a consortium of sixteen councils, to be called North West Councils Against Fluoridation (NWCAF), was set up to fight fluoridation. Today, twenty-eight of the thirty-one city and district councils north of High Peak in Derbyshire are members of NWCAF. The north-western health authorities wanted fluoridation, but North West Water turned down their requests repeatedly for four years. In June 1992 the company told the health authorities that the ‘councils’ views were the opinion of the majority of their customers’. The very next day, a dentist in a radio interview about this decision accused NWCAF of killing children!
Manchester
Manchester, Salford and Trafford councils are not members of NWCAF. In a Manchester Evening News telephone poll in November 1998, 92 per cent voted against fluoridation.6
A poll conducted in Southampton and south Hampshire in 1997 found 90 per cent of people were against fluoridation.7
Leicester
Leicestershire Health Authority voted to add fluoride to drinking water in 1989. There was an uproar when the then chairman, George Farnham, used his casting vote to force through the decision – as he sat there with a bottle of mineral water in front of him.
The Leicester Mercury conducted the first telephone poll in its history on this issue – and received 66,000 calls. ‘Of all the phone polls we have had over the years, it was by far and away the biggest we have ever had.’ The decision of the Health Authority was overturned when 94 per cent of callers opposed fluoridation.8
Glasgow
The result of an ‘extensive’ Glasgow Evening Times poll in August 2000 was a 98 per cent vote against fluoridation. This beat a similar ‘massive’ poll by the Glasgow Evening Times in October 1999, in which 97 per cent were against fluoridation. Liz Vaughan, spokesperson for North West Councils and Northern Ireland Councils Against Fluoridation, said:
This is another indicator to government that the public rejects their claims of safety. Furthermore, the people view such a practice – which is mass medication without consent – as grossly unethical. It seems that the BDA and the British Fluoridation Society do not understand the word ‘NO’, and their determination to fluoridate the drinking water is now being widely seen as public harassment.
Twenty-five of the twenty-six elected councils across Northern Ireland rejected fluoridation after the last public consultation in Northern Ireland ended on 12 April 1996. They were supported by the four Health and Social Services Councils, MPs, the Ulster Farmers’ Union, the Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers’ Association, environment groups, anglers, and the people. But despite this emphatic No to fluoridation in Northern Ireland, it is still pressed on people there.
In 1998, following two years of discontent with an officialdom that refused to answer questions or give adequate responses, the patience of the people of two small but significant towns, Holywood and Tandragee, finally ran out, and they picketed the government buildings at Stormont. ‘We have exhausted every democratic avenue and it is out of frustration that we are knocking on Tony Worthington’s door,’ said Walter Graham. ‘More than half of the adult population concerned has asked for fluoridation to stop. They are over 18 and taxpayers and they don’t want fluoridation – even if it were good for them.’
A subsequent statement released by the Department of Health said that fluoridation continued to be part of the dental health promotion policy. What kind of Minister for Health ignores such strong representations in a supposedly free and democratic country?
The Channel Islands
Residents in Jersey and Guernsey asked the National Pure Water Association for urgent help after the islands’ health departments began proclaiming the benefits of artificial fluoridation. They were not just worried about their own health. Channel Islanders were also worried that tourists from unfluoridated France and Germany might be reluctant to visit the Channel Islands if the health departments went ahead with their plans.
Teletext poll
In 1999, Channel 4’s Teletext conducted a telephone poll. More than 700 people called in. That might not seem a lot, but a spokesman for Teletext said that, for them, it was a huge response showing the strength of feeling there was on the issue. In this poll, 97 per cent were against fluoridation.
Ireland
Even though fluoridation is a legal requirement in Ireland, the people don’t want it. Dublin City Council adopted this motion on 1 March 1999:
That this City Council calls on the Manager to remove fluoride from the drinking water supply in light of scientific evidence that the health risks associated with fluoride may well outweigh any benefit from reduction in dental caries. Most European countries do not use fluoride in their water supplies and have at least as good a record on oral hygiene as Ireland and requests the Taoiseach to set up an expert technical group to review the medical, dental and environmental effects of fluoridation of water.
Donegal County Council passed the following motion on 13 December 1999: ‘That Donegal County Council would suspend the fluoridation of water pending the outcome of an investigation by the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children on the effects of fluoridation in water’.
Sligo County Council, on 6 March 2000, unanimously adopted the motion: ‘That Sligo County Council calls upon the Government and Minister for Health to amend the Health (Fluoridation of Water Supplies) Act 1960, so as to allow local authorities to make the final decision on whether drinking water should be fluoridated’.
Clare County Council, on 28 November 2000, passed the following motion: ‘This council seeks through Longford County Council and the Midland Health Board to have the Health (Fluoridation of Water Supplies) Act 1960, which requires the mandatory fluoridation of water, revoked by the Minister of Health and Children in the National Interest.’
Leitrim County Council passed the following motion unanimously on 4 December 2000: ‘That this council calls on the Minister of Health to immediately amend the Act which makes the fluoridation of water mandatory and that the minister allows the county councils to make their own decision in the matter’.
But such motions were overruled by the Irish Department of Health.9
Conclusion
The results of polls not commissioned by the BFS totally contradict claims that the public supports fluoridation. With all polls, one needs to keep in mind that the results of a poll depend very much upon the way a question is asked.
People are learning that there are two sides to the fluoride debate. According to a 1990 letter from the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, ‘[T]he statistics are that three out of four fluoridation referenda fail.’ The letter highlighted this point by suggesting that communities wishing to fluoridate should ‘avoid a referendum’.10
1.Dentists urge public to ignore unscientific claims of anti-fluoride groups. British Dental Association news release, WWW-PR22. 13 November 1996.
2.O’Brien M. Children’s dental health in the United Kingdom. Social Survey Division, Office of Population, Census and Surveys (OPCS), 1993.
3.Lowry RJ, Thompson B, Lennon MA. How much do the general public want to be involved in decisions on implementing water fluoridation? Br Dent J 2000; 188: 500–2.
4.Fluoridation. Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health, County Borough of Bolton, UK, 31 December 1968: 168.
5.Battle plan: Bolton to host summit talks on compulsory fluoridation. Bolton Evening News, 20–21 February 1999.
6.Manchester Evening News, 2 November 1998 and 4 November 1998.
7.Outrage over water probe. Southern Daily Echo (United Kingdom), 21 October 1997.
8.Preparing to sink their teeth into new battle. Leicester Mercury, 17 July 2000.
9.Fluoride in our water: are we brushing with danger? Special report. Irish Independent, 29 March 2000.
10.http://www.fluoridealert.org/low-profile.htm. Accessed 26 August 2000.