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Don’t wage fluoride battle with outlandish claims

Many of us do not favour the City of Red Deer continuing to add fluorides to the public water supply.

Many of us do not favour the City of Red Deer continuing to add fluorides to the public water supply.

But it does not help the arguments to make preposterous statements about the dangers of fluorides, as did Craig MacKenzie in the Advocate letters on Oct. 24.

I googled the person he quoted, Dr. David Kennedy, and followed up on the ideas that “placing one’s hand in fluoride water” will cause death, and that a “pea-sized” amount of fluoride toothpaste will also lead to one’s demise.

These claims are actually misquotes of two people who wrote anonymously to a blog on fluorides, not Kennedy, who is a respected lab researcher at a university.

For instance, the “death by pea-sized toothpaste” claim can be seen at http://dentistry.about.com/u/ua/basicdentalcare/fluorideinpublicwater.01.htm signed by “Guest Idee.” That entry actually reports that some toothpaste containers say if you swallow that quantity of toothpaste, you should call the poison control centre.

Given the contents of any kind of toothpaste, fluoride or not (plastic abrasive particles, bleach, sugar, flavourings, preservatives, colourants, binders), the poison control centre will probably be able to advise whether the volume ingested will harm you at all, and what, if anything, to do about it.

Mostly they tell you to spit it out in future.

Fluoride use has enough actual scientific critics and research, whether one accepts them or not. Let’s stick to facts, and even supportable opinions.

Adding outlandish and easily disprovable claims subtracts from the cause of ending fluoride additives.

Ken Collier

Red Deer