MEDIA RELEASE

for release 21st September 2009

Battering for Victorian Government’s claim

that water fluoridation is safe

Last Friday the Victorian Government’s message that water fluoridation is safe took a battering with the publication of an extraordinary scientific statement in Mildura’s Sunraysia Daily (18/9).

The Victorian Government’s health chief Dr John Carnie has been the major promoter of water fluoridation around the Victorian towns of Geelong, Warrnambool, Castlemaine and Mildura over the last two years. He has convinced local authorities and even media in each town to support his program of enforced fluoridation without a vote of the people.

But now a group of 19 science and health professionals has thoroughly refuted every one of the government’s claims of safety for fluoride. In a full page, 1100 word article titled “Citizens are being misled” the professional group asked eight serious questions that Dr Carnie and the Health Minister will have enormous trouble answering in a professional manner.

“Citizens are being misled” was co-authored and signed by 19 professionals including

Professor Paul Connett, fluoride expert from New York and frequent guest speaker at conferences in Australia,

Prof Hardy Limeback, past president of the Canadian Association for Dental Research,

three members of the prestigious 12-member panel of the USA’s National Research Council that published a 507 page report on fluoride in drinking water in 2006,

and Australian experts including

Dr Andrew Harms, a former Australian Dental Association chief,

and Dr Doug Everingham, Federal Minister for Health 1972 to 1975.

The full page demolition of the idea that fluoridation is safe was called for by concerned citizens in Mildura in response to a 2^nd of September article in the Sunraysia Daily co-signed by Dr Carnie and the heads of Diabetes Australia and Kidney Health Australia.

The eight questions asked by Professor Connett and colleagues included:

“Is Dr Carnie not concerned that a bottle-fed baby in a fluoridated community will get 250 times more fluoride than nature intended?”

Two other key statements from the article are:

“In 2006, the US National Research Council published a 507-page review entitled Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Review of EPA’s Standards. The NRC authors, including three of those signing this article concluded that fluoride exposure was associated with damage to teeth, bone, the brain, the endocrine system and might also cause bone cancer.

AND

“For some inexplicable reason Dr Carnie and other fluoridation promoters appear more intent on protecting this outdated practice than protecting the health of the Australian people.

    “He and his colleagues can only get away with this because they have the power and prestige of their respective organizations. But opinions on this issue which are unsupported by scientific data cannot be taken seriously.”

The Geelong-based consumer group BAFF believes that fluoridation must be suspended in Geelong and across Victoria pending a proper enquiry into fluoridation safety that includes Dr Carnie and the Victorian Health Minister being put on a stand, under oath, to answer the questions asked by the international and Australian experts. The evidence is so strong that fluoridation is harming children and adults that it can no longer be covered up.

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*  For further comment:

David McRae, BAFF Vice-President  -  0431 622 823

Philip Robertson, chief researcher of Carmoora Clinic’s fluoride side-effects study  -  (03) 5223 2616

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