Eilish O’Regan, Health Correspondent (Typed from hard copy as not available in e-version of Irish Independent of 13/02/2010) Followed by response by VOICE Stop- Fluoride campaigner Robert Pocock

A study on the safety of fluoride in public drinking supplies will not be available until 2012 – more than five years after Green Party leader John Gormley promised to outlaw the chemical if elected to government. It is already nearly three years since the study was promised in the Programme for Government. But the examination of fluoride’s safety in drinking water will not even begin until this summer. Fluoride has been added to public water supplies for decades to protect teth by preventing cavities. But some researchers have concerns about its impact on human health. Mr Gormley campaigned strongly against fluoride before the election. He promised in March 2007 to ban fluoride from water supplies if he was electd to Government. It was subsequently agreed in the Programme for Government between Fiann Fáil and the Greens that a study would be undertaken on its safety. Health Minister Mary Harney confirmed yesterday that the Health Service Executive (HSE) will use a new monitoring programme to collect information regarding the total exposure in the population to fluoride.

The monitoring will begin in July and no details were available last night as to how it will work. But the results will not be available for another two years. As Green Party spokesman on health, John Gormley led a campaign against fluoridation. He maintained that countries throughout Europe which do not fluoridate have better dental health than Ireland. The Department of Health has defended the use of fluoride in drinking water and said there is no evidence to indicate it is not safe. A spokesman for Mr Gormley said he believes the study, when it is completed, will be comprehensive and he “awaits its results”.

Eilish O'Regan13/02/2010Followed by letter of 19th February 2010 in Irish Independent below. Act on fluoride study nowFriday February 19 2010Why wait another three years before John Gormley's fluoride safety study is ready (Irish Independent, February 13) when he, like the rest of Europe, has already found fluoridation to be both unsafe and ineffective?It took him years of researching the international evidence (because no independent studies have ever been done here), and he brought many outside experts to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, before he produced in late 2006 a report that won the approval of many committee members. However, for political reasons, it was blocked by the usual built-in Fianna Fail/PD committee majority. Fortunately, www.fluoridereports.com has made it available to the public on the internet so people can read its main conclusion. Fluoride in drinking water is not safe for bottle-fed babies and fluoridation should therefore stop. Since we have the lowest level of breast feeding in all of Europe at 40pc this advice was, and still is, very relevant to tens of thousands of parents.And, as if to highlight how urgent the issue remains, last December both the American Dental Association and the US Centres for Disease Control re-issued their original advice that parents should not make up formula with fluoridated tap water because of the risk of dental fluorosis.Our Health Minister, however, securely back in the Fianna Fail fold, recently issued a progress report on fluoride which described the permanent and untreatable disfigurement that is obvious dental fluorosis as "a cosmetic condition but not a health problem". With John Gormley's 2006 fluoridation report confirming that more and more Irish teenagers are now affected by this irreversible condition, a continuing cover-up of yet another health system failure is totally unacceptable.Robert PocockDUBLIN 2http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/act-on-fluoride-study-now-2070436.html