Fluoride Action Network & Safe Food Campaign

6 March 2007

Fluoride Action Network & Safe Food Campaign

Babies and fluoride Babies should not be given formula made up with fluoridated tap water. Two groups are requesting the Hutt City Council to issue a warning to all parents and caregivers not to use fluoridated tap water when making infant milk formula. This follows a warning guideline issued late last year from the American Dental Association and also this year from the Centres for Disease Control in the United States.

The two groups, Fluoride Action Network and Safe Food Campaign, are planning to protest with placards outside a Hutt City Council meeting in Wainuiomata on Wednesday 7th March at 5.15pm. The Fluoride Action Network will be speaking at the meeting at 5.30pm.

"We believe the Hutt City Council has a duty to convey this message to the wider community so that babies in the Hutt City district are not harmed by the council's decision to add this chemical to the public water supply," stated Mark Atkin of the Fluoride Action Network. "We further maintain that it is Councils' responsibility to make unfluoridated water freely available to parents who require it for making up infant formula."

"An infant receiving fluoridated tap water receives unsafe levels of fluoride," said Mary Byrne of the Fluoride Action Network. "Such overexposure to fluoride during the first year of life poses the greatest risk of fluorosis for both baby and permanent teeth. It is in the Hutt City Council's interests to act now and avoid potential legal liability later. The fluoride issue won't go away until the Council stops putting fluoride into our water," added Ms Byrne.

"Artificially fluoridated water does not reduce dental decay - just consider all the countries that have never fluoridated their water supplies and still have reducing dental decay, and Timaru, where the same reduction has been seen since fluoridation stopped," declared Alison White of the Safe Food Campaign. "We are tired of the continual presence and promotion of a poison in our water supply, especially when it has the capability of harming the most vulnerable group in the society - our babies."

ENDS

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