I welcome Professor Paul Connett. I apologise for the delay and invite him to make his presentation on the recommendations contained in the report on water fluoridation. I draw his attention to the fact that while committee members have absolute privilege, the same privilege does not apply to witnesses coming before the committee. I also remind members of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House, or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.
Water Fluoridation: Presentation.
Professor Paul Connett
I thank the Chairman and committee members for inviting me. I have been in Ireland a few days and lost my voice while travelling around but will do my best.
Committee members should have two documents in front of them, including 50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation, about which I will talk more. They will also receive a copy of the scientific critique of the fluoridation forum report, prepared by me and ten other scientists and circulated by the group, VOICE. They will also have received a printed copy of my opening remarks.
I was invited to present my scientific concerns on fluoridation to the forum in October 2000. This caused considerable consternation among citizens opposed to fluoridation because they believed this forum would not be objective. I said as much when I made my opening comments. I said the way it could demonstrate to me and the Irish people that it was objective was to give a written response to 50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation. The panel agreed to do so and set up a sub-committee with this aim in mind.
As the months went by, there was discussion about the progress being made. However, after 18 months it announced that it did not have time to address the 50 reasons given but that the bulk of them would be addressed in the report when published. They were not. It did not address them. I find this particularly shocking. If the tables were turned and I was given 50 reasons to support fluoridation and asked, as a scientist, to respond to them, it would take me a few days or a few weeks at most. We have now waited three and a half years for a response. This suggests that there is no response and that it cannot defend this practice.
When the report finally appeared, it presented a totally inadequate analysis which was not very scientific. 296 pages, only 17 dealt with health concerns which one would have thought would have been the primary purpose of such a report. Of the 17 pages to which I refer, 16 dealt with other people's reviews. It was a second-hand report. Only one page was devoted to original studies which related to one issue, namely, the increase in hip fractures.
When I was invited to make a presentation to the forum, I spoke about hip fractures and pointed out the inadequacies of one of the studies used, namely, the Phipps report. However, my comments were not mentioned. I presented to the forum another hip fracture study by Li and others which has subsequently been published but which was also not mentioned in its report. I also referred to the build-up of fluoride in the pineal gland but my comments were again ignored.
I was flown to Ireland at taxpayers' expense, put up at a hotel and then flown to Cork. Why was I put to this trouble and the taxpayers put to this expense if everything I said was going to be ignored? The forum did not have to agree with me. It could have said the study Dr. Connett had presented was weak, etc. but to completely ignore it was a disservice to me, the Irish people and science.
I do not have time to deal with all 50 reasons to oppose fluoridation. It is a relatively short document and I hope members will take the time, of which they probably do not have much, to read it. However, I wish to draw their attention to six concerns.
Before doing so, I will bring to a conclusion matters in respect of the pineal gland and the study by Jennifer Luke, an extraordinary study published as a PhD thesis in 1997. Half of it was subsequently published in 2001. What she discovered was that the pineal gland - the small gland between the two hemispheres of the brain not protected by the blood-brain barrier - had a high diffusion rate of blood and was a calcifying tissue, laying down the same crystals of calcium hydroxy apatite as the bones and teeth. She conjectured that this would be a magnet for fluoride and studied the pineal glands of 11 corpses in England and discovered that they contained huge concentrations of fluoride. Until then, everybody had been told that the only place fluoride accumulated was in bones, teeth and hard tissues. However, here it was accumulating in a little gland at an average of 9,000 parts per 1 million on the crystals.
Jennifer Luke also carried out studies on animals and discovered that there was a lower production of melatonin, the important hormone produced by the pineal gland which is vital to the mechanism of the biological clock. She also discovered that animals reached puberty earlier, which is completely consistent with the lowering of melatonin levels. Her study is extremely important and should be addressed by governments which are putting fluoride into everyone's drinking water.
The study by Li considered hip fracture rates among elderly people in six Chinese villages from concentrations of fluoride ranging from 0.25 parts per million to eight parts per million. No difference in the hip fracture rates was discovered in samples where the amount was below one part per million. However, in a village where the concentration was 1.5 parts per million, the rates doubled. This finding was not statistically significant. However, when the village where the concentration was above four parts per million was investigated, it emerged that hip fracture rates tripled. Therefore, the doubling of the rate in the previous village was a real result, even if it was not statistically significant. What we have here, as in other places, is a ridiculously small margin of safety, particularly where one is dealing with something where the dose cannot be controlled.
I now wish to deal with the six concerns to which I referred. It is important to note that the level of fluoride in mothers' milk is very low and ranges from 0.005 parts per million to 0.01 parts per million. Remembering that fluoride is put in drinking water at one part per million, this means that a mother who bottle feeds her baby is going to give him or her up to 200 times the level nature intended. Evolution, after millions of years of experimentation, created the best meal for babies. However, we are putting much more fluoride into them, through the formula they drink, than nature intended. This is extraordinarily dangerous and was a cause of sufficient concern to Dr. Arvid Carlsson in Sweden, who won the Nobel prize for medicine in 2000, to oppose fluoridation in that country and lead the successful campaign to have it stopped.
One of the reasons Dr. Carlsson gave for opposing fluoridation was that he was concerned about exposing babies' brains and other developing tissues to much higher levels of fluoride than nature had intended. His statement has since become rather prophetic because there is a series of studies on animals which show that fluoride affects the brain. It affects animal behaviour and causes damage to the brain. There are also at least five studies from China which indicate a lowering of IQ in children associated with natural fluoride. The most recent study by Xiang and his co-workers shows a lowering of IQ with fluoride levels of just 1.8 parts per million. This, again, is a ridiculously low margin of safety if water is being fluoridated at one part per million.
Another striking study about the brain was that carried out by Varner and co-workers in which rats were dosed with water containing fluoride at one part per million for a year. They discovered that it caused kidney and brain damage, a greater uptake of aluminium to their brains and the formation of beta amyloid deposits characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. That is an extraordinary result. Usually, one hears people say these are high-dose experiments in animals but in this instance the water only contained one part per million of fluoride.
This is of particular concern for Ireland because quite a number of counties are exceeding the safe aluminium level - 0.2 parts per million. In some instances the level is 500% higher. Exceeding the aluminium level is dangerous and a cause for concern. In conjunction with fluoridation, it is a cause for even greater concern because aluminium and fluoride form a complex which clearly facilitates the uptake of aluminium to the brain, as demonstrated by Varner. There are 800 studies in the biochemical literature which indicate that aluminium fluoride is capable of short-circuiting the messaging system in the body. I refer here to the system that takes messages which arrive at the outside of the tissue from water soluble messengers such as hormones, neurotransmitters and growth factors. These signals, if water soluble, cannot traverse the membrane because it is made of fat. They are, therefore, carried by G-proteins. Aluminium fluoride actually excites the signal and switches on the mechanism without the hormone, growth factor or neurotransmitter. This is a source of tremendous concern.
One of the nasty things fluoride does is to form complexes with metal irons such as calcium and magnesium that the body needs and can interfere with natural processes such as enzymes. As illustrated in the case of aluminium, it can also transport these metals, including lead, to where they otherwise would not go by forming these complexes. In two studies carried out in the United States Masters and Coplan have discovered an increased uptake of lead into children's blood when the fluoridating agent is either hexafluorosilicic acid or the sodium salt of hexafluorosilicic acid. This is important for Ireland because the fluoridating agent used here is hexafluorosilicic acid.
What must we do with all of this information on possible harmful effects and the red flags being waved? What would normally happen is that a risk-benefit analysis would be carried out. This would ask whether the risks overwhelm or counteract the benefits. If one looks at the benefits side of the equation - many scientists have independently reviewed the literature - those benefits have been wildly exaggerated. Most countries in Europe do not fluoridate their water supplies and their people's teeth are just as good, if not better, than those of their Irish and American counterparts. There is no evidence to suggest that ceasing to fluoridate causes an increase in tooth decay. One of the reasons for this is that, as has been demonstrated by many dental researchers and conceded by the Centre for Disease Control, the benefits of fluoride, such as they are, are topical, not systemic. In other words, one does not have to swallow to get the benefits. It is, therefore, a no-brainer. If one does not have to swallow it, why is it being put in drinking water?
Why not take advantage of the fact that fluoride is universally available in a topical form, namely toothpaste? Everybody in Ireland, unless he or she goes to some lengths, uses fluoridated toothpaste. Therefore, people here get more fluoride than they need. I have not used fluoridated toothpaste for eight years. However, if people want fluoride, it is there. The advantage of that strategy is that people can make an informed choice. If citizens want to expose themselves, or their children, to fluoride, they can do so voluntarily by going to any supermarket or pharmacy and buying fluoridated toothpaste.
The American and Irish Governments, or the governments of the six other countries in the world where more than 50% of the people drink fluoridated water, should not impose it on people without their informed consent. This is a violation of medical ethics and of human rights. Although the results are not all in, I believe it is also a violation of the Nuremberg Convention, because it is a human experiment. A critical part of that convention is that if people are to conduct human experiments, they must get the consent of those victims.
I hope this committee will have what it takes to advise the Government to halt fluoridation forthwith. At the least, it should decide that if a county water supply exceeds aluminum levels, then no further fluoride should be added because that could cause even more serious problems.
Thank you.
Like many members of the public, as I am not a scientist I am at the mercy of experts. Like economists and doctors, scientists differ and we are bombarded with information on both sides of any argument. I have an instinctive antipathy to the notion of mass medication. There is enough evidence to give us cause for concern and some reason to pause for thought. We should, at the least, require that the precautionary principle applies in the decision we make on fluoride.
I know that those who oppose fluoride regard the forum report as suspect, to put it mildly. The report did not give fluoride an entirely clean bill of health. It tempered its remarks by making some recommendations which in themselves give cause for concern. The real concern is that although the report has been out for two years, none of its recommendations has been implemented. The report called for an expert body to advise the Minister on ongoing research, but that has not happened.
A simple measure such as reducing the amount of fluoride added to water could have been implemented by lunchtime, without difficulty, but it has not been done. I discussed the matter with the health boards. The ERHA spends approximately €500,000 on fluoride. Even if it is not doing us any harm, we do not need to be adding it; it is a huge waste of money. There has been no increase in monitoring at the reservoirs and water distribution centres, as advised in the report.
Would these measures make a difference or help in any way if they were implemented? It appears to me that the forum, by making those recommendations, did not give fluoride a clean bill of health. We should be dancing up and down in fury because none of the recommendations has been implemented.
Professor Connett
I certainly think the committee should be dancing up and down in fury on many of those issues. As the Deputy said, it would be easy to reduce the level to 0.7% tomorrow. It would be equally easy just to turn off the tap. Of all the environmental health issues that confront us today, this is the easiest one to solve. It can be done overnight. If the political will is there, the tap can be turned off.
To return to the Deputy's first comment and question concerning how difficult it is for a person without a science background to reach a judgment when bombarded on both sides, I reiterate an invitation I gave to all the countries in the world which fluoridate water to debate the matter publicly with me. For eight years, I have sought a formal debate. I will come back to Ireland at my expense if the committee can get one of the most enthusiastic promoters of fluoridation, Dr. Mullen, or any of the others, to debate the matter with me on a public platform. Unfortunately, that does not happen. In the United States, the US environmental protection agency——
I am sorry to interrupt. There is a vote in the Dáil and we must attend. We will suspend for ten minutes.
Sitting suspended at 10.55 a.m. and resumed at 11.05 a.m.
Professor Connett
Chairman, I must point out there has been a mistake here. I am listed here as a professor of dentistry. I am not a dentist. I am professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology.
To conclude the point I was making, I would not have believed this but it is true that the United States Environmental Protection Agency, as part of its science forum of 6 May 2003, held a debate on fluoridation. They invited me, many weeks earlier, to participate in that debate and I agreed. They then spent the next five or six weeks trying to get somebody - anybody from Government, from dentistry or from the American Dental Association - to debate with me. They could not find one person in the country who was prepared to debate. The same would be the case in Ireland but if the committee can find somebody, I would be happy to debate. What does it tell one, if those who enthusiastically endorse something refuse the opportunity to meet their opponent in public?
I thank Professor Connett for coming before the committee. Like most members, I found his presentation helpful. I want to ask him a number of questions about the conclusions of the forum report. Would he comment on the idea of reducing to 0.7 ppm the amount of fluoride in the water? Would that have any beneficial effect on overall health? Why did they come to that conclusion? Considering the known benefits for the protection of teeth, would this change have any benefit at all?
What is the best way of measuring the level of fluoride in our bones, blood, etc.? As Professor Connett is probably aware, there have been no health studies carried out under the Health Act introduced over 40 years ago, although a section in that Act states that health studies should be carried out. In Professor Connett's experience, have health studies been carried out in other countries to show the level of fluoride in people's bodies? What is the best way of doing that? It is something that this committee would like to do, even among ourselves. If we, as elected representatives, could be tested for the amount of fluoride, as the Chairman has agreed to do, that would be a very valuable exercise.
I want Professor Connett to comment on the question of the fluoridation of bottled feed for babies. Has he read the transcripts forwarded to him of the committee's questioning of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland on this matter and how they came to their conclusions? Dr. Hardy Limeback came before this committee previously and spoke strongly about fluoridated bottled feed. I thought his recommendations had been taken on board, and clearly they had been for a period by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, but they changed their minds. I ask Professor Connett to comment on that change of mind by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.
Professor Connett
Let me respond as to why I think they have suggested lowering the fluoride levels. The one absolute and undeniable aspect of fluoridation and fluoride is that it causes dental fluorosis, a mottling of the enamel. This is where the whole fluoridation experiment came from. It occurred while trying to find out what caused mottling of the enamel in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Finally in 1931 they found that the cause of this mottling in Colorado, Texas and other places was fluoride. In the process of doing that they thought they found that the children who had dental fluorosis had less tooth decay. They then wondered if they could find a level at which one could minimise tooth decay without causing too much dental fluorosis, in which case they could then add that level to the water. The optimum level that they came up with was one part per million - 1 ppm.
It was obviously a bargain in which there was both positive and negative. The negative was dental fluorosis, but they thought they could limit dental fluorosis at 1 ppm in the water to 10% of the population in its mildest form. What we find today in optimally fluoridated areas in the United States is that at least 30% of children have dental fluorosis on at least two teeth and even in non-fluoridated areas 20% of children have dental fluorosis. This clearly indicates, even by their own standards, that children are being over exposed to fluoride. Since the experiment started we are getting fluoride from many other sources, particularly from two sources. The first of these is dental products. It is very difficult to control a child's swallowing reflex with toothpaste. The second is that once one puts it in the water, one gets it in other things such as processed foods and beverages made with fluoridated water.
While there is a limit to how much water people will drink, as the committee will be aware there is no limit to how much beer people will drink. Drinking beer is a social activity. It is not a thirst quencher; it is a social quencher.
The end result is that the York review, an English survey published in 2000, found that 48% of children had dental fluorosis in optimally fluoridated areas worldwide and 12.5% of those had it in an unacceptably visible form. The figures in Ireland are similar. They have admitted the end point of dental fluorosis and claimed that one could lower the fluoride intake further and still get protection against tooth decay. It is stated in the report that one needs at least 0.8 ppm to protect teeth but this is now being lowered to 0.7 ppm, which is an inconsistency. It is a compromise, a half measure, a way of giving in to the opposition to fluoridation in order that it will give a little. The dental establishment in Ireland is unwilling to admit that it was wrong, that times have changed. It was a different age when fluoridation started. We had great confidence in all types of chemicals to do all kinds of wonderful things such as DDT, PCBs, asbestos and lead in gasoline, all of which have gone by the wayside, except the one substance called fluorine.
The second issue is what we should be measuring. The simplest thing to measure is the fluoride level in urine because that will tell what one's daily dose of fluoride is, which is about half of what is being ingested. If one measures the fluoride level in urine and multiplies by two, one will have an idea of the total fluoride intake. Up to 50% of all the fluoride we ingest each day accumulates in our bones. It is not what fluoride does in one day, one week, one month or even one year but its effects on one's bones over a lifetime.
The earliest symptoms of fluoride poisoning of the bones are identical to arthritis. One in three Americans has arthritis and we do not know what causes it in many forms. If one asks one's doctor the causes of arthritis, he or she will say he or she does not know but it may be related to ageing. What is happening in the ageing process is the steady accumulation of fluoride in our bones. If one gets more than this, the bones become brittle. That is the concern about increased hip fractures, of which the epidemiological studies are mixed. There is no question but that it accumulates in our bones.
As a scientist interested in public health, I find it extraordinary that one of the things we have not done worldwide is to systematically and comprehensively collect data from bones. Every time someone dies, we should be asking the next of kin if we can take a little piece of bone to find out how much fluoride is there because then one cam get an idea of how much fluoride would be ingested if one lived in a fluoridated community for ten, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 years.
My son and I have surveyed the whole literature throughout the world in the past 50 years to see how many bone samples we could find. We found about 1,800, which is very small. We should have literally thousands, if not millions, to sample. What we have also found is that fluoride levels of individuals in fluoridated communities are reaching levels associated with bone damage in animals. We have a great deal of data on bones from India and China, which have naturally high levels of fluoride and where cases of skeletal fluorosis are numerous. There are several phases of skeletal fluorosis and we have people reaching the first levels of bone damage associated with skeletal fluorosis in communities which are fluoridated.
Even at this late stage, we should be collecting bone samples at autopsy stage throughout Ireland. One can take a bone sample from the ilium crest bone, probably the nearest bone to surface, but it is a little painful, which people would not want. The serum level will provide information. However, it would not be very helpful if one took only one serum level. What is in the serum triggers the G proteins. A survey of urine samples in different communities would also be useful, and cheap. Bone samples are absolutely critical.
On the issue of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, I saw the video-tape of the last meeting of the committee with Mr. McAuley and the FSAI. I was shocked. The initial recommendation was that women should be told not to bottle feed their babies with fluoridated tap water. To my way of thinking, that is a very sensible recommendation. On the one hand, it will reduce the level of dental fluorosis and be protective against the lowering of intelligence quotient and those other concerns. Apparently, after submitting this statement, things happened behind the scenes following telephone calls and they rewrote that document, which is unfortunate. Their final recommendation was that women should be encouraged to breast-feed. I absolutely agree that women should be encouraged to breast-feed but that is not giving the type of warning signal recommended in the original document.
What is the difference between industrial and pharmaceutical grade product in regard to fluoridation?
Professor Connett
There are three differences. First, industrial grade product is much cheaper than pharmaceutical grade. If one used pharmaceutical grade to fluoridate water, it would be cost prohibitive. That is a big difference.
Second, they are different chemicals. What is put in toothpaste is a fluoride ion, either sodium fluoride or a mono phosphate. The chemical used in Ireland is hexofluorosalysic acid, H2SIF6. As a chemist, it is much easier to remember the formula than the name. This has never been toxicologically tested in long-term animal studies. The assumption has always been that when hexofluorosalysic acid comes into conjunction with a greatly increased volume of water, the equilibrium will shift and it will be converted into free fluoride ion. When one neutralises the excess acid, essentially one will have sodium fluoride.
On this basis they have said there is no need to test it because essentially it is the same as sodium fluoride. However, a PhD thesis in Germany indicates that in terms of physiological pH one still has two fluoride ions attached to the silicon. Therefore, we are giving people silicon fluoride complexes as best as we can see but this has to be unravelled. The fact that this has not been tested is a shocker but true. The US Environmental Protection Agency has admitted that it has never been tested.
The third issue is that, being an industrial grade, there are all kinds of other nasties. Ireland gets its fluoride from Spain and while I cannot talk about the Spanish process, I can talk about the American one. For years and years the phosphate fertiliser industry polluted the environment with two nasty gases, hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride. This results from the process of treating phosphate rock with sulphuric acid, which drives off two gases, hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride, and makes phosphoric acid. Hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride come off as gases and damage the environment with the result that wet scrubbers are required to capture the hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride. With the wet scrubbers one gets a 23% or 24% solution of hexafluorosalysic acid but one also gets other contaminants in the phosphate rock such as arsenic, lead and cadmium and even uranium decay products, which rock was actually mined in Florida for uranium in respect of which one gets radioactive isotopes.
What concerns many is that when we put industrial grade in our drinking water we are also getting the waste products. I will state the counter argument. Under international law, one cannot dump this product in the sea. Under US federal law, it cannot be put in streams and rivers at the concentration of 23 parts per hundred in the scrubbing liquid. One needs 180,000 gallons of water to dilute the 23% solution to 1 part per million. Where will one find 180,000 gallons of water to dilute each gallon of liquid? The answer is the public water supply. This is perceived by some but not all as a vehicle for hazardous waste management which is very advantageous to the company involved, which will pay a great deal of money to get rid of this as hazardous waste. Now, it course, they can sell this material. The counter argument is that when one has diluted it at a ratio of 180,000:1, the levels of arsenic, lead and cadmium, etc., will be lower than any water standard one could come up with.
I am concerned about how the levels of fluoride are regulated. Exactly how is it administered? I am led to believe that in some council areas they take it out of a bag and that one fellow might put in one shovel full or two shovels full. Is there a new way of regulating this?
Professor Connett
There are three products which are usually used to fluoridate water. Sodium fluoride is a solid which would have to be added by shovel. Sodium hexifluorosilicate is also a solid; it is a salt. It, too, would have to be administered in a similar way but hexafluorosilicic acid is a liquid.
Professor, there is another vote in the Dáil. We will have to suspend the sitting for ten minutes or so.
Sitting suspended at 11.35 p.m. and resumed at 11.50 p.m.
I suggest that we bank a number of questions from Senator Leyden and Deputy Connolly.
The first time the professor was here he was a guest of the Government. Now he is a guest of the Green Party but nevertheless very welcome. I was very impressed by his presentation. I am also glad that we have clarified that he is a professor of chemistry as opposed to dentistry. As former chairman of a committee set up in 1990 or thereabouts in the Department of Health and Children when I was Minister of State, I can say all of the dentists on that committee strongly recommended fluoridation. As a layperson and the chairman of the committee which produced that report, I was in favour of fluoridation. However, I would like to disown that report since I am now a convert on the road to Damascus. In the light of my experience since as chairman of the Western Health Board, I would not now put fluoride in water had that not happened in the 1950s. At the time there was very poor dental treatment and health. Not everyone had a dentist.
I am sorry but this is an opportunity for questions. There are time constraints. We have another meeting at 12 o'clock.
The fluoridation forum report of 2002 is defective and should be re-examined. The Government should seriously consider removing fluoride from water. As Senator Feighan said, the way in which it has been treated is very unprofessional. Every water scheme is treated differently, since different people are responsible. The Chairman may also be aware that, where fluoride is not in the water, the health boards bring fluoride to treat children in schools. This is also very questionable. More research is needed in this regard. The authorities in Sweden decided to remove fluoride from water schemes and I say quite openly that I will be campaigning for the same in Ireland. It is about time that we took action. I have no real questions.
I am drinking water and trust it is pure. It is supplied by a county council and one believes its claims of what is in it. However, we have no labelling for it. We talked about labelling GM foods but there is no way of labelling water. I wonder about bottled water. Do we have to put labels on it stating it contains fluoride and so on?
The professor stated he had been invited by the Government as an expert. Were other experts invited? If so, what was their opinion? Is this not a form of mass medication put into our water irrespective of whether we want it? We are told that it is good for us but is there any way of controlling the dosage? Some will drink one glass per day, while others may use it as a form of detoxification, thinking that what they are doing is good for their bodies and that the more one drinks, the better. Can our bodies excrete excesses? If so, where do they go? Perhaps we will hear that some health committee has heard that, as a means of treating obesity, we can add something to the water. We are moving in a very dangerous direction. It may have been necessary in the 1950s or 1960s but we are now past that point.
I would like to know about our EU colleagues. How do they treat their water supplies? Do they see this as a means of putting fluoride into people and dealing with teeth? What standards do they have? What standards do EU dentists have? How many of our county councils are breaching the limits for safe levels of fluoride in water?
Professor Connett
Is it a form of mass medication? Absolutely, since one is dosing the whole population. It opens the door to other things, in principle, but even with things that we would all agree would be rather good such as vitamin C, governments around the world have never repeated this exercise. They have never used the public water supply to deliver a nutrient or medication of any kind. There was a short experiment with iodide before fluoridation but that was not successful since people ingested too much.
The Deputy's second issue was whether one could control the dose. That is absolutely impossible since people drink different quantities of water and also get fluoride from different beverages and foodstuffs. Some young girls are encouraged to drink a great deal of water. Some women drink a great deal of water to avoid having to eat too much and keep slim and trim. Athletes also drink a great deal of water, as do people with certain medical problems such as diabetes. There is no way that one can control the dose.
The kidney does its best to get rid of as much fluoride as it can, about 50% of our daily intake, but the other 50% goes to our bones where it accumulates. As I mentioned in my testimony, the accumulation in the bones is one thing - dentists have been content to say one need not worry about fluoride in soft tissues, since it goes to the hard tissues, being sequestered in the bone - but that may not be a good thing over a lifetime. We have also now discovered that it accumulates in the pineal gland. I was shocked when that information was ignored.
In the European Union, England fluoridates 10% of its water supplies. Spain has a few per cent of its supplies fluoridated. The rest of Europe, if it started fluoridation, stopped it. Holland had an experiment with it and stopped it. Sweden had one community fluoridated and stopped it. Western Germany had one town, Kassel, fluoridated, and stopped it. When East and West Germany amalgamated, water supplies in East Germany were fluoridated but it has now stopped. Supplies in the Czech Republic were also fluoridated but it has now stopped. Supplies in the vast majority of countries in Europe are not fluoridated, and if one examines the data on tooth decay for 12 year olds available from the World Health Organisation, one sees that their teeth are just as good, if not better, than their counterparts in Ireland or any fluoridated community.
The problem has been that one puts fluoride in the water, examines the matter 20 years later and sees that the level of tooth decay has receded, attributing it to the fluoride. However, if one looks at the countries in question since the 1960s, one sees that the level of tooth decay has been coming down in all of them just as rapidly or even more so than in Ireland. The reason is standards of living. There is a closer relationship between teeth and the standard of living which relates to diet, dental hygiene and better parental control over children owing to their having more time. That is what Ireland is seeing. The level of tooth decay has come down owing to a better standard of living.
Sitting in the Visitors Gallery today we are honoured to have Ms Gladys Ryan, who in 1963 took this issue to the Supreme Court to try to stop it but, unfortunately, was unsuccessful. However, her issue remains with us today. The Government has no right to impose medication on the individual, which is what is happening here. I thank Ms Ryan for doing what she did and I am glad that she is here to witness proceedings. I hope this is the beginning of the end.
I also welcome Ms Ryan. We are delighted to see her so hale and hearty and still fighting the good fight.
The meeting has been very interesting. I am sorry about the interruptions but such is life in Parliament. From here, we must pass on what has transpired today to the Department of Health and Children and seek a response. We will also pass it on to the expert committee for a response to the various matters raised. Ultimately, that great debate might take place.
The joint committee adjourned at 12.05 p.m.