Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very useful debate. I thank Senators Mary Ann O'Brien, Feargal Quinn and Katherine Zappone for tabling the motion. I do not have all the answers but I stand here as a concerned citizen, a legislator and a mother. I have heard enough to say that we should be concerned and careful. We are talking about the public water supply in Ireland that is fluoridated without us having a choice in the matter. This water comes into every one of our homes. It flows out of the tap and we are told to drink at least four litres of it a day. In a way, if I were to take it to an extreme, we are medicated according to thirst. Looking at the wording of Senator O'Brien's motion, there is a fundamental human right of every Irish citizen to choose whether to have their water medicated with fluoride. Putting fluoride into the public water supply is giving us a drug without our consent. That is an imposition. The only basis on which it can be done is if it is totally safe to human health.

Senator O'Brien and others have raised a political argument in the context of us paying for water from today. That is another argument. Let us go back to the substantive issue, which is about human health. There is enough doubt raised in my mind to convince me that we have to research this area very carefully. The first question I would ask is whether countries without water fluoridation have significantly worse teeth than Irish citizens. The evidence I have looked at does not show that this is the case. The main case for the fluoridation of water is that it reduces tooth decay. Someone is wrong.

I was seconded to work in public health for a short time, and worked with a HSE doctor for whom I had huge respect. I have contacted him on this matter. He believes that the fluoridation of water is justified on public health grounds, but that it is an ethical issue, and that public health experts have not sufficiently acknowledged this. Here is a man giving a view that there is a lack of balance in this matter. He said it is critical that the Health Research Board reviews all the relevant evidence, and I would say urgently and within a timeframe. As Senator Ó Domhnaill said, there have not been regular periodic reviews. It has not been adequate at all.

The citizens' health is at risk in this regard. Children are in far greater danger because their body weight is much lower. There are shocking statistics that if a child were to eat a whole tube of toothpaste, which I know is unlikely, given his or her body weight and the amount of poison that would be ingested, he or she would die. Half a tube of toothpaste would put him or her in a coma. That is from the forum report to the Irish Government in 2002. We are all told to give children a pea-sized amount of toothpaste, but children under two do not have the reflexes to spit out and there is toothpaste with fluoride for children up to two years of age. In America, that very same toothpaste carries a warning that it is a poison. That is not on our toothpaste here.

A total of 98% of Europe has rejected fluoridation, so why are we still doing it? Are they all wrong while we are right? It is prohibited by law in Holland but compulsory in Ireland. There is a range of evidence that others have reflected in their arguments. It was interesting that the Israeli minister for health, Ms German, said Israel's decision not to go with the fluoridation of water was supported by World Health Organization statistics proving that tooth decay has declined equally in countries with no mandatory fluoridation. If that is the case, why do we have it? I am not saying Israel is the only example we should look at, as 98% of Europe is also not choosing it. There is an international movement away from fluoridation. It is becoming redundant and is being rejected in other countries.

Fluoride is a highly poisonous substance. It carries a poison warning in the United States. There are more than 1,000 scientific studies saying fluoride in water causes health damage, from osteoporosis to arthritis to gastrointestinal cancer to dementia. These are very serious claims which would contradict what Senator Barrett is saying. We urgently need a time-bound review of the research in this area. Will the Minister of State request the Health Research Board to conduct a systematic review of the evidence in this area urgently, and to report back to this House by January 2015 at the latest? It should answer the following questions. Do the citizens of countries without water fluoridation have significantly worse tooth decay than Irish citizens? Is there a greater incidence of diseases such as osteoporosis, bone cancer, lower IQ, and other major illnesses such as dementia in countries with fluoridated water versus countries without fluoridation? How effective is using fluoride in toothpaste, which can be spat out, versus a fluoridated water supply in preventing tooth decay?

I thank the Senators who tabled the motion for being thought-provoking. It is in the interests of public health. The very least we can do for each other is come up with some definitive answers that will help us inform future policy in this area.