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Label anti-fluoride campaign properly

Let us dispense with the niceties and discuss plainly what is happening here. “Anti-government hysteria masquerading as citizen concern” is the appropriate title for the “Yes on 1A” campaign.

This issue has a proud and long-standing tradition of attracting the ‘don’t tread on me’ crowd to its banner. My John Birch member grandparents actually believed fluoridation was a communist mind-control plot engineered by President Eisenhower. There are current members of Congress of the far-right persuasion who still peddle this preposterous theory.

The issue has decades worth of data collected proving no link between proper fluoridation and disease. The 2006 National Academy of Sciences study that Jim Forleo sites in his “Vote ‘for’ 1A” column (Herald, Mar. 12) does discuss many links to health problems caused by levels in excess of 4 milligrams per liter of sodium fluoride; lucky our water contains 0.7.

Do these people seriously believe that our city government, the National Cancer Institute, and American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry are intentionally and knowingly allowing us to be slowly poisoned?

All of the elements listed in that article are all found in trace amounts in numerous products under every sink in town. If years of water fluoridation had caused all the various health issues the campaign proposes, surely it should be able to generate a lengthy parade of our fellow citizens with these ailments and proof water fluoridation caused them. The vote would be a landslide if they could, but they can’t.

It all sounds like garden variety anti-government paranoia to me. The anti-vaccine controversy followed the same path. Lot’s of baseless “facts” designed to scare people silly put forward about a public health program followed by a lot of sick kids.

If you’re threatened by fluoride in your water, you can buy a filter, drill a well or petition the city to buy it from a different source. It’s bad enough we have a president who likes to advance his agenda by shamelessly exploiting people’s fears about protecting their families. Let’s keep that kind of circus act out of our city please.

Andrew Shelton

Durango