A letter written by a friend of mine. For more information, be sure to read the Scientific American article on Fluoride which you can get to from http://www.cent4dent.com/html/treatment/fluorosis.html
Just writing to share some good news…
Another legislative session in Pennsylvania has gone by and the
mandatory fluoridation bill failed to pass once again. In nearly
every legislative session in Pennsylvania in the last 20 years, there
has been an attempt to mandate fluoridation. See
http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/bills/bills.html
In the 2007-2008 session, the bill passed through two House
committees in 2007, but stalled and ultimately died in the
Appropriations committee, where it was assigned in November
2007. See
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billinfo/billinfo.cfm?syear=2007&sind=0&body=H&type=B&BN=1649
About 9-10% of PA water systems are fluoridated, service just over
half of PA water customers. The bill, if passed, would have made it
mandatory and would have increased the fluoridated population to around 97%.
In spite of an increasingly organized lobbying effort for the
mandate, the fluoride pushers still failed to get the bill through
one house (as they managed to do in 2006). In this past session, the
fluoride pushers in PA have a new lobbying coalition with a fancy
website at: http://www.pafluoridenow.org While they have a PA
fluoridation map that’s way cooler than ours
(http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/map/), they apparently don’t have
the political clout to overcome the opposition from water suppliers
and concerned water customers in PA. It seems that our activity in
2007 was enough to keep the bill dead through all of 2008.
For those who haven’t seen them, we’ve developed some good new web
content while working on this in the past couple of years. See:
10 Reasons to Oppose Mandatory Fluoridation
http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/reasons.html
“Drugs in the Water” Testimony before Philadelphia City Council
http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/philly/testimony.pdf
Water Fluoridation Chemical Shortages and Rising Costs
http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/chemicals/shortagesandrisingcosts.html
Is Water Fluoridation an Environmental Racism issue?
http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/ej.html
If history is a guide, they’ll be back with another bill early in
2009. Since I’ve started law school in August and now spend most of
my time in DC, I can’t be as available as I’ve been to lead things in
PA. Judy Luther and others have been helpful in trying to fill this
void. If you haven’t been very active in this yet, and would like to
help step things up, let me know. We’ve been hoping to start new
campaigns to end fluoridation in local communities where it’s already
going on, starting with the City of Chester, PA — where the Chester
Water Authority is contributing to an already extreme environmental
racism problem. Frances, Dolores, Desire, Carole and others in
Chester and the DelCo Alliance for Environmental Justice
(http://www.ejnet.org/chester/) have been educating people about the
problems with fluoridation and I hope that we can make Chester the
first of many communities in PA to reverse this practice of using
drinking water systems as toxic waste dumps.
Please consider donating time or money to help us win in 2009.
Happy New Year!
Mike Ewall, ActionPA
1434 Elbridge St.
Philadelphia, PA 19149
215-743-4884
catalyst@actionpa.org
http://www.actionpa.org