UKCAF website

SCHER's verdict on water fluoridation

'A crude measure of systemic fluoride treatment . . .
without a detectable threshold for dental
and bone damage.'

Doug Cross 9th July 2010

In a breakthrough review of the health risks of water fluoridation, the EU’s Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER) has now described the practice as
‘a rather poor and crude measure of systemic fluoride treatment, without a detectable threshold for dental and bone damage’.
Comparing water fluoridation with conventional preventive dental treatments, it dismisses the practice as being of little relevance, saying
No obvious advantage appears in favour of water fluoridation as compared with topical application of fluoride . . . water fluoridation plays a relatively minor role in the improved dental health.

The release of this study poses three challenges to the continuation of water fluoridation that, taken together, form an incontestable case for its termination.

Firstly, SCHER concluded that the evidence that it actually works is extremely weak. And it decided this despite ignoring the formidable published evidence (that was sent directly to the Committee) that the supposedly reduced rates of dental decay in children drinking the product disappear entirely once the effect of fluoride in delaying the eruption of children’s teeth is taken into account.

Secondly, it noted that there appears to be no threshold concentration of fluoride in drinking water below which no adverse effects can be detected:
Systemic exposure to fluoride in drinking water is associated with an increased risk of dental and bone fluorosis in a dose-response manner without a detectable threshold.

If there is no detectable threshold for the onset of abnormal bone and dental conditions, then there is absolutely no safety margin protecting vulnerable members of the public - any level of artificial fluoridation

causes medical damage to at least some of those people forced to consume the product.

And in a action that will inevitably confound pro-fluoridation fanatics, this conclusion was based on evidence published ten years ago, by the very same authority on fluoridation that they habitually misquote, the York Review itself.

Finally, SCHER accepted that fluoridation is indeed a medicinal intervention. This confirms the argument that I have been voicing for the past ten years - that in law this practice is a medicinal intervention, and is therefore subject to control under the EC Medicines Directive and English medicinal law.

This view was endorsed by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg last year, when he spoke to people in Hampshire on the threat to fluoridate Southampton’s water supply. As an unlicensed medicine, it must be subject to regulation and removed from the public water supplies in fluoridated areas of England immediately.

The SCHER report has many flaws and is provisional - a ‘pre-Consultation’ document, subject to public comment. But the Committee’s failure to recognise the significance of the statistical fraud on which the single supposed ‘benefit’ of the practice rests merely emphasises that there is now no basis for its continuation. Fluoridation has no role whatever in public health protection - indeed, it is the cause of widespread medical damage in those communities subjected to this illegal form of public medication

The case for its continuation has now been comprehensively demolished by an independent panel of experts. It is now time for the lawyers to move in, to advise those many thousands who have been damaged by this fraudulent practice on who to look to for compensation for the medical damage that they have experienced.