Page 1492 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, Mr Prowse!
MR BERRY: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is 12,300 parts per million every 10 to 12 months. What the community and the Government would need to be convinced of is that there would be no return to the old drill and fill cycle. Those of us who suffered poor oral health in the early 1950s would remember the horror of the dental chair.
Professor Craig's paper continues:
From the comments made by some, it is quite obvious that the origins and nature of fluoridation are not understood, fluoridation was not discovered in a laboratory but it is simply mimicking nature. All water supplies contain fluoride as a result of water flowing over soils and rocks prior to reaching the point of consumption. Some water supplies have too little fluoride to provide adequate protection against dental decay, additional fluoride is added to bring the concentration to the appropriate level. Fluoride used in water fluoridation does not come from the aluminium industry. Water fluoridation has now been in operation for over 40 years in more than 20 countries in different parts of the world ... Probably few other health measures have been so critically evaluated. Possible secondary effects caused by fluorides taken in optimal concentrations throughout life have been the subject of thorough medical investigations, which have failed to show any impairment of general health.
There is another problem - minor perhaps for the ACT but possibly significant for our New South Wales neighbours. The ACT Government supplies water to Queanbeyan and other surrounding New South Wales areas. Under the Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies (Amendment) Act 1989 in New South Wales it is illegal for a water supply authority to remove fluoride from the water supply without the authority of the New South Wales director-general of health.
Mr Stevenson: A good democratic principle!
MR BERRY: It was put there by the laws of the people. You might mock the laws of the people.
Mr Stevenson: I do not.
MR BERRY: It cannot be done without the authority of the New South Wales director-general of health, and that is appropriate in terms of the laws which have been decided by the people in New South Wales.
There is some doubt about the relationship between the ACT as supplier and the local New South Wales councils in this regard, and this is yet another example of the haste - and it is the haste that I am trying to point to - in which
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