Alberta Environment has rejected the objections by four doctors to Calgary’s bid to stop fluoridation.
The regulatory decision clears the way for the city to follow council’s wishes and cease adding fluoride to the water supply by early May.
After unsuccessfully trying to persuade councillors that fluoridation was a proven cavity-fighter, Alberta Health Services, two dentists a University of Calgary family-medicine professor each urged the environment ministry to consider the public-health consequences of the change to the city’s water system.
The ministry effectively chose not to judge on a health issue or second-guess the wisdom of council’s 10-3 vote, deciding that none of the objectors were "directly affected" by removing the chemical.
"After reviewing the statements of concern, we found that none demonstrated a specific relationship to the proposed changes," Alberta Environment spokeswoman Carrie Sancartier.
Dr. James Dickinson, with the U of C medical faculty, said he understands why the ministry determined its authority didn’t extend to the public-health concerns. But he still doesn’t understand why council didn’t accept all the expert evidence they were offered, showing that fluoridation works and isn’t harmful.
"The big issue, is council has been fooled by unscientific charlatans" on the anti-fluoridation side, Dickinson charged.
Councillors voted to end 20 years of fluoride-treated water in February, after a public hearing that featured several medical professionals and AHS officials on the pro-fluoride side, and mainly non-expert citizens touting research and ethical concerns on the other side.
Council rejected the idea of another fluoridation plebiscite or having U of C’s public-health school assess the benefits and risks of fluoride-treated water, but many members also argued that the medical question concerned them less than the ethics of "mass-medicating" the populace.
The city plans to pass a new water bylaw May 9 to enact the change, and it would take a few more days for Alberta Environment to authorize it, Sancartier said.
Then, the city’s treatment plants would no longer add fluoride compounds into the water supply. It would then take several weeks for all the system’s water to return to natural fluoride concentrations of 0.2 or 0.3 parts per million, as opposed to the current level of 0.7 ppm.
Calgary Herald
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