Fresh Water, a Dwindling Resource
The World including our own little island, is now running short of clean drinking water due to growing population and profligate use. Remaining surface and ground water resources are also increasingly polluted from a wide variety of sources, be they industrial, agricultural or domestic. Many modern and commonly used chemicals are virtually impossible or at least prohibitively expensive to remove once they have contaminated our water and although the amounts remaining after treatment and filtration may seem small, their scope must be a matter of growing concern. There are now a vast array of contaminants. Very many of them have not received any long term testing whether in exclusion or in combination and many of these have not been tested at all. The effects of this toxic cocktail upon humans and wildlife are little known. We do know however that there are many carcinogens and mutagens amongst them which we should not be ingesting at all.
The World including our own little island, is now running short of clean drinking water due to growing population and profligate use. Remaining surface and ground water resources are also increasingly polluted from a wide variety of sources, be they industrial, agricultural or domestic. Many modern and commonly used chemicals are virtually impossible or at least prohibitively expensive to remove once they have contaminated our water and although the amounts remaining after treatment and filtration may seem small, their scope must be a matter of growing concern. There are now a vast array of contaminants. Very many of them have not received any long term testing whether in exclusion or in combination and many of these have not been tested at all. The effects of this toxic cocktail upon humans and wildlife are little known. We do know however that there are many carcinogens and mutagens amongst them which we should not be ingesting at all.
The only sane approach to protect our fresh water resources and our health therefore must be to employ the precautionary principle and whenever possible restrict and control usage and disposal of potentially dangerous substances.
Fluoride in its many forms has been around longer than most chemicals in common usage but amazingly despite much hype on its "safeness and effectiveness" has never been properly tested and such research that has been carried out has caused increasing concern amongstenvironmentalists, toxicologists and epidemiologists. In view of all this, it beggars belief that we have a government, which not only ignores all the latest research and as usual, the advice of its own expert scientists but then replaces democracy, debate, consultation, science, and reason with compulsion, by giving the unelected and arguably incompetent SHAs and PCTs decision making powers above and beyond all local decision making.
In the last year there has been much debate and anger among the public about how out of touch our Elected Members or whatever party have become with the real world and their electorate. Even when found out in their borderline legal expenses claims they still wriggle and whinge. Pulling all the above together, I can think of no more glaring example of this failure in competence, trust and democracy than their desire to impose compulsory mass medication on the public by fluoridation of the water supply. Even the most out of touch MP cannot truly be unaware of the impending environmental crisis and that the UK is not somehow immune from this. Pollution comes in many forms, not just CO2 emissions but only the very most stupid and ignorant of governments could respond to the growing crisis of shrinking drinking water resources by not only advocating compulsory pollution of these resources with fluoride but also using it as political football and compounding their dishonesty by fiddling and rejecting their own experts advice in favour of junk science, out of date by several decades, and high-handed bullying .
Just as MPs of all parties have fiddled with their expenses claims we have current low calibre Government Ministers such as Home Secretary Johnson and Health Minister Andy Burnham(sic) who have fiddled the evidence on fluoride to support their quackery and for why? Put simply, to further their shabby short term political goals and justify and disguise their stupidity. Fortunately the public are wising up to their duplicity and rejecting their campaign goals as selfish, unworkable and undemocratic. The public don't want fluoridation and even its advocates often change their mind when confronted by reliable facts and figures.. In countless surveys and polls across the UK, they have soundly rejected water fluoridation in favour of better education and dentistry services, the latter of which have suffered badly under the current regime. Thanks to the coming General and Local Elections, we now have the chance to lobby and vet the candidates of all parties and give the boot to those who persist in meddling with and damaging our health services and our democracy. Confront your candidates and ask them whether they support this nonesense before you make any decisions or choices. Say No To Fluoride and Fluoridation and say it loud.
2 comments:
Parliamentary committe on NHS costs today attacks homeopathy as unproven.....well what about fluoridation of drinking water....certainly never proven, and unlike homeopathy is highly dangerous to people, is unethical and is medical malpractice.
Thanks very much for your comments SY. I can only concur with them. You may be interested to read the email i sent today to, Call You and Yours on BBC Radio Four which was discussing alternative and complimentary medicine.I also tried to phone them but they had a record number of calls and to ensure that there was some discussion of the points i made, i also sent the following email to them. Here it is in its entirety.
COMPLIMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE ---- DO NO HARM
Dear You and Yours
I realised that due to heavy call levels today you may be too busy to include my phone call so here are the main points i wished to raise.
Some alternative therapies and treatments may or may not be effective.
If any treatments are found to be both ineffective and dangerous in some way then these in particular might be worthy of control. or at the very least, the application of the Precautionary Principle.
However, If people still want to take them, then it's the patients individual choice and It should not be a matter for the imposition of yet more Government regulation and control.
The Government consistently refuses to listen to either its own appointed or independent experts such as Professor Nutt or the York Review. It has therefore abandoned its right to claim superior knowledge and chooses to impose the "do as I say, not as I do" approach.
The government is not a doctor and should not prescribe or proscribe. Warn or advise but dont compell.
MPs and Ministers just like local councillors or MEPs are elected by the people to Serve and not to Rule and in a General Election year they should keep this in mind.
Alternative medicines and therapies are and should remain a matter of choice for the individual in a democrasy, Fluoridation of our water supplies for example could be described as an alternative medication but in reality it is compulsory medication/fluoridation of Testing has show that it probably does not work and is dangerous to individuals and to the environment.
Ordinary people are being given no choice, the so-called consultation is a sham and in effect the system whether it be the Government or the NHS is bullying the public.
Yours.
Brian Jackson
Friends of the Earth,
Local Groups
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