Anti-Fluoridation: Portland, 2013

Hi,

My name is Jackie and I am anti-fluoridation, and here's why:

I do believe that fluoridation is a good thing to help the people who can't afford good dental care, HOWEVER, by fluoridating the water we are not solving the problem.  Instead, this is what we would be doing:

Pretend you have two flower boxes.  One has some old soil, and the other has new soil.  The flowers planted with the new soil will be growing strong and healthy; truly beautiful plants.  The ones in the old soil grow up a little scraggly, a little off color, not as tall or as full as the plants in the other box.  So what do you do to fix the ones in the other box?  Do you put a little nutrients in the water to help them grow a little stronger?  You can, but the soil itself won't be fertile, so the plants in the old soil may just appear a little better.  They won't actually be that much healthier.  What you need to do is get to the root of the problem.  Change the soil so the plants can grow and nourish.

I am basically ripping and condensing this analogy from an article I recently read in class (Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and A Gardener's Tale, by Camara Jones).  You can't fix the main problem (poor dental health) by painting a gloss over it, putting a pretty picture up, however you want to imagine this.  You have to go to the root of the problem, which in this case is there are two parts.  One is insurance coverage, affordability and quality.  We, as a country, need to figure out how to provide better quality insurance and easily accessible insurance to those who do not have it.  The ACA will help by mandating that people get insurance next year.  But the type of coverage isn't specified, and most people that have insurance have to pay separately for dental and  vision.  The biggest problem is that the health care facilities and providers treat health and people like business, not like people.  This probably won't change any time soon, but with baby steps we can maybe get there?

The second biggest issue is our food sources in America.  It is often that processed and unhealthy food items are promoted, and the ones that are high in sugars and other bad things are the ones that affect your dental health.

So instead of fluoridating our water, we need to find the root and try and fix that.  But there are other reasons that I will be voting no.  Multnomah County is saying that it is fluoride, when it is in fact, not.  It is a chemical compound including such chemicals as mercury and lead.  It is written right in the bill proposal, but the advertisements don't let you on to that little tidbit of information.

They also don't inform you about the costs that are going to accompany fluoridation if the bill passes.  There will be huge machines built, plus the ongoing costs of providing "fluoride," the costs of labor to keep the machines running, etc.  How is this going to get paid for?  Taxes, water increase, etc.  I don't think we are in a place where this is necessary, and I believe that the money that they are going to use on this fluoridation process could be spent on providing better care and making quality foods more affordable, or something.

Most of the other Westernized countries don't have fluoridated water.  Most of the major cities in the US promote it, but they don't really see a huge decrease in tooth problems.  It is something like a 5% decrease in 5 or 7 years.  That's not really that big of a difference and that also proves to me that it's not getting to the root of the problem.  We need to figure out something else because clearly this isn't the way to do it.  And besides, by addressing the root issues it will probably also promote overall healthier lifestyles and outcomes for people (like type 2 diabetes and CVD), which are other major health concerns for people in the US right now.

I encourage you all to vote "no," because while fluoridation is seemingly a good idea, there are much better ways to treat this dental issue.  The other ways could result in a better long term success rate than adding chemicals to our delicious drinking water.

http://www.cleanwaterportland.org/?gclid=CIS3yOX4oLcCFadxQgodxzEARQ