by Dina Eliash Robinson

For decades, San Diegans have been fighting to keep their water free of fluoride, a chemical that thousands of scientists and researchers are convinced is highly toxic—particularly to the very young and elderly—and the source of illnesses ranging from Alzheimer’s to cancer and osteoporosis.

Recently, however, just as other battling Californians had, they lost the fight to such promoters of fluoridation as the American Dental Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. November 5 was the date set for what many San Diegans believe would be the poisoning of their drinking water by the Metropolitan Water District.

Some San Diegans continued to fight City Hall, Sacramento and Washington—hoping to stop the fluoridation of those parts of the County that have already succumbed to it, and prevent the insertion of this chemical in the rest of the County’s water supply.

Other San Diegans have given up trying to reason with those invested in contaminating the drinking water of the entire populace, just to prevent some cavities in some young children’s teeth.

One can’t help but wonder why the ADA and other organizations have been pushing for decades to fluoridate the entire nation’s drinking water—even though it is obvious to most of us who pay attention, that it is an affront to public health and human rights. The argument that it prevents cavities in young children doesn’t hold up, since it is already being done with toothpaste, mouthwash and other fluoride treatments administered to children. Perhaps we should follow the money…

As those San Diegans were waiting with helpless dread for November 5, they got a short reprieve, when emergency construction on the city’s aging water pipes, forced the Metropolitan Water District to postpone the start of fluoridation until December 3, 2007. The construction involves “the strengthening of the galvanized steel in the filtration system to ensure it does not corrode if it comes in contact with fluorosilicic acid, the substance used for fluoridation.” If galvanized steel can be corroded by fluoridation, we can just imagine what it does to the insides of human beings.

We who are concerned about the safety and good quality of everything we ingest—especially that of the substance most essential to the survival of a species whose bodies consist mostly of water—hope that not only San Diegans, or Californians, but all of you who live in the United States, read as much as you can about drinking water fluoridation, make up your own minds whether it is safe (or necessary), or poses a serious, long-term danger to public health. Then, TAKE ACTION.