March 21, 2001.
Dear All,
Pro-fluoridationists must be issuing a massive sigh of relief that the new EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman has withdrawn the new arsenic drinking water standard (10ppb) which had been lowered from 50 ppb by the Clinton adminsistration. As earlier IFIN bulletins have made clear a 10 ppb standard threatened water fluoridation because of the arsenic contamination of the industrial waste products (hexafluorosilicic acid, sodium hexafluorosilicate and sodium fluoride) used in fluoridation schemes (see www.fluoridealert.org). The details of this withdrawal are carried in a front page article in the NY Times (printed below).
However, there may be a slight silver lining in this abysmal action. It gives us a chance to raise the fluoridation issue in the furor which will ensue when environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, who have fought for so long and so hard to get a more health protective standard, let rip. As one of our correspondents has pointed out:
" This is a chance to get some free publicity by writing a very short letter to the editor sticking to the arsenic angle of the silicofluorides. This article is front page New York Times but will probably be in most all newspapers.Check out your local newspaper today, either on the internet or up close and personal from seven eleven. For example, suggested letter:
"Most people don't realize that the chemicals used to fluoridate their drinking water carries trace amounts of arsenic, a chemical for which there is no safe level. We can understand the difficulty of removing naturally occuring arsenic in water supplies but why are our water engineers allowed to put arsenic into our drinking water unnecessarily (especially when it is known to cause cancer). If the EPA won't bring the allowable arsenic levels down, they must not allow the fluoridation chemicals to put in extra arsenic".
Paul Connett.