Friday, February 3, 2012

Calif. Dental Assoc. Pulls Funding on Fluoridation

Did you know about this one?  Kind of ironic sounding, isn't it?  The State of California has a statewide mandate for all cities with 10,000 or more households to put fluoride in their water as long as they receive funding for it from an outside entity.  

The town of almost 60,000 people in Watsonville, in Santa Cruz County, just lost their funding from the California Dental Association.  The estimate for installation, operation, maintenance, etc., was almost $3 million, and the California Dental Association didn't have that much, so they decided to pull their funds to use in another city needing a lesser amount. 


The people of Watsonville are happy about it because they'd already voted not to have fluoride in their city's drinking water.  Their city was then sued by their local public health officials for voting fluoride out, it ended up in appeals court, and after 10 years ended up in the California State Supreme Court that upheld the state mandate. 

As Watsonville reluctantly prepared to have fluoride put into their water, then the California Dental Association pulled their funding - oh darn!  The mayor was relieved to have it behind them now, but proponents for fluoride swore that they'd continue to seek funding from some where.   

If you notice, the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper gave their editorial comment in the article about there "not being any research" that supported the opponents of fluoride.  Plenty of comments from residents below the article were giving weblinks to help the newspaper staff "find" the research and read it.

What's your opinion on a state-mandated fluoride??  And what's with California's state-wide fluoride mandate requiring the funding to be from an "outside entity" instead of being from the city providing the fluoridated water?


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