Mr A K Roberts’ letter “Let’s talk fair about issue of fluoridation”

(Letters, January 6.), compared adding the chemical fluoride to water with water chlorination.

This is not a fair comparison as chlorine is used to treat the water and make it safe to drink by killing harmful bacteria. But fluoride does not make the water safe to drink, it is used to treat people and bring about changes in the human body! A very different thing.

He wrote that fluoride is only added to tap water in small amounts, but chemicals can be powerful in tiny doses. For instance, just one part per billion of arsenic in water is estimated to cause cancer in one in every 5,000 people. At only 50 parts per billion arsenic causes cancer in one in every 100 people. Source: National Resources Defense Council, New York.

Mr. Roberts said that nobody has yet said that fluoridation can kill anybody. He has not done his homework. In Hooper Bay, Alaska, one man died and 260 people were made ill after a fluoride overdose in tap water in May 1992. In July 1993 three kidney patients died after a fluoride overdose in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Visit fluoridealert.org/accidents.htm.

A WILLS, Ruislip, Middlesex.