Opinion
11 Sep 13

Gormley says Fluoride Report was Suppressed

The former Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, has spoken out for the first time about the fluoride report, which he produced – and which he believes was suppressed by the Dáil committee that commissioned it.

Report Published in Full on hotpress.com

In an exclusive interview, published in the new issue of Hot Press, the ex-leader of the Green Party describes the extraordinary circumstances in which the report – written in 2007, while the Green Party were still in opposition – was buried by the Joint Committee on Health and Children, which had commissioned it.

Had its recommendations been acted on, it would have brought an end to the now 50-year-long practice of dosing the (26-county) Irish population with hydrofluorosilicic acid through the public water supplies.

The Report on Water Fluoridation in Ireland is a 90-page document, which analyses the available evidence on fluoride at the time it was written. It is published in full, for the first time, here on hotpress.com, from Thursday September 12th, 2013.

The Oireachtas (Joint Irish Houses of Parliament) Draft report on Water Fluoridation in Ireland by John Gormley

"It provides an exceptionally well-researched, comprehensive and well-written overview of water fluoridation in Ireland," says Hot Press writer Adrienne Murphy, who has been investigating the practice of mandatory fluoridation of the water supply. "As such, it is a critical document in the current fluoridation controversy. So why was it in effect buried?"

"When you actually do a comparative study on dental health before, and then after fluoridation has ceased, you find that there is no increase in dental decay," John Gormley tells Hot Press. "I go into that evidence in detail in my report."

The report argues that mandatory fluoridation is a breach of the human rights of Irish citizens as it is in contravention of the Council of Europe’s ‘Convention on Human Rights and Bio-medicine’ (1997). And it concludes that, in light of all the evidence, and in particular considering the fluoride overexposure risk to bottle-fed babies, water fluoridation in Ireland should cease immediately.