[Report 1956] / Abingdon and Faringdon Districts Joint Public Health Committee.

  • Abingdon and Faringdon Districts. Joint Public Health Committee.
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1956] / Abingdon and Faringdon Districts Joint Public Health Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the fluoridation of public water supplies as a mass procedure for reducing tooth decay by two-thirds”. To apply this to ourselves. By Sept. 1952 the Council of Faring- don Rural District had approved plans for fluoridation to be applied to their new Buscot Waterworks, at an estimated cost of 4^d. per head per year. Ever since then we have been given one poor excuse after another for delay. The first v/as to await the report of the United Kingdom mission which made an extensive study in the U.S. of every aspect of the subject from February to ApriJ 1952. The report took a year to appear which, I gather, included the almost human period of nine months’ gestation at the printers. This report was of 100 pages and concluded among other things that (1) their studies “demonstrated beyond doubt” that children and adults living in areas where water contains 1 part per million fluoride had much less dental caries than where fluoride was lacking (60% less caries at age 12—14) and that the effect persists at least up to 40 years of age. (2) that “the evidence is conclusive” that children in areas where water is fluoridated have a reduction of caries sim- ilar to areas where it is naturally present, (3) that the effect of fluoride added at the waterworks is identical with that present naturally. In spite of all this the recommendation was to do the absolute minimum^—to start by repeating all over again in a few small areas in this country studies similar to what the Americans had so clearly demonstrated. During the five years that have passed since the Mission re- turned from their studies confirmatory evidence on all the above lines has piled up and up and all the objections and fears of the inevitable opponents, mostly quite absurd and unscientific, have been repeatedly proved unfounded. As long ago as March 1952 a joint committee of representatives of the following American Associations: the Dental; the Medical; the Public Health; the Hospital; the Nurses and the Public Welfare issued a statement covering all the above points and added that “every year that fluoridation is postponed many thousands of children (they might well have said millions) are deprived of the dental benefits which they might otherwise have obtained”. The committee resolved to “urge the fluoridation of the fluoride- deficient public water supplies of this country as rapidly as plans can be approved ...” In February 1951 an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health referred to the fact that a single manufacturer had already