WE have recently written to our local Primary Care Trusts asking them when they debate the fluoridation issue if they would confirm whether they intend to have speakers for and against fluoridation and who the speakers will be.

Nationally and locally the Friends of the Earth are against fluoridation. We believe that artificial water fluoridation is legal, ethically and politically indefensible.

The fluorides (hexafluorosilicic acid or disodium hexafluorosilicate) that will be added to the water supply are not pharmaceutical grades, but rather industrial-strength chemicals with many hazardous contaminants. They are much more toxic than naturally occurring calcium fluoride.

When fluoride is added to the water supply, it is not administered scientifically in a controlled daily dose.

It is added to the water at a concentration, so people who drink large quantities of water, such as kidney patients, nursing mothers and manual workers, will consume larger amounts of fluoride.

It will cost millions of pounds to build and run fluoridation plants. Artificial water fluoridation is exactly the same as a doctor treating a patient -- except that he does not know his name, or his medical history, or what precise dosage of the drug he will receive or, indeed, whether he even needs the treatment.

A large number of people who will be forced to drink fluoridated water are strongly opposed to doing so.

They will be forced to pay for the privilege of this unwanted treatment and that it may also do them some real harm.

Even if it did work, adding fluoride to the entire water supply raises a question of civil liberties.

Under the Patient's Charter, people have a right to refuse treatment or ask for an alternative treatment.

J M MORTIMER, (Co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth, Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley local group), Edge End Lane, Great Harwood.