REGARDING the campaign to put fluoride in drinking water, it must be pointed out that sodium fluoride, a by-product of the manufacture of aluminium (entirely different from the naturally-formed compound, calcium fluoride), has been known for a long time as a powerful and effective rat poison and a fungicide that can kill plants.

Years ago, it was discovered that minute traces of sodium fluoride slows down and retards normal brain function, making the subject apathetic and dysfunctional and, for this reason, was used in the drinking water of Soviet concentration camps as a powerful tranquilliser. There are volumes of damning evidence against water fluoridation proving it to be damaging to mental and physical health, even when taken in by the body in minute amounts.

The National Pure Water Association revealed on July 7, 1997, that the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the National Federation of Federal Employees voted unanimously to ban fluoridation saying: "Our members' review of the body of evidence over the past 11 years, including animal and human epidemiology studies, indicate a causal link between fluoride and cancer, genetic damage, neurological impairment and bone pathology."

Fluoridation is likely to be an important factor in many of the health problems in Britain today. Forced drug-taking is the hallmark of a dictatorship and should be resisted at all costs.

An example of the criminal disregard for the health of the public through toxic chemical contamination is BSE which is now believed in many quarters to be caused by the compulsory use of organophosphate insecticides sanctioned and promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture, which even went to the length of prosecuting farmers who refused to use this chemical poison on their cattle.

That it is a grievous mistake to trust government or any of its agencies is becoming ever more apparent.

SYLVIA NOBLE, Albert Road, Colne.

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