Kathy Sinnott, MEP for Ireland South and Member of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, and Dr Vyvyan Howard recently met with the European Commission's Public Health and Consumer Protection directorate on the dangers to human health posed by water fluoridation in Ireland.

Dr. Howard, of the University of Ulster, is a fetal toxicologist studying the effects of toxins on the health and development of babies before birth. He pointed out that we are compromising human health from conception by adding fluoride to drinking water. Toxic fluoride compounds are known to affect many other parts of the body including bones, teeth, thyroid as well as the developing brain. The excuse that it helps teeth should be questioned when nearly four in ten Irish teenagers have dental fluorosis -- permanent damage to the tooth enamel -- and this is three times that of their counterparts in unfluoridated Northern Ireland.

Commented Kathy Sinnott, who is hosting MEP to two petitions on fluoridation and Vice President of the Petitions Committee, "Over the last 20 years the Chinese have done extensive research on the effects of fluoride on brain development in children. Those studies which are already accessible to us in English, should cause us to be very concerned that public water supplies in Ireland are deliberately fluoridated for the simple reason that this fluoridated water may be affecting expectant mothers here."

Concluded Mrs. Sinnott, "It is time for our Government to stop mass medicating its people. I call the Irish Government to stop fluoridating our drinking water and protect the health of all our citizens."

• NOTE FROM FAN: A Member of the European Parliament (English abbreviation MEP ) is a member of the European Union's directly-elected legislative body, the European Parliament. MEPs are the European Union's equivalents of a country's national legislators.