It has spilled into two competing petitions that can be found on change.org on water fluoridation in the Rockhampton Regional council area.
One, created by Lissetta Grant, simply asks for consulting the community prior to removing water fluoridation and the other, created by none other than Merilyn Haines, President of QAWF, continues the same thoroughly debunked anti-fluoridation arguments.
Personally, I hope many of my readers will sign Ms Grant’s petition and, if successful, the actual science can be regarded with correct weight within the public discourse, including, one would hope, information, such as that compiled here in response to the typical anti-fluoridation claims that simply do not stand up to cross examination.
Communities have the right to choose whatever healthcare practices they wish, by all means. But such choices must be informed by the highest quality data available which of course, comes from the body of scientific research. It should also be the choice of the community and not some fringe interest group based some 640 km away.
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Please look over my replies to common anti-fluoridation arguments that simple do not stand up to examination and also my articles in relation to water fluoridation.
newanthropocene.wordpress.com 
Thank you! It’s voices of reason,Ike yours that keep that light at the end of the tunnel burning. Much appreciated Lissetta
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My pleasure.
Feel free to contact me to assist wherever I can and link to my replies to common, unsubstantiated anti-fluoridation arguments (or offer more) where suitable.
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Hi Moth,
Thanks for this post. We need as many people as possible to sign Lissetta’s petition. Merilyn Haines seems to have a very well-organised group of mainly alt-med, alt-reality people supporting her ill-founded and non-scientific cause. One of our local councilors, who is a gardener, thinks that fluoride is affecting his hydrangeas and that this is a good enough reason to stop it! The level of ignorance and mis-information surrounding this issue in some parts of regional Queensland is just mind-boggling!
The main instigator of the anti-fluoride posse is a local councilor, Glenda Mather, who I have successfully nominated for the ‘Bent Spoon Award’, which will be awarded by the Australian Skeptics, later this year. I hope she wins, for claims such as – “Despite the on-going efforts of Queensland Health promoting the cause for fluoridated water, it has never produced any scientific studies/research proving its case.” (Spectator News Magazine May 17, 2013)
Wow, I thought there were tons of studies proving the effectiveness of fluoride. How can you argue with an outright lie?
I don’t think we’ll have any success, but thanks for your support.
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Hi Fiona,
I plan to do whatever I can to counter the anti-science intrusion to the situation in Rockhampton, ie Haines. She is well organised. Her group seem to troll the internet and send in fan after fan to flood sites to either prop up claims made by Haines or demonise those who counter her. I’ve seen it here, The Conversation and on a page on the ABC website where apodcast of herinterview can be found.
It’s a common trick to fool a casual web surfer that she’s something that she is not. The tricks they use are the same as what I’ve seen from the climate “sceptics” and anti-vax etc and yes, they are often anti-meds, or in truth, anti-science in focus.
If you have a link to evidence of the councilor worried about their hydrangeas, I’d love that! Alongside the other you supplied, I’ve got another great article!
Don’t lose hope. I take on many anti-science groups and every now and then feel glum because it seems that these irrational groups are numerous and winning. But ultimately they must fail. Realityis against them. We need to defend reason and science as proactively as they do their favoured ideology. Eventually they will look sillytrying to prop up something that most can see is just absurd.
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I should also state that Glenda Mather’s comments scream Merilyn Haines. On youtude, Haines is interviewed for a “documentary” called ‘Fire Water’ in which she repeats this nonsensical claim again and again.. muddled in with pointing to numerous studies – many of which, when one reads them, do not back her claim, or at least not her certainty, and in fact do prove the case for fluoride scientifically.
Mather has been duped by QAWF, the quote is telling of such.
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Fiona Dobson, it would be good advice for you to first check the research done on fluoride sensitivity in plants before attacking those who raise the fact that fluoridated water can damage plants. Agricultural research has found fluoridated water can kill fluoride sensitive flowers. Check out the research done on by Rod Jones reported in his well known Australian work on “Caring for Cut Flowers” http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/2544.htm
It appears that some species of plants appear very sensitive to fluoridated water. The same situation that applies to some people.
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Unsurprisingly, this book doesn’t make it into the libraries of the university I work at… So I suspect it’s not exactly ground-breaking.
Yet, looking at the info provided on the link and even the name of the book itself proves a point; you’re not actually making a point about fluoridated water impacting negatively on plants through irrigation, but simply that florists can take measures to increase the length of time a cut flower will look pretty – whatever those measures are (without forking out $50, how am I to know?)
Then, you extrapolate that out to mean that fluoridated water negatively impacts living plants… oh, and thus humans.
Good advice for you would be to stick to the point rather an attempt to make one argument mean something else. Someone might like to write a song about the fluoridated hydrangeas of Rockhampton, but I’m waiting for convincing scientific evidence regard why ALL the trees, shrubs and herbs of every capital city of Australia (except for Brisbane until very recently) have magically remained lucky in the face of multi-decadal fluoridated water exposure.
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Hello to you MOTH, the government archives below report damage to a wide variety of plants from fluoride in the air at concentrations as low as parts per billion: http://www.scew.gov.au/archive/anzecc/pubs/anzecc_gl__national_goals_for_fluoride_in_ambient_air_and_forage_199003.pdf
I know that to someone who does not want to think of fluoride as dangerous, you might well have the same difficulty taking this info in as you clearly find difficulty understanding some people get sick from contact with fluoridated water.
If you were interested in scientific research you should have been interested enough in Dr Jones research and bought his book as I did. The levels of fluoride that damaged the cut flowers was 1 mg/Litre. Those growing in unfluoridated water remained undamaged.
Of course you can expect to remain out of touch with what is actually going on by keeping yourself uninformed. And your strongly held belief that fluoridated water is also not harming people will be looked at with utter disregard by practitioners who have to treat the damage fluoridated water and fluorides are causing their patients.
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Actually, I do prefer peer reviewed scientific literature to books that avoid such scrutiny. You may have noticed if you’d cared to look through my material on the subject, but I can understand avoiding evidence when it doesn’t fit ones desired world view. I see it all the time with climate deniers, anti-vaccination groups, creationists, 9-11 truthers, creationists and yes, anti-fluoride advocates. Moreover it is off-topic, as I stated before.
You simply repeat the point of your previous that dead plants act differently when exposed to different chemicals. Let me simplify, as you didn’t seem to get me: people do different things to make their xmas tree last longer over the holiday season, such as sealant sprays and various additives to the water supplied to the tree… Do you think such chemicals would be beneficial to living plants? Of course not. What fluoride does to dead plants means little to living plants in the same fashion.
As for your latest link, again, it doesn’t count. Read it; it is all about atmospheric exposure to fluoride compounds. It FAILS to suggest water fluoridation, in concentrations recommended by WHO and undertaken in Aust has a negative impact on LIVING plants. Further, why refer to a 23yr old government paper if the science is so strong? I’d call that avoidance of facts.
I’m not denying anything, Philip, I hold scientific evidence above all else AND have lived in fluoridated areas for more than 30yrs, WITHOUT mass plant death or any negative impacts to anyone I’ve ever met. I base my position on good science, supported by the experts and not fear mongers, grey literature, wishful thinking and, in your case, exaggeration.
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