How did it go? I’m happy to post today in reply to a comment from
geri_island who was asking about the June 9th “debate” on Edmonton’s Breakfast Television show on the matter of fluoridating our municipal drinking water.

It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, or told to expect. Not so much a debate but an 8 minute session of
The View with four people who’ve never met before. And although I had 5 minutes of material to present, I think between the four of us in the segment (three speakers and the host) we each got to say about three sentences each. I don’t think it was a slam-dunk for any of us, although I now know how the meme that will end fluoridation will go.
The central question about adding fluoride to Edmonton’s water did take the stage. Not “is it harmful?” which the majority of the anti-fluoride activists argue, but rather, “Is it redundant?” which came up when a simplified version of this line graph comparing the trends in dental health between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries was posted.
The 18 Countries SlideThis was a slide I’d asked for, but the producer had told me, seconds before it appeared, to prepare to speak to an image about brittle bones instead and I was off-guard. Anyways, the slide had the desired effect and I got to use my last sentence to say fluoridating our drinking water is redundant.
Dr. Soin argued that fluoridating our water has a significant impact on dental health, and we can’t say that it is redundant based on the 18 Countries slide because we don’t know what the natural levels of fluoride in their water was over this period.
I didn’t have the chance to rebut the glaring error in her reply.
Dentists argue that .7 ppm (parts per million) is the optimal concentration of fluoride in drinking water. Dr. Soin said that without artificial fluoridation, Alberta’s water would be at .1 ppm, implying that we would be stuck at the 1965 end of this graph with a population average of 4 decayed, missing, or filled teeth in all of our mouths. So, it could be the case that these non-fluoridated countries have naturally occurring fluoride concentrations of .7ppm. We just don't know.
But if natural background levels of fluoride in the 18 unfluoridated countries accounts for the commensurate improvement in dental health there, that means that over the past 30 years, there has been an uncontrolled, unreported, unaccounted for 700% increase of background fluoride in their water. This is a grave ecological issue. Somehow, most of the world’s water is being mysteriously contaminated by fluoride! So the new question is, will it stop? Or will nature keep increasing the natural levels of fluoride to .8ppm, or worse, the 1.5ppm level when it will no longer comply with drinking water guidelines? And why haven’t we heard about this global, spontaneously available fluoride? (I'll ask Dr. David Schindler, world water expert, if there has been a 30-year trend of increasing fluoride concentrations in the world's water, and if he says 'yes', then we have another ecological problem. But if there is one, he would have reported it by now.)
It was good, though. I can see exactly how this argument will end now. And no one will be able to deny that adding fluoride to our water is a waste of taxpayer’s money.