It’s been an hour and a half after the massively packed city hall hearing on water fluoridation got started, and we’re still barely done with the scheduled part of the hearing—the high-powered and much-decorated parade of panelists and experts personally invited by city officials to testify on the health and economic benefits of fluoride.
Not that there hasn’t been any drama. One woman, with a baby strapped to her chest, was escorted out after an outburst that came when Randy Leonard compared fluoridation to vaccination before the school year. A decent-size group of protesters gathered outside. Dozens of people have been forced into overflow rooms elsewhere in city hall and in the Portland Building. And, briefly, the whole thing had to be put on pause after the TV feed from the meeting went out—provoking, rumor has it, an angry mob outside the council chambers.
Mostly, though, the hearing has been sedate. Local dental experts showed slides detailing the deplorable state of our kids’ dental health. There were stories of kids with tooth infections so bad they almost died. And experts from Kaiser and OHSU and, formerly, the CDC, addressed and debunked the series of studies that question the risk of insanely high doses of fluoride—doses we wouldn’t be getting in Portland.
We were told infant formula is safe to mix with fluoridated water. That toothpaste is safe. That fluoride won’t make your kids dumber or give you cancer. They also spoke about the millions of dollars that would be saved in dental care costs and emergency room visits if Portland invested in fluoride.
“The internet is rife with misinformation,” said Bill Maas, a former CDC executive now working for Pew Charitable Trusts, who flew in from Maryland to speak.
Leonard said it even better: “If you’ve taken too much aspirin, it can cause severe internal bleeding and even lead to death. But every doctor tells someone my age to take an aspirin.”
There were snickers and hissing, however, when one expert said it was “chaotic” and futile for one person to try to sort through the hundreds of fluoride studies all by themselves. Curiously, the city, I’m told declined an offer to have a separate panel of anti-fluoride experts present their own analysis.
We’ll keep updating as more happens.
Update 7:20 PM: This is my last update of the night, five-plus hours in, even though dozens of people remain on the list. This last batch comes after Mayor Adams limited testifiers to two minutes, instead of three, and I have no idea how council will get through all of it before tomorrow morning. The mayor just left for an event at the convention center, but will be coming back. That left Dan Saltzman in charge, and he’s been way less strict about shutting down outbursts and claps.
Frankly, we’re hearing a lot of the same stuff on both sides now. And people are clearly getting punchy.
Kissing is bad for the spread of cavities, we heard. And I swear I’ll start taking shots every time I hear the “Oh, you don’t have Portland teeth” anecdote. Or the next time someone someone in the crowd mutters something about “strawman” arguments. In a SUPER weird twist, a woman also was accused of stealing someone else’s bag—and maybe reading her testimony in front of council? The woman accused of stealing was roughly escorted from the council chambers, pulled up by a guard hard enough that she fell down, and cops were called.
So what else was interesting? One opponent brought a big graph that he says showed that dental costs in fluoridated parts of the region weren’t lower than the costs in non-fluoridated parts. Sam Chase, Metro councilor-elect, joined the head of the county’s health department, in making short remarks in favor of fluoridation.
A Harvard-trained Kaiser doctor said he didn’t “think it was prudent to hold off on one of the top 10 advances of the 20th century” based on “flawed” studies on IQ and cancer effects.
“If I had even the slightest concern that adding fluoride to my water would put my wife at risk for cancer, or lower the IQ of my children,” he said, “I would not support it.”
Another fellow reading some anti-fluoride studies found out he’d only been given one minute instead of two, prompting the mayor to apologize: “We cheated you out of a minute.” “What a surprise,” the man went on, before mentioning corruption in the American Cancer Society and referencing a 300-page legal document he uncovered during research for a lawsuit. He did finish with a good point: “Fluoride will not take the place of parenting.” And sugar.
Laughs broke out when one foe, a bald guy, looked at the also-bald Randy Leonard and said, point blank: “I don’t know what they told you in the backroom, but it’s not going to cure our baldness, either.”
Another speaker, a decorated dentist, ripped Adams for eating chips during the meeting, arguing that dental caries and cavities are the result of shitty diets and nutrition. He said aborigines and others who didn’t eat lousy, processed foods didn’t have the same rate of dental trouble. He said fluoride support is the result of “weak science” 50 years ago. Later, another woman held up sugar and soda as a prop.
The most compelling stuff came from Mike Smith of Occupy Portland. Smith accused the council of engaging in dangerous “neo-liberalism” and condescension toward the poor and people of color—claiming they didn’t think the poor were smart enough to pick up a toothbrush and be healthy.
“Doctor Leonard, I don’t give you informed consent to put a drug in my water,” Smith said. “Barynard animals are force medicated, not human beings… This is not George Orwell’s Animal Farm. You are not the pigs in charge.”
Update 6 PM: Close to four hours in, we’re still through just a dozen or so speakers, beyond the city’s invited panel. Someone asked why the city can’t wait to let a referendum happen before moving forward. Floy Jones, a water-rates activist, complained about public process and said the city must’ve been holding back on water cuts over the past year if they could suddenly fast-track fluoridation over the next year and a half.
“Doctor Leonard I don’t give you informed consent to put a drug in my water,” Smith said. “Barynard animals are force medicated, not human beings… This is not George Orwell’s Animal Farm. You are not the pigs in charge.”
Amanda Fritz, who hasn’t weighed in on fluoridation yet, asked for more info on timing. Leonard defended the timing and said he thinks, after permitting, he can have fluoride online by January 1, 2014. And the mayor wound up telling the man who asked Leonard about the timing, Mark Colman, that he couldn’t reply. “This isn’t a circus. It’s a council chamber.”
Earlier, former mayoral candidate Scott Fernandez, a chemist who built his campaign on water issues, got into an entertaining exchange with Adams after the mayor asked why it’s not terrible that we’re already treating Bull Run water with chlorine and sodium hydroxide.
“That is a treatment for water,” Fernandez said. “That is a very distinct difference. What the fluoride will do is be a treatment for people.”
Adams tried to say something else, and Fernandez cut him off by saying “you’re trying to be a chemist, I guess.”
The mayor replied by saying: “I don’t often have a chemist in front of me, so I’m asking some questions.”
Fernandez later told Adams, rather politely: “You’re screwing us.”
It wasn’t all opposition. One man testified that it’s okay to let council go for fluoridation. So as not to subject us to the “whims of the people.”
And twice, Adams praised pro-fluoride doctors and told them they “looked like” doctors and jokingly asked if they were mouthpieces for big fluoride. And twice, an observer shouted it was “offensive.” “Why, because he’s white?”
Another doctor in favor of fluoride came up and said: “Collecting anecdotes doesn’t make a point. Science makes a point.”
Update 5:05 PM: It’s been a lot of the same so far, 10 or so people into the public testimony portion of the hearing. Fluoride is a carcinogen. Fluoride is a waste product. Fluoride is laced with arsenic (like apples!). Someone just reminded the room that dentists once used mercury and that people thought mercury (not us; never us) also was safe. I can’t believe 200-plus more people are signed up. They can’t all be planning on staying. Even some city commissioners say they’ll have to leave in another hour or so.
One speaker, Rick North, managed to hold his own in a discussion with Adams, Leonard, and Fish after he asserted that a study from China, the one that said IQ might be lowered by super-duper doses of fluoride, was somehow applicable to Portland. Thanks to his application of some arithmetic.
Leonard asked him, after that, whether there’s any evidence of IQ drops in America, decades after fluoridation spread.
North replied: “Because they’ve never tested for it in the United States.”
Leonard: “Why?”
North, drawing laughter: “Ask Pew!”
He followed with a lament that an “echo chamber of organizations” is ignoring the possible harm of fluoride and that every time someone tries to do a deeper study of how fluoride affects brains, “the establishment comes down on them like a ton of bricks.”
A few speakers later, things actually got a little emotional. If weirdly so. A woman who said she recently retired from teaching at a Beaverton High School talked of a notable drop in students’ memory skills after fluoridation came there a few years ago.
Grammar, vocab, science concepts, etc., she said, all went by the wayside. It was discussed in the teacher’s lounge.
“With each passing year, the memory loss seeemd more pronounced,” she said, “and I heard many students express their own frustration with themselves.”
Then she went on to talk about an eruption of bone fractures. And finished by mentioning how a student contracted a bone disease that may or may not have been caused by fluoride.
“And he died,” she said, accusingly. “It was the saddest thing our school ever, ever, ever went through.”
Update 4:15 PM: Finally, public testimony has started. The O is reporting some 200-plus people waiting to talk, many in opposition. We had to wait for another group of panelists to speak, largely doubling up what the others had said before them; that made for 12 invited guests—and two hours of talking. We also had to wait for Nick Fish, a co-sponsor, to talk.
“We were elected to make the tough call,” he said, before someone shouted “no.” “Too often people in our legislative bodies… kick the can down the road. History will judge us in how we address this important issue.”
Dan Saltzman, before Fish spoke, got some cheers when he complained that the wait for testimony stretched close to two hours. He was silenced by the mayor, who told him “settle down” and noted that he’d missed a decent part of the meeting earlier. And a commissioner from the West Hills Water District, a $1 million Bull Run customer serving 11,000 people, complained about the process behind fluoridation. His board, he said, has yet to receive formal notice from the city.
The first citizen, anti-fluoride activist Angel Lambart, gave an emotional plea to reconsider the issue, noting her thyroid condition and chemical sensitivity.
“At the very least it should be put up for a vote,” she said.
Someone else just raised a question about why no one was invited to speak against fluoride. Adams explained that invites are a courtesy extended by an ordinance’s sponsors, Leonard and Fish, in this case. She offered the city her dentist’s phone number to talk about how her improved diet, not fluoride, helped her teeth.
“I don’t appreciate you trying to alleviate your white guilt by putting toxins in our water,” she finished, succinctly.
I missed this. Are they debating changing the spelling to “Flouride”?
white people.
“Collecting anecdotes doesn’t make a point. Science makes a point.”
Best line of the week.
This “debate” is cutting in to my ability to be crazy smug about the ridiculousness that often passes for debatable issues in the midwestern state that I am from.
But am I not entertained?
God bless you Denis for sitting through this.
The fact that several of the Council members and the Mayor came out in favor of fluoridation *before* the meeting and that the pro-fluoride group was given over an hour of testimony by an “Experts Panel” even though former CEO of the American Cancer Society, Rick North, who opposes fluoridation, requested equal time from Randy Leonard (and got no response) says it all. This was pure one-sided political theater.
Randy Leonard claims that the reason that the timeline for this project was shortened from 5 years to 15 months was because the Water Bureau did not make it clear that the time factor was mainly a permitting issue not a construction issue. Still, an initiative was filled by http://cleanwaterportland.org to get the issue to a vote by the citizens which would be on the ballot primary on May 2014, which would fall two months after the stated timeline in the ordinance.
“Item d.The Water Bureau shall design and implement a fluoridation program so that the City’s water is efïectively fluoridated no later than March I, 2014.”
It might look as if the timeline was shortened to prevent a vote by the very citizens who voted them into office. But that might seem undemocratic. Right?
50+ years of fluoridation in every other major US city, where are the mass protests against it in those cities?
Give the people who will have to pay for it (get ready for a still bigger water bill!) the right to vote for or against.
Here’s a point about “science”. It gets old. Remember leaded gas? Asbestos? Saccharine? DDT? All once perfectly safe backed by the best “science” know to man.
I love our water as it is. Drink all the fluoride you want but don’t put it in our pure clean water.
Haha! I’d rather at flour than Fluoride!
It is my human right to control what I ingest especially when it comes to medications. For my city government to attempt to force me and the rest of the unwilling public of portland to take a controversial medication for a condition the vast majority of us don’t have at a completely uncontrolled dose is authoritarian and frightening. For the city government to do this while ACTIVELY PREVENTING THE PUBLIC FROM HAVING INPUT is criminal and the people who are doing this will have a hard time living in Portland after this. There will be civil suits and hopefully a criminal investigation of how much money changed hands between Randy Leonard, Sam Adams, Nick Fish, and their partners in this plan to abruptly force an invasive, disgustingly arrogant policy on the public of Portland.
I am sure we all have a legal right to physically defend ourselves against mass murderer’s and if we acted on mass instantaneously we could stop this nonsense very quickly.
Dr. Dean Burk had no hestiation in calling fluoridation mass murder and today one in three people develop cancer. Never donate to any Cancer Research Institute … some causes of cancer are very well known … start preventing cancer by turning off the fluoridation taps and Cancer Research Institutes everywhere should be loud and clear, but most are spineless recalcitrants not worth pissing on even if they were on fire.
I watched this on the internet. The City Council invited credentialed people opposed to fluoridation to speak before them at length, over 1 and 1/2 hours, but didn’t extend the same courtesy to professionals opposed to fluoridation, who were just lumped in with the over 200 testifiers who were give 3, then 2 than 1 minute to testify
Oregon dentist Bill Osmunson who opposes fluoridation had to talk like an auctioneer and then was scolded because he overran his 60 seconds. Dr. Osmunson was probably the foremost expert on this issue in the room. Clearly this meeting was not intended to gather the facts but to showcase the people who convinced the City Council to fluoridate.
And it was quite a show and revealed that fluoridationists act upon faith. Fluoridation opposition acts on evidence.
No evidence was presented showing Portland children are fluoride deficient. Clearly too many can’t afford dental care.
If allowed to speak longer, Dr. Osmunson would have revealed that when you look at bombed out teeth, you are seeing socioeconomic status not lack of fluoride – as many testifiers implied.
The problem: Lots of Portland children have bombed out teeth.
The solution that City Council believes: Fluoridation will stop or alleviate this problem.
The truth: It won’t
No evidence was supplied that proved otherwise. We saw pictures of children with rotted teeth but no one told us how much fluoride these poor children ingested from foods, beverages, dental products, pharmaceuticals or how much fluoride they inhaled from air pollution or ocean mist. Tea and ocean fish have loads of natural fluoride. Did these kids drink too much cheap powdered ice tea? We don’t know because such data has not been collected. Adding more fluoride into these poor malnourished bodies will probably do more harm. Whose fixing their teeth?
Those for and against fluoridation agree that too much fluoride can actually weaken teeth and make them more brittle and more apt to decay. Maybe those children with bombed out teeth are actually victims of fluoride overdose
Cavity crises are occurring in every city – even fluoridated cities – not because of a fluoride-deficiency, which doesn’t exist in the human body, but because of dentist-deficiency.
Most dentists won’t treat poor children. That’s the real problem Portland faces. Why isn’t the City Council addressing the real problem. And why did most of the fluoridation-endorsing organizations lobby against an Oregon health care plan that would have given healthcare to all residents. If they really care about poor children, this would have passed into law.
I just love how all the sudden everyone is a fiscal conservative when it coincides with their paranoia.
We have all been hoodwinked, fluoridation has been the greatest Fraud perpetrated on so many unsuspecting people All the latest information of peer reviewed world scientific research has not been allowed to be heard on an equal footing to the pro lobby which has been supported and bank rolled by corporate resources. A fundamental right is to have an informed choice as to what we all drink and it is unethical what governments are forcing on citizens, amounting to forced mass medication on a massive scale. We will all have the right as individual stake holders of our community water supplies and then hold shareholders of the companies producing the poisonous waste going into these water supplies accountable after ignoring the concerns and advice of the risks to our health have been shown I can claim the right to become a damage and loss claimant
Jesus, you anti-fluoride people are bananas. Why can’t you put all this crazy energy toward something actually worthwhile/supported by an overwhelming majority of responsible science?
SUGGESTION: GET THE AMERICAN LEAGUE TO DROP THE DESIGNATED HITTER, PAVING THE WAY FOR A MERGER OF THE LEAGUES UNDER PURE RULES. If there was ever a giveaway to profit-minded interests at the expense of purity, it’s the DH. After that, you can tackle the 2-Minute Warning in pro football, which is SIMILARLY OBJECTIONABLE, BUT LESS FUNDAMENTALLY INTRUSIVE UPON PURITY.
@Chuck: And I just love how smug people get when they think they know what’s best for everyone else. I work with liberal, well-educated people, and I have yet to talk to one who’s in favor of fluoridating the water supply. But don’t worry about our opinion, we’re obviously just a bunch of paranoiacs.
@Todd, CONDESCENSION ALERT: this is why we elect representatives who sift the available evidence and weigh policy options for us, because just being well-educated and well-meaning aren’t actually substitutes for true professional expertise. When 95% of the people with true expertise weigh this issue, they conclude again and again that fluoridation is a no-brainer* from public health and policy perspectives.
When you have the overwhelming weight of science on your side against the hysterical purveyors of irrational paranoia and pseudoscience, smugness is warranted. Anti-fluoridationists are as discredited as climate change-deniers and the vaccination-causes-autism crowd. Obsessiveness and vociferousness of protest should not be mistaken for weightiness of evidence.
* That’s a free pun for you people who think fluoridation lowers IQs!
Thanks for this coverage of the city council meeting – fun to read.
@Todd: what Colin said. Either you believe in science or you don’t. The notion that you have to respect ideas with little to no basis in fact is bullshit.
Hey Portlanders: Welcome to activism, and dealing with city hall.
They’re a bunch of crooks and liars. It’s the same shenanigans every time: declare a policy, hold a sacrosanct “public meeting” about the issue, deny the opportunity to those opposed to the new policy fairness at the “public meeting”, and then go forward unapologetically with the new policy as if there was uniform support all along.
It was the same recipe at the JTTF meetings. From what I understand, it’s been this way for decades.
Good lord, people. Take a breath.
I don’t believe everything that’s said against fluoridation. But I really don’t like a couple of lame-duck politicians pushing through something that affects everyone and has been voted down three times before, rushing the schedule to beat out an initiative against it, and telling us that this is democracy in action.
So does anyone know where Smith and Hales stand on this issue? Or do they pucker and run when it’s mentioned?
Let’s keep Portland weird not by joining the rest of the world in adding fluoride, but instead by offering free dental care to poor and minority children. I’d be willing to bet the same $$ spend would have a greater positive effect.
Even better, let’s make a meaningful attempt to address the fact that poor and minority people have terrible diets compared to us better-off white bastards.
Or are we just hoping to fatten the industrial chemical company’s wallet?
“But I really don’t like a couple of lame-duck politicians pushing through something that affects everyone and has been voted down three times before, rushing the schedule to beat out an initiative against it, and telling us that this is democracy in action.”
This is the same exact argument conservatives make regarding gay marriage.
Did City Hall have dealings with pro-fluoride lobbyists? Is one of the mayor’s political advisers part of this lobby? We still don’t know after last night’s hearing, but not from lack of asking.
Video (about 1.5 mins): http://ustre.am/_1HSxG:1dFz
“This is the same exact argument conservatives make regarding gay marriage.”
Only if it’s also the same exact argument liberals make regarding laws banning gay marriage.
@ chuck:
gay marriage doesn’t ‘affect everyone’ (or certainly not directly)…..but water does.
I always love how people start stretching their degrees:
According to Scott Fernandez’s own website: “Scott went on to earn a degree in biology and graduate degree in drinking water microbiology.”
Not a chemist.
Signed, a chemist (Ph.D. in chemistry, working as a chemist.)
mayor adams belittling and ignoring a man to his face when asked if he has met with fluoride lobbyists or if his campaign manager Mark Wiener previously worked in the fluoride industry (he did):
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/25234104/highlight/290877
@ human in training: I completely agree with you. However, a lot of Christians (and Muslims, fwiw) can and do argue it would somehow drastically change their world, just like anti-fluoridation advocates argue, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The point I was making is that the “I can’t beleive the gov’ment isn’t putting this to a vote!” complaint is often made when elected officials take steps to do the right thing (such as legalizing gay marriage, halting all executions or putting fluoride into water) without putting it up for a vote.
Turns out fluoridation was pushed on the American public in much the same way as marijuana prohibition: by a small group of powerful industrialists who bought the opinions of the most respected medical and scientific establishments of the time and funded a massive pro-fluoridation media campaign. The Original suggestion to promote fluoride as a dental agent came not from a medical professional, but from a powerful man in the aluminum industry (an industry that produces massive amounts of hexafluoroscilic acid that would have to be disposed of as toxic waste if it were not simply dumped in the water supply all over the US). In addition, the initial promoter of fluoridation in the scientific and medical community was the Mellon Institute, the same organization that was promoting the safety of tobacco use, asbestos, and the addition of lead to gasoline.
It’s worth watching this short, very clearly explained history of water fluoridation, by Christopher Bryson, an award winning journalist and former BBC producer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReJhMxTJVyo
In the city-council meeting council tried telling us dental fluorosis wasn’t a health issue. LOL!!!
http://www.intellipissies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Fluoride-is-Poison.jpg
The holes where teeth rotted out in the photo council showed were caused from children eating sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white rice and flour. So lay off the junk food and keep our water safe! fluoride is NOT safe. Hello??? It’s the very same chemical HITLER put in drinking water to sedate and exterminate.
((((((((((((( TOXIC – FLUORIDE – IS – NOT – SAFE )))))))))))))
FACT: Native Americans had mostly perfect teeth without ingesting toxic fluorides.
“Science” (when there’s MONEY to be made) is often WRONG (intentionally!) People speaking the truth, because of those who lie, are typically not believed; such as scientists without a financial motive.