Progress for Plattsburgh Blog - Mike Kelly

I never intended to become a fluoride crusader. In fact, the last time I heard anything about fluoride was in the 1950's. As a child, I remember when my town decided to fluoridate its water supply. It was a tremendous source of pride for our little southern city. We even had a sign at the city limits that looked like this:

There was a local grocer named Cas Walker who somehow got it in his head that fluoride was bad. He railed against the evils of fluoridation in a weekly television program that he sponsored. He even went so far as to denounce fluoridation as a Communist plot. Everyone wrote 'ol Cas off as just another redneck lunatic.

Forty-five years later, after I became a City Councilor in Plattsburgh, NY, I received an email from a Ms. Carol S. Kopf, denouncing fluoridation, just like Cas Walker had so many years before. Ms. Kopf didn't say anything about Communist plots, however. She pointed out some recent scientific evidence that brings into question the sense of putting fluoride into public water supplies. She was articulate and clearly not a redneck lunatic. I emailed her and advised her that I was looking at fluoride with increased interest as a result of her email. She advised me that a local gentleman, Dr. Paul Connett, might be willing to come speak to the Plattsburgh City Council about the issue. I asked my fellow councilors and the mayor about it, and they graciously agreed to entertain Dr. Connett. Little did I know I had opened up a huge hornet's nest. When Dr. Connett came to speak to the Council in March of 2009, all kinds of fluoride folks came out of the woodwork, both pro and con. A fistfight nearly broke out in the City Hall lobby between the pros and the cons. It was an emotionally charged Council meeting, to say the least.

After nearly ten months of debate, countless emails and reams of research,  I've made up my mind about fluoride. I agree with Cas Walker and Carol Kopf: fluoride is bad. It's one of those things, like lead in paint or DDT to kill mosquitoes, that seemed like a good idea at the time but which turned out to be not such a good idea. As a postscript, it turns out that ol' Cas wasn't as loony as I thought on the whole Communist plot thing. In my research, I found out the Soviets used fluoride on prisoners to make them docile.

I will post a few more blogs devoted to fluoride to help you understand how I'm now in league with the fluoridation opposition. In the meantime, if you want to read what others are saying about fluoride check this link:

http://www.nofluoride.com/quotes.cfm