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Wallkill Valley Times, Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Walden again considers dropping fluoride
Continued from page 1
that. They’d make their presentations to the board and
there would be a public hearing where hopefully the
people who are actually using and drinking the water in
the village will come out to voice their opinions. Then
the board would take all of that information and make
that decision.”
During the public comment portion of last Tuesday’s
board meeting, Meg Atwood of Orange County
Community College argued in favor of keeping fluoride
in Walden’s water. “There’d be no plausible scientific
reason for you to stop fluoridating your water supply,”
Atwood, who teaches dental hygiene at the school, told
the board. She added that the funds expended on water
fluoridation is money well spent considering the amount
of cash the community saves on dental costs as a result,
as well as the benefits citizens receive in oral hygiene.
Trustee Lynn Thompson noted during the meeting
that there are other health concerns tied to the ingestion
of fluoride that are not connected to dental health.
Atwood responded that “I’m a scientist, so I look at
scientific evidence, I look at factual evidence and I look
at the breadth of scientific evidence that is out there,”
she explained. “If any of you do a Google search on
water fluoridation, I guarantee you that the things that
come up are going to be very frightening. If you do that
with vaccination, you’ll get the same thing, and a lot
of other contested things in public health. When we’re
looking at public health, we’re looking at the good of the
community from a health perspective. In order to look at
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that, you need to look at the scientific evidence.”
Walden resident Robert Walther told the board that
he’s strongly in favor of the idea of eliminating fluoride
from the public water supply. “Quite frankly, I think it’s
unconscionable that you should forcibly medicate me
and the whole village,” he said. “Aspirin is very good for
you, so why don’t you start putting aspirins in the water?
Some peopl