Dr. Gerald L. Durley
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON DISPROPORTIONATE HARM TO AFRICAN AMERICANS
Andrew Young, Letter to Gov. of Georgia and Am. Water Works Assoc. RE: Fluoridegate Scandal Documents and Repeal of GA's Fluoridation Law October 6, 2016 Gov’t Failed to Warn About Fluoride’s Disproportionate Harm to Black Community Risk Factors for Fluoride Toxicity in the Black Community |
Dr. Gerald L. Durley, now retired, clinical psychologist, environmentalist, and Pastor of the Providence Baptist Church in Atlanta, called upon the Georgia State Senate to repeal Georgia’s mandatory fluoridation law. In a March 9, 2011 letter to the head of Georgia’s Senate, Durley wrote:
First and foremost, water fluoridation takes away people’s choice... Second, fluoridation disproportionally harms members of the black community... Third, we cannot control the dose of fluoride people ingest when we put fluoride in drinking water... We need to focus on helping people get access to dentists. Lack of fluoride does not cause cavities. Too many sugars on the teeth, lack of access to dental care and lack of dental health education—these cause cavities. We also need to know why the full story about harm from fluorides is only just now coming out. I support the holding of Fluoridegate hearings at the state and national level so we can learn why we haven’t been openly told that fluorides build up in the body over time, why our government agencies haven’t told the black community openly that fluorides disproportionately harm black Americans, and why we’ve been told that decades of extensive research show fluoridation to be safe, when the National Research Council in 2006 listed volumes of basic research that has never been done. This is a serious issue for all Americans, of every race and in every location. | ||||
Ambassador Andrew YoungAndrew Young, former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador during the Clinton administration, wrote the following to the Georgia legislature in a letter dated March 29, 2011:
My father was a dentist. I formerly was a strong believer in the benefits of water fluoridation for preventing cavities. But many things that we began to do 50 or more years ago we now no longer do, because we have learned further information that changes our practices and policies. So it is with fluoridation. We originally thought people needed to swallow it, so the fluoride would be incorporated into teeth before they erupted from the gums. Our belief in the need for systemic absorption was why we began adding fluoride to drinking water. But now we know that the primary, limited cavity fighting effects of fluoride are topical, when fluorides touch teeth in the mouth. We know that fluorides do little to stop cavities where they occur most often, in the pits and fissures of the back molars where food packs down into the grooves. This is why there is a big push today to use teeth sealants in the molars of children. We also have a cavity epidemic today in our inner cities that have been fluoridated for decades... I am most deeply concerned for poor families who have babies: if they cannot afford unfluoridated water for their babies milk formula, do their babies not count? Of course they do. This is an issue of fairness, civil rights, and compassion. We must find better ways to prevent cavities, such as helping those most at risk for cavities obtain access to the services of a dentist. |
Dr. Alveda KingDr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on her blog, June 22, 2011:
“. . . . All water fluoridation legislation should be repealed in all states that enact fluoridation. Generally people with built-in biases in support of fluoridation have been controlling the discussion about harm from fluorides. The Centers for Disease Control has clearly been trying to preserve fluoridation at all costs, but the facts about fluoride harm are coming out anyway. This is a civil rights issue. No one should be subjected to drinking fluoride in their water, especially sensitive groups like kidney patients and diabetics, babies in their milk formula, or poor families that cannot afford to purchase unfluoridated water. Black and Latino families are being disproportionately harmed.” |
Clifford WalkerPortland, Oregon NAACP:
As the Chair of the Portland NAACP’s Veteran’s Committee and in my past position on the Oregon Commission on Black Affairs, I have seen well-meaning plans that do not actually achieve meaningful progress on the problem they claim to address. Fluoridation is just such a plan. If Portland voters want to help low-income children we should reject fluoridation and focus on providing equal access to dental care.” —Clifford Walker, April 2013 |