And now for something completely different. Are you ready for some more fun with fluoride? A City Council committee is tackling the ‘Austin weird’ policy tomorrow.
The city’s fluoridation foes have been at it for a while. While the county Health and Human Services department has continued to downplay fluoride’s possibly harmful effects, it appears council’s Public Health and Human Services committee, chaired by Randi Shade, is still struggling with the subject. They solicited comment on the topic on March, and tomorrow morning at 9am, the committee will hold a work session on fluoride.
With concern rightly mounting over fluoride’s effects on infants, fluoridation concerns are arguably unfairly maligned as paranoid Cold War relics. However, the outlandish, sensational rhetoric its detractors often use seemingly do them more harm to their cause than good. As work sessions traditionally don’t allow for citizen input, we won’t see any grandstanding citizens tomorrow – but what will we see from the council?
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This article appears in May 13 • 2011.