Fluoride in water is ‘grotesque’

Editor:

Thanks very much for the front page press of the fluoridation issue in Santa Monica (“Not all smiles for fluoride treatment,” page 3, Jan. 19). I’ve been as active as possible with the Santa Monicans for Safe Drinking Water.

The idea of adding fluoride to our city water is grotesque.

There already is “naturally occurring” fluoride in our water. What is being added is toxic waste material from the fertilizer/aluminum industries, known as hydrofluorosilic acid and sodium fluoride. Plain and simple: Toxic.

What also wasn’t mentioned is that hundreds of cities in the last six years or so are removing and rejecting fluoride from public water. Europe is 98 percent non-fluoridated.

Currently, there is a nationwide movement to ban all water fluoridation, and I only hope I live long enough to see that come to pass.

This is truly a horrible injustice on the innocent public that this toxin is added to our public waters. It is truly all money-driven with profits to the chemical industries as the main goal. We are being chemicaled to disease and death in this country.

Joyce Martino
Santa Monica



Writer had a mind bloc

Editor:

I had to laugh at a recent letter you printed by local resident John O. Legreid (“What are we willing to pay for war?” page 4, Jan. 19) in which he states that the “war in Iraq is the Bush payoff for the Jewish bloc vote.” What ridiculous nonsense! There are now 300 million people in America, of which there are six million Jews, and they represent 2 percent of the voting public. Or, better said, 98 percent of Americans who vote are not Jews. As a group, Jewish voters are quite liberal; haven’t we all heard the words “Jewish liberal” used repeatedly? In a recent scholarly article, 87 percent of Jews polled voted for Democrats. A “Jewish bloc vote” for George Bush? Absolute stupidity.

If you go to Google or any other search engine, you will find that in 2000 George Bush received the votes of only 19 percent of American Jews living in the U.S., and only 35 percent of American Jewish voters residing in Israel (a much smaller number of voters). In 2004, (John) Kerry received between 75 percent and 78 percent of the Jewish vote.

Ken Karmiole
Santa Monica