§ Miss Widdecombeasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether the Government have any information on the genetic effects of fluoride as used in water fluoridation.
§ Mrs. CurrieThe Committee on Mutagenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment has recently considered the relevant evidence on genetic effects of fluoride in relation to the addition of fluoride to drinking water to a concentration of 1 milligram per litre including the results of recent research carried out in the United Kingdom. Its conclusions are as follows
There is evidence that prolonged exposure of cultured mammalian cells to sodium fluoride can cause mutations in these cells. Although the mechanism of action of fluoride is not understood, there is no chemical evidence to believe that fluoride reacts directly with DNA under physiologial conditions. On the contrary, there are indications that the action of fluoride is probably indirect and would not occur at low concentrations.Such effects as have been observed in cultured mammalian cells occur at concentrations of fluoride considerably in excess of the plasma concentrations resulting from in vivo exposure to fluoride in water at 1 mg/l. All well-conducted in vivo mutagenicity tests are negative.The Committee considers that there is sufficient evidence from the available data to conclude that the consumption of fluoridated water would not constitute a mutagenic hazard to man through the induction of heritable abnormalities in the gene cells.The Committee has noted that the direct and extensive studies of human populations reviewed by the DHSS Working Party on Fluoridation and Cancer provide no sound evidence at all of an effect of fluoridation on cancer mortality and incidence rates, whether for cancer as a whole or for cancer at a large number of specific sites.