Windsor fluoride debate comes down to vote Monday
The Windsor Utilities Commission recommends fluoride be removed from the city's drinking water.
Windsor council is to decide whether to do so on Monday.
The recommendation also states, however, that, "savings from this action be redirected to oral health and nutrition education in Windsor and Essex County for a period of five years."
Windsor spends $130,000 dollars each year to add fluoride to its water system. And it's been doing so for 58 years now.
The Windsor drinking water system also provides water to the towns of LaSalle and Tecumseh.
The Town of Tecumseh has already advised the WUC to stop adding fluoride to the water.
According the WUC, "the fluoride debate is a public health issue rather than a water treatment or operational issue."
"As such, from an operability standpoint, administration sees no risk with respect to the removal of fluoride from the City of Windsor water supply," their report council reads.
The WUC said it's received 26 letters of support of removing fluoride from water.
Fluoride Free Windsor is one group lobbying the WUC and Windsor council to remove the additive.
Dr. Allen Heimann of the local health unit previously noted the Centers of Disease Control calls water fluoridation one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th Century.
The WUC received 22 letters requesting fluoride remain in the water.
Research done at the University of Toronto for Ontario's Ministry of Health in 1999 concluded: "the few studies of communities where fluoridation has been withdrawn do not suggest significant increases in dental caries."
