Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Severn Trent’s water bungle
Thursday 30th July 2009, 2:00PM BST.
Thousands of householders in parts of Shropshire received water with double the required amount of fluoride following a blunder by Severn Trent, it emerged today.
A total of 28,743 people in Bridgnorth and Wolverhampton were affected by the incident, following the mistake by an unqualified worker at Severn Trent’s Dimmingsdale works, near Wolverhampton.
The Drinking Water Inspectorate has been highly critical of the error, which posed no threat to public health.
The fluoride was added by an unqualified worker and Severn Trent then tested the wrong taps. Some households received twice the required amount of fluoride.
Severn Trent admitted an error and has since strengthened procedures, it said today. It repaired faulty equipment, retrained staff, reviewed procedures and sampled the affected area.
Today David Wickens, from Severn Trent, said: “The dosing equipment was attended to by an engineer who had not got the correct qualifications.
“The level of fluoride that we would normally treat to would be 1mg per litre and the maximum that it went up to was 2mg per litre.
“The health professionals said there was no risk. We’ve put in a training programme to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
A report from the Drinking Water Inspectorate said the incident had involved a catalogue of errors.
Officers had made 14 recommendations in order to prevent a recurrence of the problem.
Severn Trent had failed to notify the Inspectorate, did not liaise with local and health authorities, had been guilty of inadequate follow-up sampling, inadequate investigations into the root cause and inadequate training of staff, the report said.
The report said: “In June and July, water leaving the works contained more fluoride than permitted, which went undetected because work being carried out to install new equipment was inadequately supervised.
“The company had not complied with many aspects of the Code of Practice on Technical Aspects of Fluoridation 2005.”
Water at Dimmingsdale works is fluoridated as part of a legal agreement with West Midlands Strategic Health Authority
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My toothpaste contains flouride.
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H. Probably not that much… It’s a health threat if too much is included – same as your toothpaste, if too much is put into that it wont do you much good.
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I don’t want fluoride in my water or in my toothpase. It is a poison and should be banned.
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So, don’t employ unqualified staff. That way, Severn Tent can’t blame them when things go wrong.
And an overdose of fluoride isn’t harmful? Yeah, right…
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Flouride is a poison which in small doses is apparntly “safe” although studies have proved that in certain people it can pose a health risk even in small doses. It’s hard to avoid consuming floride but buy floride free toothpaste and fit a heavy duty filter to your mains tap and then use a second filter in a bottle. This should remove most of the floride. On a note of poisons in food, Aspartame is another one which is apparntly safe, found in sweetners and “sugar-free” food and drinks. Avoid!
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I wonder what Zippy and George thought of the water bungle???
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1.5 mg fluoride per litre water is the absolute legal maximum and the Dimmingsdale incident lasted for a month at least, so there are bound to have been some people in Bridgnorth and Wolverhampton who were made ill. Estimates are that 1% of a fluoridated population are sensitive to the negative health effects of fluoride. Health will have been affected in many ways and is ordinarily not diagnosed by GPs as being caused by fluoride. Moreover, standard tests do not include testing for fluoride toxicity. The future health of infants in the affected who were given boiled tap water with their baby formula in July 2008 will have been compromised. Fluoride crosses the undeveloped blood brain barrier in infants and in the foetus and causes dental fluorosis. It’s scandalous to gloss over this incident as not being serious. What would have happened had the Dimmingsdale Incident not been detected at the end of July 2008 but had continued for a year. No harm? Are these people living in cloud cuckoo land? Well, in reality, they’re following the Department of Health edict that no breath of scandal shall taint the reputation of the Holy God Fluoride. Listen up everyone – fluoride is a systemic poison. If you don’t believe this, do an Internet search for “skeletal fluorosis India” for the proof.
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severn trent are probably the worst of all the privatised firms, they should be renationalised immediately
end of!
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It’s the chance you take when you allow health authorities to add unneccesary chemicals to your water supply, next time it could be even worse
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