Sharkey Objects to Fluoridation Proposal

A proposal to place fluoride in Port Hueneme’s drinking water has left a bad taste in the mouth of Councilman Jon Sharkey.

Sharkey is accusing fellow Port Hueneme Councilman Bob Turner, who is a dentist, of “playing good old country hardball” by adding a proposal to fluoridate drinking water to Wednesday’s City Council agenda.

Turner proposes fluoridating the drinking water that the 56,000 residents of Port Hueneme and surrounding areas will receive once a $15-million treatment plant comes on line next year. The plant is supposed to improve the area’s notoriously awful-tasting water.

But Sharkey contends that fluoridation has potential health risks.

Moreover, he said he is concerned that Turner wants the council’s three municipal representatives on the five-member board of the Port Hueneme Water Agency, under whose auspices the plant is being built, to cast their votes in favor of fluoridation.

The council never tells its representatives on various regional boards how to vote on particular issues, said Sharkey, adding that he believes a majority of the council supports fluoridation.

“This represents a radical departure from the norm,” said Sharkey, who is one of the city’s water agency representatives. “There’s no way I could ever be directed to vote on a matter that I consider would not be in the best interests of the city.”

Turner said there has never been a controversial issue that has necessitated the council directing its representatives to an agency on how to vote.

Half a century after Grand Rapids, Mich., became the first American city to fluoridate its drinking water, the American Dental Assn. now calls fluoridation the single most effective public health measure to combat tooth decay.

The association cites figures showing that fluoridating water cuts cavities in a community by as much as 40% at an annual per-person cost of about 50 cents.

Still, Sharkey said he is unconvinced that putting fluoride in water is a good idea, noting that some researchers have found a link between fluoridation and osteoporosis in elderly women and that it is possible to get fluoride poisoning from ingesting too much.

“My basic position on this is that if there is any doubt we should leave it out,” he said. “Should we be forcing people to take any kind of medication whether they want it or not? . . . This goes a little bit beyond what government should be doing.”

But what is ostensibly a health issue has always had political overtones. Early foes called fluoridation a communist plot.

Two years ago, Gov. Pete Wilson signed a law requiring water districts with more than 10,000 households to add fluoride to drinking water, although authorities have been allowed an extended grace period to find the money to do so.

Recent statistics show that only 17% of Californians consume fluoridated water, compared with 62% nationwide. No Ventura County community fluoridates its water, according to local officials.

But the water Port Hueneme residents drink already contains 0.7 parts per million of naturally occurring fluoride. The new treatment plant would remove that, and Turner wants 1.0 parts per million of fluoride added back.

“All we’re going to do is raise it 0.3 more where it’s of optimum benefit to the people,” Turner said.

Times correspondent Veronique de Turenne contributed to this story.