Re: ‘Adding another chemical' (The Weekend Sun, August 5). In answer to the letter by Janice Priest, what a load of rubbish she has written. Firstly, Tauranga is one of the last cities in New Zealand to add fluoride to its water. Fluoride the world over has been scientifically proven to be of benefit to people.

There was no sugar coating as the Government now realised Tauranga needed the extra cost to help with filtration. If fluoride had been left in the water in 1992 there would have been literally thousands of thousands of people with no cavities in Tauranga today and you would not be talking about fluoride because it would have been there.

I am sure that if you checked the figures the cavities rose massively after removal of fluoride from Tauranga water. The council accepted and people voted for two referendums on absolutely unsound advice, no scientific knowledge, and mainly on the advice from the web that fluoride was cancerous to people. This is true if have you thousands of amounts of fluoride in your body – which is millions of times of what is to be added in the water.

Scientists have finally been taken notice of and have debunked the untruths they were. She is also alleging, by suggestion, that the filtration system is there, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, again by suggestion, that fluroride is harmful and should be removed from the system. It is not. Scientific reasoning and common sense is behind this, not untruths.

How do I know about fluoride? I lived through the time when fluoride was first introduced to Aucklanders. In about the first five years 90 per cent of dentists were not necessary and had closed shop. School dental clinics were closed as no children were needing the dentist. If they are needed under fluoride they are being fed a massive sugar diet, not because of fluoride. I had cavities before but none after fluoride, until I came to Tauranga, 12 years ago. I am now 86.

Terry Johnson, Gate Pa