Council Smooths Path For Fluoridation Vote

The City Council yesterday removed the last obstacle to a Nov. 5 referendum on continuing the fluoridation of Cambridge's water supply.

By a 7-2 roll-call vote, the Council waived a provision in state law that requires it to mail notices of a referendum to all registered voters at least seven days before an election. The waiver, which followed a brief hearing, spared the City the problem of finding $5000 and enough clerical help to dispatch nearly 47,000 pieces of first-class mail.

Although neither Walter J. Sullivan nor Alfred E. Vellucci explained his opposition to the waiver, both councillors apparently doubted Thomas J. Hartnett, executive secretary of the Board of Election Commissioners, who said most people simply ingored official mail. Hartnett told the Council he planned to publicize the referendum through posters and newspaper advertisements.

The vote, which will be held two weeks from today, is the third on the same issue within a decade. Cambridge citizens decisively rejected fluoridation (20,194 to 13,935) in 1953, only to approve it by the narrowest of margins (16,069 to to 16,027) six years later.

Since Aug. 2, 1960, the Water Department has been adding one part of sodium silicofluoride per million parts of water at a treatment plant near the Fresh Pond reservoir in West Cambridge. By collecting 4000 signatures in a petition filed last month--far more than the five per cent of registered voters required by law--foes of fluoridation were able to put the issue before the people again.

Pro-Fluorides Favored

Both sides are confident of victory in the coming referendum, but most observers give the pro-fluoridationists and edge. The Council's action seemed a setback for the anti forces, who favored the City malling, since a larger turnout at the polls would give them a better chance of ending fluoridation.

Mrs. Raymond A. Bauer, chairman of the Cambridge Citizens' Committee for Dental Health--a group formed for the 1959 referendum--said yesterday that she didn't know of "a single, intelligent, active person in Cambridge who is against fluoridation." She said that in some communities anti-fluoridationists are "honest people" like "Christian Scientists, civil rightists, and old ladies who don't want to change," but she dismissed the Cambridge force as "crackpots."

Professor Backs Fluoridation

She was echoed by James M. Dunning '26, assistant clinical professor of Public Health Dentistry and director of the University's Dental Health Service. Dr. Dunning, who serves as vice-chairman of the Citizens' committee, maintained that the value of fluoride in preventing tooth decay is "very, very great when it has had time to show its effects." He added that there is no danger in a one part-in-a-million concentration of fluorine in Cambridge's climate, although he acknowledged that about 15 per cent of children, who are raised on fluoridated water develop mottling--"inconspicuous" white spots on their teeth.

The Cambridge Citizens Opposed to Compulsory fluoridation, who favor the distribution of fluoride tablets for those who wish to use them, is spearheading the opposition force, They claimed, in an advertisement last week, that fluoridation infringes on religious freedom and is comparable to forcing Catholics to eat meat on Fridays or forcing Jews to eat non-kosher food.

"A Poison Deadlier Than Arsenic"

Dr. Charles A. Brusch, a general practitioner who operates a medical center near City Hall, also speaks for the anti-fluoridationists, but is not affiliated with any organization. Claiming that fluoride ("a poison more deadly than arsenic") can have deleterious effects on the nervous system, the circulatory system, the bones, the thyroid gland, the liver, the kidneys, and the heart, Brusch bases much of his argument on the difficulty of regulating one's daily intake of the chemical.

The Cambridge Civic Association, which customarily campaigns for progressive causes, has expressed itself in favor of fluoridation, but has decided to let Mrs Bauer's group represent their interests