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Tennessee: correction and update

FAN Bulletin 796A

April 18, 2007

Dear All,

I made a mistake in the first version I sent out on this important Bill. The message from Dan Stockin provides the full text of the revised bill below. Please use this . Please also note Dan’s important commentary on this issue.

Paul Connett

Dear Paul,

Ss I’m already getting emails from folks who would like to get the infants/diabetics/ kidney patients bottled water labeling bill introduced in their legislatures, here is some info and an IMPORTANT correction for everyone to consider and include.

The REVISED, AMENDED text is important. There is a typo in the text of the earlier-today FAN bulletin. For water with less than 0.2 ppm fluoride, the label text should say: This water contains no- or low-fluoride.

I just received the MS Word version of the amended bill. Here it is:

By deleting Section 1 in its entirety and by substituting instead the following:

            SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 53, Chapter 1, Part 1 is amended by adding the following as a new, appropriately designed section:

            Section 53-1-1__.

            (a) As used in this section, unless the context otherwise requires:

            (1) “Bottled water” means water that is placed in a sealed container or package and is offered for sale for human consumption or other consumer uses; and

            (2) “Bottled water plant” means any place or establishment in which bottled water is prepared for sale.

            (b) All bottled water sold in this state which contains fluorides at more than two tenths (0.2) parts per million concentration shall have the following on each item of bottled water:

FLUORIDE NOTIFICATION: This water contains fluoride. (Symbol or drawing of a baby’ milk bottle surrounded by a circle with a line drawn diagonally across the circle, with the word "NO" spelled clearly immediately under the circle shall be adjacent or nearby.) The National Research Council has identified infants and children, diabetics, kidney patients, seniors, and others as being at greater risk for harmful effects from ingested fluorides.

            (c) All bottled water sold in this state which contains fluorides at less than or equal to two tenths (0.2) parts per million concentration shall have the following on each item of bottled water:

            FLUORIDE NOTIFICATION: This water contains no or low- fluoride. (Symbol or drawing of a baby’ milk bottle surrounded by a circle with the word "YES" spelled clearly immediately under the circle). The National Research Council has identified infants and children, diabetics, kidney patients, seniors, and others as being at greater risk for harmful effects from ingested fluorides.

           We still have to get this thing past the Agriculture committee as we ran out of time to finish it yesterday. But if a LOT of states all introduce this bill, perhaps the bottled water association will drop their resistance to this and see that they can actually MAKE MONEY for their member manufacturers of bottled water. People will want to easily and readily KNOW that a given bottled water does not contain fluoride.

Arguments for this labeling of water come straight out of the NRC report. The following is key: (From page 71 of the report): "To assist in estimating individual fluoride exposure from ingestion, manufacturers and producers should provide information on the fluoride content of commercial foods and beverages." This really got their attention.

Also, the language about susceptible subpopulations on pages 297 - 298 of the NRC report supports the text of the water labeling in the bill very strongly. Read these pages and copy them for your legislators, as well as the page with the statement that babies and children are getting 3-4 times the amount of fluoride as are adults, on a body weight basis. Underline the sentences about “people who consume much larger volumes of water”, “diabetes insipidus”, “individuals with renal (kidney) disease are of particular concern”, “children are vulnerable for developing enamel fluorosis”, “the elderly are another population of concern”, and “medical conditions.” Also underline the sentence on page 217 that says “diabetic individuals will often have higher than normal water intake…an estimated 16-20 million people in the US have diabetes mellitus.”

The concept is to make the other side try to argue against the government panel’s (NRC’s) own words if they try to resist labeling bottled water.

If you’d like to thank Rep Niceley, send a note to him and his assistant: rep.frank.niceley@legislature.state.tn.us   and ruth.adams@legislature.state.tn.us <mailto:ruth.adams@legislature.state.tn.us> . I’m hopeful we can get national media attention as well as similar bills in a number of other states. If you know any media reps, feel free to forward the bill text. Any attention we can draw to the actual text of the NRC report, to get people to actually read what it says, sure will be helpful. If you have any questions about our TN bill, which by no means is out of the woods yet, please use my secondary email address below. We still don’t know if this bill will make it out of committee this time, but we’re getting a lot of people talking.