20th February. 1997

Mr. Trevor Sargent T.D.
Dail Eireann,
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.

Dear Mr. Sargent,

I noted with some interest your interview with Pat Kenny on R.T.E. 1 yesterday. During that interview you stated that fluoridation of drinking water was carried out using a waste by-product from the fertilizer industry. You also alluded to the fact that some fluoridation was carried out in N. Ireland. In fact Chemifloc currently holds the contract to supply Fluosilicic Acid to the N.I. Water Service for use in Tandragee and Hollywood, etc. I would like to inform you that Chemifloc does not supply Fluosilicic Acid which is derived from the fertilizer industry - we supply a manufactured product which is of high quality. Typically, manufactured Fluosilicic Acid contains only 5-10% of the arsenic levels which are found in the fertilizer derived material. It may be of further interest to you to know that Chemifloc supplied the manufactured Fluosilicic Acid to all the waterworks in the Republic for the period Jan. 1991 through June 1996. The contract for the supply of Fluosilicic for fluoridation was awarded for the current period by the Eastern Health Board (acting as agent for the Dept. of Health) to Albatross Fertilizers of New Ross, Wexford. They supply fertilizer based Fluosilicic imported from Holland. The contract was awarded on the basis of price - as I'm sure you can appreciate, our manufactured, high quality product was hard put to compete with a waste product. We did raise the issue of arsenic content with the Eastern Health Board but their attitude was that it met their specification and it didn't matter if ours had substantially less arsenic.

Because of the quality of both our product and service, some 60% of the waterworks outside Dublin initially continued to purchase Fluosilicic Acid from us, even after the Eastern Health Board had informed them that Albatross had been awarded the contract. They felt able to do this because of a clause in the E.H.B. tender document which clearly stated that the local authorities could purchase from whomever they pleased. However, our sales evaporated by November due to the intervention of Brendan Howlin T.D., Minister for the Environment, who in effect told the authorities they would only be able to recoup the cost of fluoridation if they purchased the material from Albatross. I wonder if the fact that Albatross is in Howlin's constituency influenced him?

In any event you can be happy that not only is the Eastern Health Board ensuring that your water is fluoridated, they're also seeing you get a little extra arsenic at no charge. Personally I would prefer to do without the arsenic.

Yours sincerely,

E.A. Storey