Worker who quietly lowered town’s fluoride for years resigns amid controversy
“I felt like there was a lot of good people who have worked hard all their lives to see the town be better,” she writes. “I didn’t want the town to become a place that was not a town.”
That, in a nutshell, is a description of why a group of women in Washington County, Wis., resigned from their jobs and quietly walked away from FAST (Floor Surface Approximating System) fluoride in 2011.
“I felt like there was a lot of good people who have worked hard all their lives to see the town be better,” said one of the women, who asked to be identified in this report as “Mary.”
Mary wasn’t happy with FAST in the first place, she told the newspaper. She said the fluoride that was being used on the town and in the county’s schools was “not very good.”
“It was not very good,” she said. “It didn’t work well. I think we need to step back and find a different way to take care of our kids.”
Mary didn’t tell her colleagues that she was unhappy with the fluoride because she was afraid that they would think she had a personal interest in it. She said women generally don’t know how to deal with their own emotions.
“I didn’t want any man judging me on my choice,” she said.
After more than eight years of using the fluoride, Mary said she felt she had to stand up. She said she didn’t realize what she had done until she heard a radio broadcast.
She had quit, but she didn’t tell her children — who are now teenagers — that she had done so. Her resignation was accepted the same