As bans spread, fluoride in drinking water divides communities across the US
…
It is a scenario playing out nationwide. From Oregon to Pennsylvania, hundreds of communities have in recent years either stopped adding fluoride to their water supplies or voted to prevent its addition. Supporters of such bans argue that people should be given the freedom of choice. The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing the mineral makes it no longer necessary to add to public water supplies, they say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while store-bought products reduce tooth decay, the greatest protection comes when they are used in combination with water fluoridation.
The outcome of an ongoing federal case in California could force the Environmental Protection Agency to create a rule regulating or banning the use of fluoride in drinking water nationwide. In the meantime, the trend is raising alarm bells for public health researchers who worry that, much like vaccines, fluoride may have become a victim of its own success.
The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom drinking water may be the only source of preventive dental care.
“If you have to go out and get care on your own, it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Myron Allukian Jr., a dentist and past president of the American Public Health Association. Millions of people have lived with fluoridated water for years, “and we’ve had no major health problems,” he said. “It’s much easier to prevent a disease than to treat it.”
According to the anti-fluoride group Fluoride Action Network, since 2010, over 240 communities around the world have removed fluoride from their drinking water or decided not to add it.
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/fluoride-drinking-water-local-bans/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
So lead, plastic, and PFAS are fine but fluoride is where they draw the line…?
They're also against vaccines because supposedly vaccines will damage their DNA... whereas apparently PFAS don't.
This
I am SO tired of being at the mercy of idiots.
“Never Underestimate The Power Of Stupid People In Large Groups” -George Carlin
No, people shouldn't have the right to choose if fluoride is added to their water. People are stupid. You vote to remove something that will greatly help children that can't vote. The government's job, sometimes, is to stop stupid people from hurting others and their selves. That's the reason you can't drink raw milk or use lead gas.
The raw milk thing is actually part of the reason the FDA was formed!
You can get raw milk if your state allows it. The federal government bans it, but only has regulatory authority over interstate commerce, so it can't be moved across state boundaries, but you can get it if it's made in-state.
I mean, I think that you're mostly aiming to expose yourself to listeria, but if that's what someone wants...
My guess is that dairy farmers have an interest in promoting it in that if they can sell it, it gives them a market without much competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_raw_milk_debate
Drinking milk was a bad example. I should have said sell unpasteurized milk. The point I think we both agree is that stupid for people make stupid decisions. Just like I don't think people can decide about vaccines that have very low risk rates. It effects everyone, not just the idiots.
If stupid people want to make stupid decisions, that’s fine. The problem is when they try to take the rest of society down with them via damage or converting others to that stupidity.
That was my badly worded point. Other are effected by a few people with extra time.
You can drill your own well to get your own water, just like you can have a cow for raw milk.
can we compromise on drinking raw milk with flouride added?
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
Well, and TB.
Some of the herd nobly chose to sacrifice itself to improve the genetic resistance of the whole.
Just let them die then, rather than trying to make them age where they don't want to.
That is a completely different argument and has nothing to do with the topic.
Of course you can drink raw milk if you want to!
Guess mods don't under sarcasm
Btw, cooking milk destroys some of the good stuff in it.
Edit: Raw milk has proteins which boost immune system and growth (because it's for baby cows), which break down while cooking.
And yeah, probably don't drink raw milk in US.
And all the things that kill you.
Probably a culture and laws difference. Here (swiss) getting raw milk from your local farmer is no problem.
I'm sure small doses of cyanide has benefits too.
Where does "no, people don't have the right to choose if [chemical] is added to their bloodstream, because they are stupid" stop? Who determines when it's "stupid" not to add a chemical to the water supply, and to whom do they answer? If the voting public decides to override public officials on a matter like this, you're basically saying they shouldn't have the "right" to vote the officials out on those grounds. You're basically saying this is some kind of extraordinary policy matter that obviously needs to be insulated from the kind of democratic review pretty much all other municipal policies are subject to. And we're talking about dumping a chemical in the water supply as a substitute for having good public health infrastructure in our country.
If you're a Republican, well, they're inconsistent, evil psychos, I don't expect much from them to make sense. But if you're a Democrat.... if you're a democrat.........
EDIT no really, explain it to me, don't just downvote me. Why should a highly technocratic public health policy that achieves only one public health goal, and isn't even the only way to do it, be beyond democratic review? This literally makes less than no fucking sense. Also, the rules on raw milk and lead in gasoline are also subject to democratic review. They don't get challenged because there are basically no downsides to those policies and literally the only people who are negatively impacted are people invested in the industries in question. People get iffy about fluoridation because there are corner cases that cause problems for individuals, so it's actually a public health tradeoff and you can avoid those tradeoffs with different policies (like universal public health care + fluoridation regimes) -- ie, you can achieve the benefits of fluoridation without negatively impacting anyone. The cost-benefit ratio of water fluoridation is literally different to those other policies, which is why nobody complains about unleaded gasoline but they do complain about fluoridation in water.
If nothing else, does anything strike you as half-cocked about comparing clean, potable, treated drinking water without fluoride to leaded gasoline? Do you refuse to drink un-fluoridated drinking water because of the permanent and irreversible health effects of being exposed to literally any quantity of unfluoridated potable water?
Unfortunately your point is a false agreement. The chemical in question has been studied for decades and has little to no negative impact on general public. A few people don't warrant a total ban. Everything will effect someone at some point. It's science not magic. A better education system and removing pointless arguments ( religion, anti sponsored studies ) would help inform people. I sure most people don't know fluoride is poisonous but so is vitamin D, C, and E. The dose is so high that you would have to eat it like cady straight.
I'm not antidemocratic, though the "let states decide" movement is making me reevaluate that. I'm more of a "let educated and qualified" people have a high stance then "it's turn the frogs gay" crowd. It is a difficult conversation but we have to advance as a society. This is not advancing. Also I agree universal healthcare would be a wonderful, but that shouldn't excuse something that is universal beneficial.
To add to your reply,
If universal health care is the answer to not putting fluoride in the water, you make the universal health care a reality before you get rid of the thing that it replaces. You didn't get rid of something until you have it covered elsewhere, and even then you need to make sure by giving the new thing time to prove it is as effective as you believe it is going to be before you pull the plug on the thing that is proven to have been effective
Not sure why someone down voted that but I agree. You never remove something until you have a more effective solution in place. That was one of the issues I had with Republicans when it can to the ACA. They destroyed it with nothing to fill the holes. Fucking hate that but I don't expect anything from them.
Yes they should. Ingesting fluoride is bad for you, and it doesn't help your teeth to drink it. That's why small children's toothpaste doesn't have it, because you can't trust them not to eat it. It's only good when applied directly to the teeth, which can be accomplished on a daily basis by using toothpaste with fluoride and/or a mouthwash containing it, both of which you don't drink.
Fluoride is removed from my drinking water by my reverse-osmosis filtration system, along with all the other contaminants like PFAS and lead. I've been drinking fluoride-free water for 10 years, and my teeth are beautiful and healthy. Anyone who drinks bottled water is also probably drinking fluoride-free water since those companies mostly use the same filtration method to produce their bottled water.
Do you have evidence?
Sure, here's a good article with lots of info.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956646/
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/293019/
Link to original article. Cheers to you for citing your sources, but the authors here are massively conflating the effects of industrial fluoride exposure with residential water fluoridation in an attempt to prove a position they began with.
That's not a peer reviewed study - its somebody's editorialized book report.
Go ahead and review it then - their sources are cited.
Evidence has been presented, whether or not you agree with what it says is irrelevant.
thanks
We live in the time of the most readily available and advanced information yet continually make the dumbest fucking decisions.
“Cavities…yeah….goddamn hadn’t had one of those in awhile, we should bring those back.”
I’d like to chime in that fluoridation plus a toothpaste containing hydroxyapatite is a game changer; my kids went from several cavities a year to almost none. You used to have to buy japanese toothpastes for this, but it’s starting to show up in america.
What are you talking about?
People get cavities all the time, and it's because they don't brush their damn teeth.
you know they put fluoride in toothpaste right? if you're not getting enough from that your water isn't going to make up the difference.
It demonstrably makes a huge difference, even with people who brush on a regular basis.
Let us suppose that brushing alone gives you maximum benefit you can get from fluoride.
There are people out there who can't brush their teeth as often as they should, for reasons outside their control. Why should we deprive them of the benefit of fluorinated water? It makes no difference to us. Would you rather live in a world with more tooth problems, or fewer?
Hello! That would be me! I have trigeminal neuralgia.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/trigeminal-neuralgia/symptoms-causes/syc-20353344
As the image should illustrate, brushing my teeth really really hurts, so I can't do it anywhere near as often as I'd like to.
The article addresses this. They explicitly state that this decision will disproportionately effect poorer people whose only preventative care may be drinking water. In order for this to be as effective as having fluoride in the water supply, you'd have to find some way to get said toothpaste to these poorer people AND ensure compliance. So, definitely not as easy as just removing the fluoride and letting toothpaste handle it.
If they are so poor that they can't afford toothpaste, and their only option for obtaining fluoride is by drinking tap water, their teeth are going to be absolutely fucked no matter what we put in that tap water. So this is not a good reason.
Their teeth will be less fucked with fluorinated water.
We should just buy them toothpaste and toothbrushes instead, that would be far more effective to help. Don't buy fluoride to put in the drinking water that nobody needs to drink, and invest that money in toothpaste and toothbrushes to be mailed out for free or whatever.
Poverty isn't just money. It's education and time as well. A less-well-off person will be less educated, and thus they won't really know or understand why consistently brushing is important. People who are struggling to keep afloat also tend to have multiple jobs, or other responsibilities. Brush time seems insignificant until you realize that some people's average day is: wake up after 2 or 3 hours sleep, eat a piece of bread if lucky, go to first job, work 4-8 hours, go to second job, go home, go to bed, do it again. There's no time and energy in there for such a simple maintenance item that is, strictly speaking, not required for life.
Plus disabled people, plus people in an abusive relationship, plus depressed people, plus people who are just plain gross. Who wouldn't want to live in a world where all these people have better teeth?
As a child you can't brush your adult teeth that haven't grown in yet, but you can drink fluoridated water and have it deposit in your adult teeth as they are growing making them stronger than they otherwise would have been for the rest of your life.
There's other ways to do that too. Kids here (Netherlands) get fluoride treatments from a young age (after their adult teeth have come through, I think) up to 18. It's not particularly enjoyable but like you said, it benefits you for the rest of your life.
Free/affordable healthcare means checkups at the dentist about every 6 months. After the checkup you get these two small jaw shaped containers (for upper and lower sides) filled with a fluoride paste and you just sit there for a few minutes drooling into a metal bowl. There's even flavours but they're all gross, haha. Apparently that's on purpose so you don't swallow too much.
Anyway, this whole fluoride in the water thing appears to be a very US based discussion, so I've got no horse in this race. I just wish the US had better, more affordable healthcare to begin with.
If you're poor and American, you essentially can't afford a dentist. This is better than nothing.
Excuse me! The fluoride treatment flavours ar wonderful! Best part of going to the dentist as a kid!
The missing ingredient in the US is a lack of public health infrastructure that universally covers poor people. Obama's healthcare reform didn't even cover every poor person in the country. But if we had that, adding in a fluoridation regime would be trivial. "Fluoridating tapwater is the cheapest way to get it to poor people" is only true because so many poor people in the US have no healthcare, period, so you have to set up all the infrastructure from scratch. Dumping it in the city water is cheaper than setting up real public health infra, but only before you factor in every other benefit of having public health infrastructure and all the cost savings across all of society caused by having public health infrastructure.
Neoliberals in the US love it because it's one of those "smart" solutions that requires absolutely no national-level infrastructure, you just need companies with fluoride waste on one side, and municipalities willing to buy some on the other. You don't have to make our society better, and what's more, you can castigate opponents for hating poor people when really you're the one preferring dumping a single chemical in the water to address a single type of dental problem instead of supporting actual public dental health infra in this country.
Also, dumping it in the water sort of obviates one of the more important aspects of administering compounds like fluoride, which is dose control. Water fluoridation increases the rate of fluoride toxicity because drinking water is not the only source of fluoride in people's diets. Improperly administered fluoridation schemes have killed hundreds of people in the past. More recent research has also indicated that there are heath risks associated with accumulation of fluoride in soft tissues leading to damage heart muscle, kidneys, liver, and brain which had not been documented back in the 19-fucking-40's when this dipshit policy was first invented. all claims in this paragraph from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9920376/
We fluoridate the water so we don't have to actually help poor people with their health in this country, and apparently so liberals don't need to keep up with health research conducted since the 1940's.
Lol
CDC
Do you drink your toothpaste?
The UK used the same argument to stop the addition of iodine to salt. "People already consume enough dietary iodine". You know what happened? Thyroid diseases are on the rise in the UK again, slowly creeping back to early XX century levels.
I think iodine is underappreciated. But also I think fewer and fewer people use the salt shaker because they eat so much processed food (which has salt that is not iodized). Then you're down to milk and seafood. Milk gets it because they use iodine to sanitize the udders. So if you don't drink milk and who eats seafood on most days. Solution to anyone reading: multivitamin.
This. I never add salt to my cooking because there's already so much salt in everything.
Same with Switzerland
You can't trust this stuff. I only drink water straight from the creek and- excuse me, my diarrhea is acting up.
What a bad faith argument.
Most people who want to avoid fluoride in their drinking water use reverse osmosis.
Then I guess there's a solution and we don't need to remove it for everyone else.
Why should people have to resort to using reverse osmosis to avoid fluoride in their drinking water?
Also, good job pivoting instead of admitting you were arguing in bad faith.
I expect you to keep doing that.
For the same reason people should "have to" resort to anything else they don't want that everyone else is fine with. You don't get to choose for society as a whole.
If you don't want to eat inspected meat, fine. Go raise or hunt your own.
Like lead in gasoline? The thing is, everyone else is not "fine" with this. Why do you think there's an article about it?
Complains about people arguing in bad faith, proceeds to argue in bad faith. Hahahahahaha
Can you stop replying to all my posts?
We've already established you can't read.
In fact, I'm just gonna make the proactive decision to block you. Goodbye.
Why should people have to suffer at the hands of idiots who want to ban fluoride in water?
That's a loaded question because people do not suffer without fluoridated water.
Do you want to explain how they suffer without fluoridated water? That way you're talking specifics that can actually be debated upon instead of generalities where people need to make your arguments for you.
No you're wrong. It's no loaded. Lack of fluoride increased the risk of tooth decay. https://www.msdmanuals.com/home/disorders-of-nutrition/minerals/fluoride-deficiency
Jeez, you really can't read, can you?
I don't expect you to be capable of making worthwhile arguments, so I'm just going to end this here.
Goodbye.
Ban the fluoride and give universal dental care like Canada is planning.
A pipe dream. The dummies will likely just ban the fluoride with no other plan or solution.
Or, ya know, keep the fluoride in the water and also give universal dental care. Removing the fluoride from the water is the more expensive solution.
Yeah.
God forbid we do something expensive if it's to improve people's health...
Yeah, so few people advocate for this though. It's either fluoridation is unbalancing my humors or let's fluoridate a bunch of water that will go down the drain.
You know that eventually free healthcare is still paid by everyone ? Why add the cost of generally preventable tooth decay to the tab? It’s not mutually exclusive…
Free universal healthcare is cheaper than the current US system for a whole pile of reasons, mainly by consolating the consumer into one giant bargaining group. But there are secondary savings, like enabling people to get regular check ups to catch things early before they get expensive. It also enables them to go to the doctor when they need it, instead of gambling that they'll get better; it's cheaper if many people go in for small things than if a few people go in for large things.
US healthcare is the most expensive healthcare in the world because it can push people and insurance companies around. The rest of the 1st world pays LESS than the US does for itd healthcare because governments have the power to tell healthcare providers to go fuck themselves if they try and charge too much
That’s unrelated with the need of prevention over having comprehensive healthcare coverage… I mean it’s not a bad point, but it’s unrelated.
Let healthcare be free for the patient thanks to magic money it still sucks to experience tooth decay that would have been prevented by chemically treating water as it’s always been.
Its not the magic of free money, thats literally what tax $ are for. And when the government pays for healthcare, suddenly, for some reason, they care more about legislation that keeps its citizens healthier. Stop eating the propaganda that private healthcare tries to sell you, universal healthcare is as free as libraries, paved roads in cities, and clean water in proper 1st world countries is. Private healthcare is more expensive in literally every sense than universal healthcare is.
tl:dr: You want flouridated water? A government that has to pay for the dental costs of its citizens is going to have a hell of a lot more incentive to keep flouridating the water as long as it doesnt cause healthcare costs elsewhere
I thiiiiink the point they're trying to make is, why not both? It's cheaper to have some kind of subsidized public healthcare, versus what we have now. Doing that, but then removing the fluoride from the water will still be cheaper than today's plan, but more expensive than better healthcare AND fluoridated water. Why choose one when there's no real reason not to have both?
I even put it in the Tl:dr though, a government paying for its citizens healthcare is likely going to push for Flouridated water, both is the default, "why not both" is a redundant argument, and OP is still referring to universal healthcare as "magic money" which is disingenuous, stupid, and a private healthcare propaganda sound byte
“Free Healthcare” is free as in libre, not free as in beer.
Everyone is free to get it. We all pay for it. We would pay far less than what we pay now in premiums. It works on other countries, and there is no reason it wouldn’t work here in the USA.
"Free at the point of service".
"Inclusive as a part of citizenship".
Of course it costs money, of course everyone pays for it. That's what taxes are
Yeah it’s free as in roads and parks
state and local taxes work that way - state and local governments spend tax dollars to buy goods and services
federal taxes just delete money from targeted people, choosing who to make poorer in order to regulate inflation - the federal government creates new dollars when it needs to buy something
It is free as in beer, in the sense that you as a patient never have to spend out of pocket for medical care.
There's always someone arguing "It's not free cause your taxes pay for it," but you're paying those taxes anyway regardless of where the money goes. You as an individual would never notice the difference in your taxes.
And the idiots dont realise that EVERYONE pays less in those taxes than they currently pay for their private healthcare. Private healthcare COSTS MORE than public healthcare because the drug makers, hospitals, etc have more power to gouge insurance companies and the average Joe than they do a large government
yeah and a car accident is generally preventable too.
how about an impacted wisdom tooth? should have thought about that before growing teefs nerd, enjoy your crippling debt.
USA, can you PPEASE remform your education system and actually ensure that everyone gets a normal and good education? Your idiots are ruining the country.
Also while at it, use that education to teach the kids what freedom really is, how little you really have of it, that boasting about it is dumb, and that using it to make idiotic decisions doesn't make you look awesome, it makes you look like, well, an idiot.
De-education has been an agenda of one of the parties since the eighties, and we're just seeing it take fruit now.
These things take time, and that party plays the 'long game'.
Since that person named USA explicitly, I'm going to assume that they're not an American, and that English is not their native language, and hence, not being taken to task for their spelling.
I assume nobody has planted a bomb on my car, that my spouse hasn't poisoned my food, and that my chair hasn't been rigged to collapse when I sit on it.
Assuming is how people can reasonably function day to day. You assumed your post had value. Sometimes assuming works out for you, sometimes it doesn't.
Actually assuming makes an ass out of you and Ming
🪦
Stop bothering Ming. She has done nothing to deserve that
If you honestly don't want fluoride, you can remove it yourself.
Honestly, if you're that paranoid about anything in your drinking water, you'd probably benefit from outright distilling it anyway.
They don't get the choice of whether or not their water is purified either. Damn gubmint!
I mean, people do pay more for mineral water. Yesterday, I was at CVS, and there were at least three sections of refrigerated cabinet consisting of different brands of mineral water.
But if someone wants to produce hard water, I'm sure that they can do that too.
googles
https://www.amazon.com/iSpring-FA15-Water-Filter-Clear/dp/B00FBLGD1S/
Yeah. From the "related filters" section on that, looks like there's a whole industry of selling people things they can jam inline into their reverse osmosis filter system to do things to their water to make them happy. This one adds "calcium, magnesium, and potassium".
I don't see much on there by way of numbers as to what concentrations it's supposed to produce, but I suppose that if it makes people happy, it's available. Not like they're getting any guarantees as to how hard their municipal water is either.
They can buy bottled water and pay for their stupidity.
You can't remove fluoride using standard water filters, or even high-end RO filter systems. A specialized fluoride-specific filtration system (multi-stage) is required due to fluoride's chemical bond.
We need to stop letting the village idiots make policy.
Americans won the battle to bring back measles
Now they’re fighting to bring back tooth decay
People can be fucking ignorant and unfortunately Covid made this all worse. There are simple measures we can take as a society to make everyone’s health better but people succumb to misinformation spread by those who profit from the alternative.
I don't think covid really made it worse, it just appeared at the right time.
The world has just gone bonkers with misinformation.
It’s only “fluoride” if it’s from the Florida region of the United States of America—otherwise it’s just a sparkling inorganic, monatomic anion of fluorine.
Common misconception - to Floridate water, a man wrestles an aligator and one of them must pee in it.
The water, or the alligator?
Not this shit again. This pseudo-scientific nonsense has been debunked numerous times already. You would think that this would be a dead conspiracy theory but here we are debating this once more. This is what happens when you have an scientifically illiterate population.
It's the old Alex Jones "turning the frogs gay" line. Just enough science to hurt yourself with.
I wanted to watch the video, but piped isn’t working. Can you help with another link, 🔗 or not, no biggie?
I went ahead and just linked it to the Youtube link. Should be working now.
On a more positive note if they lose their teeth they might have less luck at reproduction. Problem fixes itself, fingers crossed
From personal experience in dealing with people without as many teeth as the average, it doesn't stop them. R selection strategies in action.
I am missing a tooth from a face injury.
You're still above average! ;)
Do your point a favor, remove the n from an
When the tap water is "cloudy, bubbly, and milky" I think of a thousand different reasons why this could be. Flourid is not on that list.
If the tap water looks like that, I'd have the installarion checked before anything else. And I would not put it beyond an American water provider to deliver absolutely shitty water.
There are plenty of places that deliver bubbly, cloudy, milky water and it ain’t from fluoride
This sounds like that Simpsons episode where the school board votes down the "free recharging of fire extinguishers". They aren't even saying that their might be problems with floride, they just want choice for the option of choices sake. What is next, freedom to push your children into traffic?
This is a common talking point for people who can’t otherwise justify their position. It’s the “because I said so” of arguing. You see it a lot with far right talking points, where they’ll frame it as freedom of choice, when it’s really just an excuse to pander to conspiracy theorists, the extremely religious, racists, homophobes, etc…
“The civil war wasn’t about slavery; it was about states’ rights.”
“If I want to refuse service to a gay couple, that should be my choice.”
“If I want to refuse service to a mixed race couple, that should be my choice.”
For some reason, they never came around on the Pro-Choice movement, though
If I want to prevent your abortion, that should be my choice. "My" being the operative word, they're incredibly selfish. (Oh, and should the situation arise, "My abortion is the only justified abortion.")
Practically a one-to-one correlation between pro-life politicians and pregnant sex workers forced to get abortions.
But that was choices for women, who Conservatives have been clear that they view as property.
Children yearn for the streets; It has been far too long since it was commonplace for them to beg for bread, freezing in the cold, yearning for Scrooge's pocketbook.
Just another pest boil of the lack of scientific education in the US. Anti-Vaxx, Anti-Flouride, Anti-Science in general. Do you guys want to go back to the age of pilgrim fathers, or what?
these people? dude they yearn for the "rural settler life" of course they want to go back to the good old, god fearing, sustenance farmers and factory workers
And tooth rot. Like dental care isn't expensive and overlooked enough.
Let them go back there, I won't stop them from being killed by preventable diseases, maimed by wild animals, and, most importantly, no phones and no internet.
o0h no, they arn't happy until EVERYONE has to live according to Pol Pot's vision (+church)
Seriously though isn't that what making everything "great again" in this country is referring to?
I mean, most western countries don't add fluoride to their water supply, as ingesting significant amounts of fluoride is bad for you. America is an outlier there, as far as I'm aware.
There's usually small amounts occurring naturally in water. However, we shouldn't be adding in more, as it's cytotoxic and were not supposed to injest it.
Western countries do add fluoride, but it's done regionally depending on natural fluoride content of local water (or, specifically, lack of it).
Well, the US probably adds too much, but a certain minimum level is needed. In some countries, flourides are delivered by other means, e.g. salt.
Ugh! This is why we can't we have nice things.
Send these idiots to 5th grade science class, and don't let them out until they pass with at least a C.
We had a fairly popular game show here called Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, and collectively, the answer is apparently "no, we're not".
But.. these people are on the school board deciding what can be taught in science class
Clearly the solution is to make fifth graders dumber 🫠
Republicans are literally trying.
JFC this again? I thought all these conspiracy wackadoos had moved on to dumber and crazier things.
Apparently not:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/opinion/alex-jones-wellness-conspiracy.html
I kinda want you to spell out what InstaHard does
God i wish my community fluoridated its water. Just had a kid, and anything to help prevent cavities is amazing, and low levels of floride is such an easy, risk free and cheap solution.
Buy fluoridated water for your kid, don't dose the population with drugs in their water.
None of that conspiracy stuff matters, it doesn't matter if fluoride is 100% safe. Don't put drugs in tap water.
but what if the water is naturally too high in fluoride. should we not use "drugs" to remove the flouride to bring it back to safe levels?
Should we remove the "calcium drug" that is in groundwater too? and trace iron? those are drugs the same way fluoride is, should we be removing them?
What about the chlorine we add to water to make sure water remains safe. thats a "drug", isnt it? should we only ship raw water, and just accept some people will die?
Or should we put on our bigboy pants, and deal with reality?
If a natural body of water that is to be used as a water supply has high levels of a dangerous substance, yes, it should be removed. I'd say this is common sense, you don't drink dirty water just because it's "natural". Also, it's not necessary to use other drugs to remove fluoride. Either way, I'm saying adding drugs to municipal water supplies is not a good idea, I'm not making any claims about natural bodies of water.
Again, I'm saying adding a drug to municipal water supplies is problematic, not making claims about appropriateness of groundwater.
These are very different questions. If you suddenly removed chlorine from tap water around the U.S., massive numbers, perhaps tens of millions of people would likely die within days. If you suddenly removed the fluoride, rates of tooth decay would increase over the following years.
Chlorine added to water is not a drug meant to affect the the body of the consumer, it's to prevent spread of water borne disease.
Ideally, no I don't want chlorine added either -- the need for chlorinated water is another one of the many problems we create for ourselves when we live at a grotesque overpopulation.
The reality is that we add a known neurotoxin to our tap water and drug our population to reduce tooth decay. Disprove this statement. Is fluoride not a known neurotoxin?
Its just an odd double standard you have, some chemicals are OK to be added, others are not. My thought process is very simple "fluoride is extremely safe, and everyone deserves the opportunity to live without cavities, lets level that playing field, the same as we do by chlorinating our water"
Fluoride is NOT a neurotoxin in the amounts the found in tap water. Everything is toxic in high enough quantities, and if you think we should ban something because in concentrate it is toxic, then we need to ban water too. If you think fluoride is a neurotoxin in the levels mandated by the FDA, please prove that.
You misundersand. No chemeicals added to water are OK, but chlorine is tolerable considering it saves millions of lives. Everything has a cost to benefit ratio. Adding chlorine to tap water has a huge benefit, fluoride does not.
How can you know the dose a person gets from a drug added to tap water? The fact is that dosing by tap water is one of the worst drug distribution methods possible.
This is silly and does not relate to my argument.
WTF? No, you shouldn't want it added randomly to the water. I grew up with well water and my teeth are fine, don't buy into the bullshit.
N=1 case study from a radically biased individual or multiple rigorous studies by people who understand public health. I just don't know what to believe!
I grew up with well water as a child and my baby teeth were wrecked. Adult teeth had fluoride and are fine (for the most part)
So there's an anecdotal experience that counters yours
Oh, great - a "I didn't have that and look at me. I'm fine. You shouldn't have it either." person.
It's a meaningful statement though. Natural drinking water doesn't have flouride added to it, it's inclusion is frankly bizarre, and the idea that human beings think it's good to be added is so Bizzarro World to me.
The claim something is "natural" whatever that means does not make it good or safe. Fluoride in the drinking water tho, has proven to be effective and safe.
What the hell is "natural drinking water?" That's not a thing.
If you mean water from a spring or creek, that's "spring water." If by "natural" you mean untreated, unfiltered, untested, it might be okay but can also kill you depending on bacteria levels, parasites, or other pollutants or contaminates.
Don't drink random water out of the ground.
It's present, but the levels vary and may not be sufficient in a given area to help prevent cavities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride
This has the same kind of vibe as the old people who speak fondly about the good old days back when not even kids had to wear seat belts or be in car seats.
"And I survived!"
you grew up on well water, which is often high in fluoride.
You likely benefited from high fluoride, and just didnt realize it.
Meanwhile, I grew up with fluoride added to the water and only had one maybe two minor cavities by the time I was 25, then moved to a place that has such shitty city water everyone heavily filters it, so even if fluoride is added, the filtering removes most of it, and I have had so many dental problems since, not a single one without at least one filling, and several crowns... So there, my anecdote cancels yours.
Use a fluoridated mouthwash before you brush, and switch to a hydroxapatite toothbrush for 3 months, might be a good experiment
Fun fact: adding flouride to drinking water is illegal in my country and I think it has always been illegal.
We do have it in varying quantities in our drinking water but that's apparently because of our geography. We also have maximum limits like many other countries do.
People with their own water wells are more likely to have elevated levels of fluoride in their water.
Teeth....the haves vs. the haves not....another Florida experiment.
PRECIOUS
BODILY
FLUIDS!
Children's ice cream, Mandrake!
Have you ever seen a commie drink water?
Tell me Jack, when did you first develop this theory?
That movie is so fucking good.
We were satirizing this in 1964. People literally want regressivism.
They should change nothing and say that they got rid of it. It's not like these people are smart enough to tell the difference.
I had great teeth as a kid, but then moved out to the boonies with well water, 5-6 years later I started getting cavities (while still getting fluoride at the dentist twice a year). My teeth have been nothing but problems since.
Now our town water refuses to add fluoride and a bunch of my son’s school mates already have fillings in kindergarten.
Are we sure these people don't just want to ban Florida but have a spelling problem?
Just fighting against the most insidious of communist plots.
Have you noticed that I only drink grain alcohol or rain water?
To be fair, there's still a ton of areas in the US with questionable drinking water.
I honestly wouldn't criticize them if they chose to drink alcohol like in the old days to avoid diseases from unsanitary water.
I mean, just look at Flint :(
Oh good. Whats old is new again.
Flouride conspiracies are old hat compared to most of the bullshit thats been bandied about in the past 10 years.
Solved it guys, Introducing T-dazzle, a safe fun and natural system to keep your sparklies sparkling. You can even earn discounts on your long term dental checkups by using it.
Fun fact: spreading conspiracy theories about the evils of fluoride in the water (it's mind control! pollutes our precious bodily fluids!) was one of the talking points that crypto-fascists threw against the wall to see if it would stick- if you recall the line about your "precious bodily fluids" in Dr. Strangelove, that was a nod to that particular vein of conspiracy theory that was making the rounds in the far-loony fringes of what was then the Republican party
I truly do not mean to belittle anyone who holds this opinion, but isn't this such a minor thing to be worried so much about, to try to prevent?
I just mean there seems to be like a hundred other things that would be more important to discuss before we get to fluoride in the water.
No one is forcing them to drink tap water with fluoride in it. They can buy purified water if they're that afraid of it.
I bet the same people that are worried about fluoride have never had their tap water actually tested to see what their pipes might be leeching.
Or get various devices to remove it.
A water distiller is the big hammer, will take everything out.
https://www.amazon.com/VEVOR-Water-Distilling-Distillation-Countertop/dp/B0CSFQZ89V/
I believe the primary market for these devices is small-scale production of moonshine.
People don't trust "the government" to add a chemical they don't understand to their water.
You're not saying anything new to me.
My point is that this is such an old discussion to be rehashing again, and even if there's validity to the point to discuss, if you triage everything that's going wrong these days, I would say fluoride in the water is so low on the triage list.
In other words, my question was not if it's a real issue or not, but prioritizing the issue high by bringing it up again and again, throughout the decades. More important things to worry about, basically.
Agreed, it's pretty frustrating. Improved education and increased trust in governments (at least local) seem like obvious but difficult solutions.
It's the one good thing we got from Fluorine chemistry.
And they don't want it.
They're after our precious body fluids.
Have you ever seen a communist drink water, major?
Stupid upcoming second Dark Ages. Things were just starting to get interesting.
Welp, does anyone need good bleeding with leaches and some infected nasty turnip that is all-natural whole food?
Fluoridation is part of a communist conspiracy to sap and impurity all our bodily fluids.
Powerful men have been worried about it since the Cold War.
Great, if dramatic, video on the subject: https://piped.video/watch?v=J67wKhddWu4
I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love. Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I... I do deny them my essence.
The video isn't working and your words don't make sense General Jack D. Ripper : Do you realise that fluoridation - is the most monstrously-conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face? this view was regarded as a fringe idea in the 60s
All I can think about is Dr Strangelove.
Well, they're fighting hard against that commie plot and winning.
yall talking about fluoride? Out here we're talking about someone stealing water from us. Because apparently that's a thing that's actually genuinely happening out here.
Just don't look at the part where we're lowering the water table to irreversible levels, that's definitely not a problem, we swear.
i don't drink tap water, i don't think as many people do generally in the US as they used to 20 years ago, there's a lot of reasons for that, but it would be interesting to see how much fluoride the average person takes in from drinking water to begin with nowadays
A friend of mine used to always make fun of me for not drinking tap water. I explained that it taste bad and that you can see the particles floating around in it. He said "no no no, the Gov wouldn't allow that. It's safe to drink!" I know it is safe, but the quality sucks.
This same friend stopped drinking from the tap after he moved to the neighborhood next to mine.
All that is to say that while the tap water in most areas of the US are perfectly safe for consumption, that doesn't mean that it is pleasant tasting.
Good god! Where do you live?!
I'll grant that tap water may not taste great. This sounds stupidly picky, and I'm not, but there's a clear difference in the water from our bathroom tap, kinda gross, and the kitchen tap, totally normal. Been like that since the house was new, 7-years ago.
One thing people don't get, tap water is only nasty, if at all, when you first pour it. Take a glass and blast it full. Take a sniff, get your nose right on top.
If you let it sit for a day, it's perfectly "flat". This is why people's houseplants suffer and turn brown at the tips. The plant pushes the chemicals, like fluorine and other stuff, out to the leaf tips, turns 'em dead. Let your water sit a day and it's about like rainwater. (I know minerals like fluoride won't change or evaporate out. Don't know anything about municipal water treatment.)
And that's another thing! I've noticed for years that when it's dry, watering from the hose helps, of course. But a solid rain pops the green out. Very interesting to observe.
Lol, it sounds worse than it is. The water here is just very hard.
Not sure if it is a filtration issue or if it absorbed during transit in the pipes. At any rate, there is a very large chemical manufacturing plant and a nuclear fuels processing plant a stone's throw from where I live, so the state monitors the waterways like a hawk. They've been busted a small handful of times over the years, but thank goodness nothing serious enough to worry about- despite what some of the other locals say.
That's super interesting about the plants! Something to keep an eye on in the garden over the summer. I appreciate the tip about leaving the water out overnight too.
Apparently, boiling hard water causes certain minerals to bind with microplastics, making them way easier to filter out. So you have that going for you?
If you have shit floating in your water, you need to get that checked out because it's almost certainly an issue in your end.
Then why does unfiltered tap water suck pretty much everywhere I go?
It legit tastes like they put dirt in it, even school fountains.
The best is there will be hard, medical and scientific data to absorb and see if cavities spike in these areas and compare them to past data. I might have a hypothesis of what will happen.
The article already has one example: “Juneau, Alaska, voted to remove fluoride from its drinking water in 2007. A study published in the journal BMC Oral Health in 2018 compared the dental records of children and adolescents who received dental care for decaying teeth four years before and five years after the city stopped adding fluoride to the water. Cavity-related procedures and treatment costs were significantly higher in the latter group, the study found.”
I say life begins at arousal... NO FLUORIDE!
https://youtu.be/2BlJRtsQrgo?si=VggUJYscYg-x22fG
When Life imitates Art.
IIRC the biggest risk of the fluoride is it can pull calcium from the muscles in the digestive tract. With the tiny amount in drinking water, you would normally only feel an effect (like a slight cramp) if you drank too much, too quickly. Your body would be able to replace the calcium from its stores within a minute or two. If it is too uncomfortable, a simple antacid can speed it up.
The biggest risk is that it renders your pineal gland completely useless. (not the face, not the face, not the face)
There's quite a list of well-documented risks, actually. The anti-fluoride website highlighted in the article goes into some of it, but the one I'm intrigued by is the established link between IQ and fluoride. The "high" level in the report below is easily achievable by a standard diet and recommended water intake, assuming fluoridated water is both ingested and used in food processing and cooking.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409983/
We need #TDazzle, it makes your teeth stronger and starts a party in your mouth. Its an aquatic based social media oral experience.
Here’s an informative video explaining the details
9 out of 10 dentists approve a ban /s
“Let’s stop putting something in the water that’s meant to treat us, and give people the freedom to choose,”
Some topics demand freedom of choice and others don’t.
Removing fluoride.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL83S3zL0OE
This whole anti-fluoride thing is just a psyop brought to us by big toothpaste and the ADA… that’s the real conspiracy, wake up sheeple! /s
It’s not fluoride, it’s #tdazzle.
https://piped.video/watch?v=8c0JrJdJrBA?si=-odO3ntcUYWS0-JF
Please do your own research, as this is a very controversial subject which has been fought since its inception, with entrenched opinions. Here's a primer:
Most of the research done on fluoridating tap water was done in the early 1940s & 50s, well in advance of modern dental hygiene and fluoridated toothpaste use. Studies do definitively show applying fluoride directly to teeth does strengthen tooth enamel, but modern studies are mixed, at best, regarding efficacy of fluoridated tap water between equivalent socioeconomic communities. No studies have been conducted regarding dermal absorption of fluoride , believed to further elevate intake.
I think the simplest solution is to let people choose for themselves, and add fluoride to their personal drinking water if that's what they choose.
We don't need to fluoridate water in our toilets, showers, or irrigation.
I just want to point out that too much of anything is bad, because that's what "too much" means. Saying "but too much of x is bad" is such a dumb argument, that I always bring this up.
The delta between fluoride levels considered "theraputic" and "harmful" (per the WHO) is quite small. The most effective use of fluoride is topical (applying to teeth) rather than oral.
can you provide sources for these claims?
i have not been able to find any conclusive evidence on fluoride being a carcinogen. in fact, im finding many reputable sources saying that’s still an open question.
i also can’t find a reliable source on the IQ claims.
the other claims are also fairly dubious as well.
Of course not, what do you think independent research is?? Find your own sources!
/S just in case
The website in the article, had anyone read it without their personal bias scoffing at the title and going straight to comments, contains much of this info - I recommend giving it a gander.
98% of Europe doesn't fluoridate their water. IATP provides statistics and primary concerns: https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Facts_about_Fluoridation.htm
Per the NIH: "Children in endimic areas of fluorosis are at risk for impaired development or intelligence": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409983/ Note: the “high” level in the report below is easily achievable by a standard diet and recommended water intake, assuming fluoridated water is both ingested and used in food processing and cooking. This excludes exposure via fluoride toothpaste.
Fluoride and cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3283934/
I'm all for continued study on fluoride's effects, but I'm not totally convinced on all these points.
It seems like most studies showing negative IQ effects are attributed to naturally high concentrations of fluoride in drinking water, or elevated levels due to nearby coal burning. It's certainly significant to know that there are toxic levels of fluoride, but recommended levels have been adjusted to be about half of that (though the exact threshold of toxicity is fuzzy).
So yes, we need to be careful about the amount of fluoride in our water, but removing it completely (excepting natural presence) may be throwing the baby out with the fluoridated bath water, as it were.
The main reason I'm against removing it completely is because it's not clear that it isn't helping prevent tooth decay, especially for those who don't have the means to get directly applied fluoride (i.e. Toothpaste and dentist applied coatings) and wouldn't have the means to add fluoride to their water on an individual basis.
The best available scientific information is that it does help, and it’s the most cost effective way of doing so
"The authors conclude that available evidence suggests that fluoride has a potential to cause major adverse human health problems, while having only a modest dental caries prevention effect": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956646/
^ I think this logic needs to be reversed - the burden of proof must be abundantly clear with few to no risks before it should be considered. The paper above also highlights interesting aspects about the initial test which spurred water fluoridation in the US. This was also a time in which broad public awareness of dental hygiene was first entering mainstream - was the causality due to amended tap water, or more tooth-brushing?
There's a reason most of Europe (and most of the world) doesn't fluoridate their water, and their teeth are statistically healthier than the USA & Australia, where most tap water is fluoridated.
In my opinion the water fluoridation debate has become associated with nut-job conspiracy theorists and the "don't tread on me" crowd. There are legitimate concerns, and the debate has been ongoing prior to Roswell, etc. There are literal conspiracies diluted in public perception/sentiment by wacky theoretical conspiracies and the types who espouse them.
That's the thing, the proof has been that fluoridated water helps teeth. The data is old, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's incorrect. As for European countries, at least according to Wikipedia, not many of them artificially fluoridate their water, but some of them have naturally high levels of fluoride in their water and some others provide fluoride via salt or milk.
Here's a study that compares oral health and cognitive decline across varying levels of water fluoridation (natural or artificial) in Sweden. The data finds positive oral health outcomes and no significant impairment associated with higher fluoride levels. Obviously this directly contradicts your linked study, so what are we to believe? I think the only conclusion we can really come to is that more research needs to be done.
It's also not surprising that tooth health has generally improved with the rising availability of toothpaste and other dental care, but I think what remains to be seen is, are we at the point where we no longer need fluoridated water, or would our tooth health overall decline without it, particularly among vulnerable populations? Particularly in countries like the US where oral healthcare is often prohibitively expensive and not usually covered by general health insurance, is it wise to cut off the small amount of freely available dental help we have before finding a suitable alternative?
That seems like a pretty significant qualifier.
Very little of our tap water actually touches human stomachs too, but we still make sure it isn't filled with amoebas.
Without chlorination people would get sick and possibly die. Amoebas & bacteria can enter our bodies when showering or even flushing a toilet - via aerosolization. Chlorination is also important for the water infrastructure itself, and to prevent buildup within home pipes and appliances.
Should we put multi-vitamin compounds in our drinking water too? It is strange that this one thing is added to water vs the host of other compounds which are shown to benefit human health.
Sure, why not? If they can be absorbed by the body that way and do some good, what's the problem?
Do you consider water to be medicine, or a resource? Why don't we add caloric value to our tap water too, for the sake of malnutrition in impoverished communities?
Because not everyone benefits from extra calories, but as long as you don't include vitamins that you can't take too much of as long as it is in small quantities, what's the harm?
I was being facetious and think your argument is completely preposterous, but continuing for fun. Let's say you are dictator of your loyal subjects, and decide to medicate their water with... vitamins, including copper. What if someone is sensitive to added copper, either because of damage to their copper plumbing, copper cookware, or a metabolic issue? What if someone is working outdoors in the summer heat and consumes 2 gallons of water per day, but begins to experience symptoms of copper toxicity due to the volume of water intake? The water is excreted, but our bodies do not excrete most excess vitamins, such as copper. This copper intake then causes an imbalance/deficiency of zinc and subsequently magnesium.
Should we add prozac/SSRIs to our water to thwart depression and make the populous happier?
Most of the world doesn't medicate their water, and their citizens are surprisingly healthier than us in the US & Australia where we "medicate" our water. How about we give people access to clean, pure water and let them supplement as they & their doctors see fit?
I like how you ignored the "as long as you don’t include vitamins that you can’t take too much of as long as it is in small quantities" and moved on to "what if someone takes too much?"
Does being this stupid hurt?
What makes more sense?
A) Large corporations (not known for their wisdom, concern for our well-being, or compassion) found a profitable way to deal with a hard-to-manage waste stream (from fertilizer production) by convincing government leaders (not known for their scientific understanding or compassion) to buy their waste and dilute it to where it no longer needs to be managed as toxic material?
B) Your government leaders are actually concerned about tooth decay.
Lol downvotes. Really guys? Water fluoridation is the one issue both Democrats and Republicans agree on and are doing the right thing for the people? You're being lied to, and fiercely defending the ones lying to you.
If they want to get it into poor kids, should put fluoride in fizzy drinks.
Should the government put all beneficial substances in our water? Only some? Which ones? Why?
I don't want drugs in my water.
There aren’t drugs in your water. There are minerals though.
Any substance, mineral or otherwise added to the water to affect the functioning of my body is a drug.
If the government didn't add anything to water, you'd die from bacteria and viruses after it sits stagnant in the pipes.
According to this line of reasoning, I guess it's OK for the government to add some Ozempic to the water?
There's a vast difference between sterilization agents and a purpose-made drug designed to treat a specific illness. There's a vast difference between a purpose-made drug and a simple elemental supplement. I suspect you know this. Nice strawman though, it'll burn well.
A simple elemental supplement can still be dangerous and is still a drug. One can overdose and cause health problems by consuming lots of tap water, dental fluourosis is not uncommon, I've actually seen it in people.
Ok. Sure. This is a valid argument that we can tackle. Comparing it to ozempic isn't.
You're going to have some level of fluoride from any water source -- whether there's any extra added or not -- unless there's processing to remove it. Just part of groundwater.
Saying "use a filter to remove some naturally occurring X" -- sure ok
Saying "use a filter to remove drugs added to your tap water that your tax dollars pay for" -- not ok
If you water had nothing in it, it would be dangerous to drink. Distilled and/or 18 MΩ water can kill you, if you're not careful.
LOL! I've been drinking distilled water primarily for 25 years! You can order it for your water cooler from Sparklett's.
Sorry, you're right, I was a bit... hyperbolic. You can drink it every day without problems since 1) it's not as pure as we like to think it is and 2) you can easily get all your minerals and stuff from your food.
The danger is if you decide to chug a bunch of water for one reason or another. It's easier to give yourself water intoxication with distilled water, essentially because the osmotic pressure is so much higher relative to the inside of your cells. This isn't actually a problem most people have to worry about, water intoxication is pretty rare, but I'm used to thinking in terms of hardcore athletes. It would be foolish to drink only distilled water for a marathon, for example.
That all sounds about right, appreciate your candor.
After 25 years, just this last year I started getting rib cramps which I suspect are a mineral (electrolyte) deficiency caused by distilled water (+ bad diet of UPF), so it's not necessarily completely without problems if your diet sucks. I started taking a mineral supplement and the cramps went away.
You drink distilled water, which causes you issues you have to remedy by taking additional supplements.
Clearly your stance is not viable for general populations. You sound like people that don't want to allow blood transfusions because it makes them feel icky and fringe cases exist of it going poorly.
Did I say distilled water should be what the general population drinks? Did I say we should replace tap water with distilled water?
My mineral deficiency is due to a bad diet of primarily ultra-processed food and maybe exacerbated by nearly 3 decades of distilled water consumption. Oh, and it was cramps, fluoride causes brain damage.
Someone who gives themselves mineral deficiencies should absolutely not be listened to when it comes to general public health issues lol
Fluoride in the doses allowed in water doesn't cause brain damage, you sound like an anti-vaxxer.
You started with serious questions, worth talking about, but thinking fluoride is a drug killed it. That tells me you're not educated enough to have the conversation.
lol, and why would fluoride not qualify as a drug?
Drug: A substance used in the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of a disease or as a component of a medication.
You know tap water literally has chlorine in it, right?
I don't drink tap water, but yes I'm well aware. I don't believe chlorine can be considered a drug added to our water as it's intention is not to affect my body, it's to prevent growth of bacteria in the water system.
Either way, I don't really want that in my water either, but practical reality necessitates it, hundreds of millions could die without it, this is not nearly the case for fluoride.
Lol
I'm sure your rational, considered opinion deserves as much weight as doctors and utility engineers.
Floride is an element. What we use in toothpaste isn't nearly the same as the industrial byproducts dumped in the drinking water
Edit: I was half asleep when I posted this, fluorine is the element, floride refers to salts with ionized fluorine in them. The stuff in toothpaste and the dentist's office is sodium fluoride
What is added to drinking water is hydrogen floride mixed with God knows what else, because it's an industrial byproduct with lax restrictions.
Most of Europe and Japan don't use this, and despite having great data to do statistics on, there's little evidence it's doing anything for dental health
This wasn't science that led to public health policy, this was a solution to a business problem and a PR campaign
You're wrong and this article is about you
What on earth are you saying lol
You aren't wrong. These people have confirmation bias.
They are, in fact, wrong. Fluorine is an element, Fluoride is a common ion of Fluorine. And it being "an industrial by-product" makes no difference (other than whether it was purified/separated - which it is, they aren't just dumping waste into the drinking supply), it is, in fact, the same stuff put in our toothpaste.
You are assuming I believe the stuff they put in our toothpaste is safe. If the government cared about your teeth they would outlaw added sugar. Lol lick boot heel pleb!
Have you ever been wrong? If so, there's no reason to consider to your comment because your input is irrelevant.
It is possible to be a good source of information that has come to the wrong conclusion using the best information provided. As long as you update your conclusions as more information becomes available, no harm no foul.
You shouldn't trust me just because I said something, yes.
You should understand what's being said yourself so it doesn't matter who is saying it.
No that is not how expertise works. You cannot be an expert at everything: there's not enough time for one and not everyone is even capable for two. In fact, most people are decidedly NOT capable of being experts about MOST things. If someone spends their life working in an area (not watching YouTube videos about it), their perspective in that area is BETTER and is more worthy of consideration. A consensus among experts prevents any one individual from taking advantage of a situation and is even more worthy of consideration.
The thing is, copying experts does not mean you understand the subject.
Lots of people think that just because they cite someone with more credentials than them, then that person must be correct. That's not how the real world works and you'll understand it more as you get older.
If you just trust people based on their credentials, then you're treating science like a religion and shouldn't be taken seriously by rational people. You do this because it's easier than understanding the science yourself.
This means you will be taken seriously by average people since rationality is on the decline.
Lol shut up I have two kids, a PhD and almost 20 years experience running a university research lab BEFORE my current job.
You don't have to understand that low dose fluoride is good for your teeth for it to be true. You don't have to understand that vaccines improve community health, or that getting enough movement throughout the day is good for heart health, or that eclipses don't cause electromagnetic anomalies for those things to be true either.
Planning to trust yourself more then experts in a field is naive to the point of being delusional. Especially if you're thinking you can go read a paper or two and "understand" it enough to be an intellectual peer of someone who actually invested years of time. No matter who you are, even if you're Einstein reincarnated, you're not that smart.
You don't have to listen blindly to every person, but listening to the consensus of people who know more than you isn't religion, it's a heuristic for making better decisions.
So? Did you study the effects of drinking fluoridated water?
Or do you just have faith in those who did?
It's just another source of information. Treating that source as absolute truth without understanding it yourself is ignorant.
And thinking your cursory understanding of a subject from a few sources you picked is just as good as someone who DID study it is equal parts naive, arrogant, and stupid.
I cite them not because they’re going to be correct, but because all things considered they’re more likely to be able to draw the correct conclusions from the data than me or the person I’m talking to.
I thought trekkies were supposed to be smart =/
I bet that guy is still mad that they broadcast a white guy kissing a black woman on television.
Smart enough not to treat science like a religion.
Listening to experts isn't treating it like a religion you dolt.
Are the experts ever wrong?
Yes, but orders of magnitude less often than random members of the public "doing their own research". And looking at the consensus of the experts rather than individual experts the error rate is further orders of magnitude below that. You need to let go of the idea that information being a good basis for decisions means that it's "absolute truth", because only religion has that; what we have is some sources of information that are less likely to be wrong than all the others, and that's unfortunately the best you can get.
Less often than you are.
Every time you speak lies and wrongness comes pouring out, if you stopped speaking and listened to experts onece and a while you'd be better off in life.
I don't think it's fair to flatly posit that since the CDC has been wrong at some point in the past, they can't ever be trusted. While i understand the concept of don't blindly follow words regardless of who said it, the sheer amount of research and dedication from an organization such as the CDC should count quite a bit more than the folks who have done none.
I don't have the means to do such research, and as such i will more heavily weigh the words of the applicable research team than i will the words of someone who has no knowledge on the topic.
I think the question really should be not "have they ever been wrong," but instead, "do i think they're wrong on purpose." A lot of research teams are funded by one side of an argument, which is cause for concern. The CDC is most likely not, and it would be fair to say they could be wrong, but likely not on purpose. Therefore i would say in this instance they are the more qualified experts who are also trying their best to be objective, and therefore, they likely have the more reasonable statement on this topic.
Fluoride was only added because it's a largely useless industrial waste product that was kinda good at helping prevent enamel decay. Corporations get more money, municipal governments get to siphon tax dollars to their rich friends in the name of "public health," and your water gets a funny taste! Win, win, win, right?
Weirdo
How?
Downplaying the usefulness of Flouride, writing it off as though to imply it’s some kind of scam, while even acknowledging its usefulness is a fucking weird take.
“Yeah we added it to the water supply because it prevents people teeth from falling out but GUYS did you know they get it from companies that don’t want it? What a fuckin SCAM huh?” Is how you comment comes off
I was going to help improve public health, but then I learned we'd have to pay someone money in order to do it, so I chose to keep my hands clean of such a disgusting act.
Europe has seen near-identical falling rates of tooth decay in the past fifty years without mass fluoridation like the US.
Introducing industrial waste to the water supply is generally referred to as a bad thing. Incentivizing the nitrogen fertilizer industry by making even their waste profitable is also a bad thing. Forcing medical procedures on people so that tax dollars can be funneled to the private sector is not good either.
You keep saying waste, I would argue it's a byproduct. Like whey from milk.
You're username, for one.
https://www.cdc.gov/oralhealth/conditions/index.html
How does that contradict any of my comment?