…
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.
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
“Yeah we added it to the water supply because it prevents people teeth from falling out
Europe has seen near-identical falling rates of tooth decay in the past fifty years without mass fluoridation like the US.
but GUYS did you know they get it from companies that don’t want it? What a fuckin SCAM huh?”
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.
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.
You’re username, for one.
How does that contradict any of my comment?
I am SO tired of being at the mercy of idiots.
“Never Underestimate The Power Of Stupid People In Large Groups” -George Carlin
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.
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.
The biggest risk is that it renders your pineal gland completely useless. (not the face, not the face, not the face)
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
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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.
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.
Especially when it comes to a novel virus… which is what I assume they were alluding to when chastising the CDC for making a mistake. They updated their advice as the information became available through research.
Edit: typo
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Lol shut up I have two kids, a PhD and almost 20 years experience running a university research lab BEFORE my current job.
So? Did you study the effects of drinking fluoridated water?
Or do you just have faith in those who did?
but listening to the consensus of people who know more than you isn’t religion, it’s a heuristic for making better decisions.
It’s just another source of information. Treating that source as absolute truth without understanding it yourself is ignorant.
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.
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.
We need #TDazzle, it makes your teeth stronger and starts a party in your mouth. Its an aquatic based social media oral experience.
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 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.
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.
you can see the particles floating around
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?
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.
That’s the reason you can’t drink raw milk or use lead gas.
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.
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.
Well, and TB.
Some of the herd nobly chose to sacrifice itself to improve the genetic resistance of the whole.
can we compromise on drinking raw milk with flouride added?
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
Of course you can drink raw milk if you want to!
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Wow! That escalated quickly.
Guess mods don’t under sarcasm
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.
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.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
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.
The raw milk thing is actually part of the reason the FDA was formed!
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.
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.
Americans won the battle to bring back measles
Now they’re fighting to bring back tooth decay
We need to stop letting the village idiots make policy.
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.
It’s not fluoride, it’s #tdazzle.
