…
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.
So lead, plastic, and PFAS are fine but fluoride is where they draw the line…?
This
They’re also against vaccines because supposedly vaccines will damage their DNA… whereas apparently PFAS don’t.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I am SO tired of being at the mercy of idiots.
“Never Underestimate The Power Of Stupid People In Large Groups” -George Carlin
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.
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).
This. I never add salt to my cooking because there’s already so much salt in everything.
Same with Switzerland
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.”
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?
There are people out there who can’t brush their teeth as often as they should, for reasons outside their control.
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.
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
Excuse me! The fluoride treatment flavours ar wonderful! Best part of going to the dentist as a kid!
Community water fluoridation has been identified as the most cost-effective method of delivering fluoride to all members of the community regardless of age, educational attainment, income level, and the availability of dental care. In studies conducted after other fluoride products, such as toothpaste, were widely available, scientists found additional reductions in tooth decay – up to 25 percent – among people with community water fluoridation as compared to those without fluoridation.
Do you drink your toothpaste?
What are you talking about?
People get cavities all the time, and it’s because they don’t brush their damn teeth.
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.
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’.
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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.
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Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.
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.
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Actually assuming makes an ass out of you and Ming
🪦
Stop bothering Ming. She has done nothing to deserve that
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
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.
For the same reason people should “have to” resort to anything else they don’t want that everyone else is fine with.
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.
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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
The addition of fluoride (fluoridation) to drinking water that is low in fluoride or the use of fluoride toothpaste and supplements significantly reduces the risk of tooth decay.
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.
you were arguing in bad faith
Or perhaps they were making a joke.
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?
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.
Do your point a favor, remove the n from an
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! ;)
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?
they just want choice for the option of choices sake.
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.”)
“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.
But, but, but… states rights.
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)
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.
Seriously though isn’t that what making everything “great again” in this country is referring to?
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
When Owen Shroyer, an anchor and reporter for Infowars, took the stand late last month in the defamation trial of his boss, the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he was asked about the many health products for sale on Jones’s site. Among them: diet pills, fluoride-free toothpaste that Jones once claimed “kills the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range” and InstaHard, a supplement whose purpose I probably don’t have to spell out.
I kinda want you to spell out what InstaHard does
Supporters of such bans argue that people should be given the freedom of choice.
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 can buy bottled water and pay for their stupidity.
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.
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.
