…
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.
I am SO tired of being at the mercy of idiots.
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.
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
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?
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.
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?
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).
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!
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.
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 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.
can we compromise on drinking raw milk with flouride added?
Of course you can drink raw milk if you want to!
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
I’d love to say something sensible, understandable and concise.
But this post is like someone shouting “WHY DID MATHEMATICIANS MAKE THE √ SYMBOL TICK SHAPED?!”, convinced they’ve found a way to prove that 2+2 is not 4.
There is so much to unpack there. Properly responding to every explicit and implicit grain is like reasoning against a beach.
I’m not sure what you meant to say but it sounded super smart.
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.
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.
“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
