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.

  • esc27@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    So lead, plastic, and PFAS are fine but fluoride is where they draw the line…?

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    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.

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      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.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_raw_milk_debate

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        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.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          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.

        • tal@lemmy.today
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          Some of the herd nobly chose to sacrifice itself to improve the genetic resistance of the whole.

    • bastion@feddit.nl
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      Just let them die then, rather than trying to make them age where they don’t want to.

    • MonkderDritte@feddit.de
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      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.

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      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.

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    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.

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      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.

      • affa@startrek.website
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        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.

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    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.”

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      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.

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      What are you talking about?

      People get cavities all the time, and it’s because they don’t brush their damn teeth.

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      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.

      • explodes@lemmy.world
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        It demonstrably makes a huge difference, even with people who brush on a regular basis.

      • Liz@midwest.social
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        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?

      • Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de
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        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.

        • Raz@lemm.ee
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          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.

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        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.

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          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.

            • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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              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.

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                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.

                • Liz@midwest.social
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                  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?

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        CDC

        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.

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    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.

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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      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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        The first thing is not so much less democracy, but more participation. I’m definitely guilty of this myself, so not trying to be holier than thou preachy. Conservatives have been doing a concerted effort to take over lower level offices as well, school boards, municipal positions, etc. Part of the issue seems ro be the people who want to do this stuff often have an ulterior motive, and people who should probably be in these spots have a lack of interest.

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          Local office is pretty much shit. You get yelled at for whatever the crazies saw on TV last night, you can’t fix anything, and everyone is angry about something.

          Never doing it again.

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      Funnily enough, the idiots do have a grain a truth here, that grain just happens to be an example of the internet’s favorite, Dunning-Kruger.

      Excess flouride does have profound negative effects on intelligence. Several hundreds times the levels you get positive effects for tooth health from, and thus well beyond the scope of flouridation programs. There are also other notable side effects from flouride toxicity, so it’d be quite noticable.

      There are even several regions of America and China where they need deflouridation treatments for ground water, but the conspiracy types never seem to mention those.

      They also don’t seem to note that flouride toxicity, like lead toxicity, leads to both decreased intelligence and increased aggression.

      How making the working class angry and dumb makes them easier for the owner class to control and profit from never seems to come up.

      • Veneroso@lemmy.world
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        Lead exposure also causes reduced intelligence.

        Leaded gasoline was still a thing when I was a kid.

        Lead paint chips are delicious.

        And those Stanley cups that suburbia is raging over, also contains lead.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        How making the working class angry and dumb makes them easier for the owner class to control and profit from never seems to come up.

        Ask the folks at the Jan 6th riot. Trump played them all like fiddles.

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          Sure, but I don’t think anyone is accusing Trump of being behind a flouridation conspiracy. It demonstrates rather that angry morons are rather easy to point at the government, which is why the government probably doesn’t want a bunch of angry morons to rule.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            I don’t think anyone is accusing Trump of being behind a flouridation conspiracy.

            Sure. I’m simply noting that whipping people up into a frenzy or panic is an age old technique for controlling large populations.

            It demonstrates rather that angry morons are rather easy to point at the government

            Or at this or that ethnic group or religious sect or ideological cohort, sure. You don’t even have to be particularly conservative for this technique to work. Liberals fall for the Immigrant Caravan Invasion and Crime Wave panic stories and Pending Federal Bankruptcy and Communist Invasion stories as easily as any moderate Republican.

            the government probably doesn’t want a bunch of angry morons to rule

            They do, if they want to export that violence overseas or inflict it on minority groups and women, as a means of social control.

            And it isn’t as though state officials are even all that rational. Certainly, Joe Biden’s had no problem perpetuating a genocide overseas, despite his policy whipping up a bonfire of opposition at home and in neighboring regions. Neither do Vladimir Putin or MBS or Narendra Modi seem shy about stoking the fires of bigotry in their own countries, as a means of mobilizing large groups of people into parades of support for their rule.

            Angry morons are a great source of cheap activist labor, whether you’re storming the capital on Jan 6th or rallying Hindu nationalists to tear down a 600-year-old mosque in Delhi.

  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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    Americans won the battle to bring back measles

    Now they’re fighting to bring back tooth decay

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    You can’t trust this stuff. I only drink water straight from the creek and- excuse me, my diarrhea is acting up.

    • affa@startrek.website
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      What a bad faith argument.

      Most people who want to avoid fluoride in their drinking water use reverse osmosis.

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          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.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            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.

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              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?

              • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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                Complains about people arguing in bad faith, proceeds to argue in bad faith. Hahahahahaha

                • affa@startrek.website
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                  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?

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              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.

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    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.

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    Not this shit again. This pseudo-scientific nonsense has been debunked numerous times already. You would think that this a dead conspiracy theory but here we are debating this once more. This is what happens when you have an scientifically illiterate population.

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    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?

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      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.”

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          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.”)

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            “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.

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      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.

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    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?

    • orrk@lemmy.world
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      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

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        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.

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          o0h no, they arn’t happy until EVERYONE has to live according to Pol Pot’s vision (+church)

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      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.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        Western countries do add fluoride, but it’s done regionally depending on natural fluoride content of local water (or, specifically, lack of it).

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        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.

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      Seriously though isn’t that what making everything “great again” in this country is referring to?

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    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.

    • mojo_raisin@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • Corhen@lemmy.world
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        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?

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          3 months ago

          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?

          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.

          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?

          Again, I’m saying adding a drug to municipal water supplies is problematic, not making claims about appropriateness of groundwater.

          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?

          • 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.

          Or should we put on our bigboy pants, and deal with reality?

          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?

          • Corhen@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            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.

            • mojo_raisin@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Its just an odd double standard you have, some chemicals are OK to be added, others are not.

              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.

              Fluoride is NOT a neurotoxin in the amounts the found in tap water

              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.

              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

              This is silly and does not relate to my argument.

    • SlothMama@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • ryrybang@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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!

      • Hoomod@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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

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        3 months ago

        Oh, great - a “I didn’t have that and look at me. I’m fine. You shouldn’t have it either.” person.

        • SlothMama@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          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.

          • teegus@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            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.

          • ryrybang@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            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.

          • tal@lemmy.today
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            3 months ago

            Natural drinking water doesn’t have flouride added to it

            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

            Fluoride is naturally present in groundwater, fresh and saltwater sources, as well as in rainwater, particularly in urban areas.[7] Seawater fluoride levels are usually in the range of 0.86 to 1.4 mg/L, and average 1.1 mg/L[8] (milligrams per litre). For comparison, chloride concentration in seawater is about 19 g/L. The low concentration of fluoride reflects the insolubility of the alkaline earth fluorides, e.g., CaF2.

      • capital@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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!”

      • Corhen@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        you grew up on well water, which is often high in fluoride.

        You likely benefited from high fluoride, and just didnt realize it.

      • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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          3 months ago

          Use a fluoridated mouthwash before you brush, and switch to a hydroxapatite toothbrush for 3 months, might be a good experiment

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    JFC this again? I thought all these conspiracy wackadoos had moved on to dumber and crazier things.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      3 months ago

      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.