As bans spread, fluoride in drinking water divides communities across the US
As bans spread, fluoride in drinking water divides communities across the US
The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing fluoride has some community leaders arguing that its addition to public drinking water is no longer necessary. But public health experts worry that, much like vaccines, fluoridation may be a victim of its own success.
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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.
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.
166USA, 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.
57When the tap water is "cloudy, bubbly, and milky" I think of a thousand different reasons why this could be. Flourid is not on that list.
If the tap water looks like that, I'd have the installarion checked before anything else. And I would not put it beyond an American water provider to deliver absolutely shitty water.
41Ugh! This is why we can't we have nice things.
Send these idiots to 5th grade science class, and don't let them out until they pass with at least a C.
We had a fairly popular game show here called Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, and collectively, the answer is apparently "no, we're not".
35Fun fact: adding flouride to drinking water is illegal in my country and I think it has always been illegal.
We do have it in varying quantities in our drinking water but that's apparently because of our geography. We also have maximum limits like many other countries do.
People with their own water wells are more likely to have elevated levels of fluoride in their water.
28Teeth....the haves vs. the haves not....another Florida experiment.
23They should change nothing and say that they got rid of it. It's not like these people are smart enough to tell the difference.
21I 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.
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15Fun 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
14Oh 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.
14Supporters of such bans argue that people should be given the freedom of choice.
I truly do not mean to belittle anyone who holds this opinion, but isn't this such a minor thing to be worried so much about, to try to prevent?
I just mean there seems to be like a hundred other things that would be more important to discuss before we get to fluoride in the water.
13It's the one good thing we got from Fluorine chemistry.
And they don't want it.
12Stupid upcoming second Dark Ages. Things were just starting to get interesting.
Welp, does anyone need good bleeding with leaches and some infected nasty turnip that is all-natural whole food?
8Fluoridation 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
8yall 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.
7All I can think about is Dr Strangelove.
Well, they're fighting hard against that commie plot and winning.
7I say life begins at arousal... NO FLUORIDE!
5IIRC 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.
4Permanently Deleted
1We need #TDazzle, it makes your teeth stronger and starts a party in your mouth. Its an aquatic based social media oral experience.
19 out of 10 dentists approve a ban /s
1“Let’s stop putting something in the water that’s meant to treat us, and give people the freedom to choose,”
Some topics demand freedom of choice and others don’t.
1Removing fluoride.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL83S3zL0OE
0It’s not fluoride, it’s #tdazzle.
0This 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
0Please do your own research, as this is a very controversial subject which has been fought since its inception, with entrenched opinions. Here's a primer:
- Too much fluoride is bad for humans, and the threshold can achieved with a standard diet and recommended intake of water, assuming fluoridated water is used for both consumption and food prep. This excludes fluoride toothpaste.
- Fluoride can not be removed from tap water using standard water filters, or even R/O filters. Removal requires highly specialized filters which utilize aluminum to chemically un-bind the fluoride, which then require a separate filtration statge to remove the aluminum.
- This is because fluoride creates some of the strongest chemical bonds, and is the reason it is the primary component in PFAS, or "forever chemicals"
- Very little of our tap water actually touches human teeth.
- Fluoride is a problematic byproduct of the production of aluminum and fertilizer industry.
- Buildup of fluoride in urban/suburban soils is becoming a crop & gardening concern for which there is no viable solution.
- Fluoride tablets were administered as a remedy for hyper-thyroidism, as it decreased thyroid function. Fluoride is believed to be a factor in the increase of modern hypo-thyroid ailments
- Fluoride is a known carcinogen.
- Fluoride is a known neurotoxin, shown to reduce IQ - particularly for children. Many pediatricians advise against fluoride toothpaste at young ages.
Most of the research done on fluoridating tap water was done in the early 1940s & 50s, well in advance of modern dental hygiene and fluoridated toothpaste use. Studies do definitively show applying fluoride directly to teeth does strengthen tooth enamel, but modern studies are mixed, at best, regarding efficacy of fluoridated tap water between equivalent socioeconomic communities. No studies have been conducted regarding dermal absorption of fluoride , believed to further elevate intake.
I think the simplest solution is to let people choose for themselves, and add fluoride to their personal drinking water if that's what they choose.
We don't need to fluoridate water in our toilets, showers, or irrigation.
-11What 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.
-15If they want to get it into poor kids, should put fluoride in fizzy drinks.
-27Floride is an element. What we use in toothpaste isn't nearly the same as the industrial byproducts dumped in the drinking water
Edit: I was half asleep when I posted this, fluorine is the element, floride refers to salts with ionized fluorine in them. The stuff in toothpaste and the dentist's office is sodium fluoride
What is added to drinking water is hydrogen floride mixed with God knows what else, because it's an industrial byproduct with lax restrictions.
Most of Europe and Japan don't use this, and despite having great data to do statistics on, there's little evidence it's doing anything for dental health
This wasn't science that led to public health policy, this was a solution to a business problem and a PR campaign
-48The 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.
Has the CDC ever been wrong? If so, there's no reason to cite them as a source because their input is irrelevant.
Instead, try citing the actual information the CDC is drawing their conclusions from.
But that's too difficult for modern-day "journalists."
-53Fluoride 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?
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