Toxicologist here. I think that take is dishonest or dumb.
Taking a lethal dose is almost never the concern with any substance in our drinking water.
Hormones, heavy metals, persistent organic chemicals, ammonia are all in our drinking water. But for all of them we can’t drink enough water to die from a high dose.
Some of them still have a large effect on our bodies.
It’s about the longterm effects. Which we need longterm studies to learn about. That makes them harder to study.
Still doesn’t mean flouride does anything bad longerm. But the argument is bad.
Yeah, by this argument lead in the water isn’t a concern.
Yeah but lead bioaccumulates where as fluoride/ine doesn’t
Are you sure fluoride doesn’t? It does accumulate in the soil, building up in crops. Considering fluoride exposure from all sources, many people are above upper safe limits, even from tea drinking alone
I don’t think fluoride should be added to water as it just pollutes the environment, where 99.99% of water isn’t coming in contact with teeth
It doesn’t. This is high-school chemistry.
Fluoride only “accumulates” up to the peak concentration of the environment (no further) on places where it is removed from contact with that environment.
You can only accumulate fluoride in the soil if you keep adding it and there is almost no rain to wash it away.
Like how crops are irrigated with town water, and in many areas with lowering rainfall? Accumulates in fruit, vegetables, leaves too
Yes, irrigation with the minimum possible amount of water is known to destroy land for millennia at this point. But sodium will be a problem way before you notice any change in fluoride.
You just made me mad by helping me realize that the Trump bros are going to break water by removing fluoride long before they fix water by removing lead.
Removing fluoride won’t break the water. However, it may break our teeth.
lead poisoning becomes evident pretty early though doesn’t it? (With respect to kids)
I would think that the ratio of persistent exposure to unsafe level has got to be easily higher in cases like Flint than any fluoride-in-the-water usage. Just speculation on my part.
What measures are taken to avoid screwing up the dosage, anyone know? Maybe predilute so that an oops requires multiple buckets instead of vials?
It’s so funny I was just having a similar conversation about neurotoxic venomous animals in another thread. Lethality is an obviously concerning threshold, but there are substances out there that can easily destroy your quality of life and livelihood that never reach the concern of being lethal.
I think for mostly rational people concerned about fluoride in their water is that it was a public health decision made with little to no actual science proving it’s safety or efficacy when it was first decided that they were going to add it to the public water supply. The proposed benefits of it weren’t even supported by scientific evidence, it was just supposed that exposure to sodium fluoride could potentially reduce tooth decay for some.
Personally, I’ve suffered from the cosmetic damage of dental fluorosis, and I’m not necessarily thrilled about fluoride. But I have way more issues with public mandates founded on pseudoscience than I am with sodium fluoride. Especially now that we can see evidence that for some people fluoride can be especially beneficial.
So what was wrong with giving people the option of using fluoride toothpaste or mouthwashes… Why did it have to go into the public water supply?
Mate, your entire second paragraph is completely false. Like, you need to just read this: https://www.nidcr.nih.gov/health-info/fluoride/the-story-of-fluoridation
It’s considered by the CDC as one of the greatest Public Health Achievements of the last Century. There have been dozens, if not hundreds of studies about fluoride affects in the water supply.
Yeah that proves my point entirely.
In 1945 they fluoridated the first public water supply.
In 1979 the first published research began to appear to show how fluoride might be able to remineralize dental enamel.
In 1945, Grand Rapids became the first city in the world to fluoridate its drinking water.The Grand Rapids water fluoridation study was originally sponsored by the U.S. Surgeon General, but was taken over by the NIDR shortly after the Institute’s inception in 1948. During the 15-year project, researchers monitored the rate of tooth decay among Grand Rapids’ almost 30,000 schoolchildren. After just 11 years, Dean- who was now director of the NIDR-announced an amazing finding. The caries rate among Grand Rapids children born after fluoride was added to the water supply dropped more than 60 percent. This finding, considering the thousands of participants in the study, amounted to a giant scientific breakthrough that promised to revolutionize dental care, making tooth decay for the first time in history a preventable disease for most people.
Yeah, I guess that somehow totes proves his point. Super easy to see the world wrong when they have the reading comprehension of a 6th grader.
In our area, the only water supply WITH Fluoride serves an area with a median HOUSEHOLD income of less than $40k with more than 25% living below the poverty line. For communities like these the fluoride is critical because there will be a lot of children that don’t have access to fluoride supplements, or regular care from a pediatric (or regular) dentist.
Fluoride does have long term effects though once you consider fluoride exposure through all sources like diet, which is mostly due to fluoride from water ending up in farmland. Tradesmen alone regularly exceed the upper limits due to high water consumption in hotter seasons
Citation needed
To which? These are all pulled from research, just need to know which so I don’t waste my time pulling up something you’re not questioning
Ideally both.
WHO guidelines for 1.5mg/L fluoride
Upper limit of 10mg/day (considered to be high by some bodies)
https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au/nutrient-reference-values/nutrients/fluoride-updated-2017
Basic bath: only considering water intake, consuming 6-7 liters in a day (regular occurance working in Australia) puts you over the upper limit without considering major sources like diet, tea and dental products and treatments.
Plants are vulnerable to fluoride accumulation in soil, and their growth and development can be negatively affected, even with low fluoride content in the soil.
This. How can we be completely certain that something isn’t damaging over the long term. I’m not anti fluoride, but healthy debate and scepticism is a good thing, especially when we’re all forced to consume a substance with the only alternative being dehydration and death. People need to be free to make their own choices.
We probably have enough A/B data now to make some inferences yeah? Compare countries with fluoridated water to countries without.
You can get even more granular than that. CDC maintains a list of water systems and whether or not they add fluoride. CDC My Water System. To give you an idea of how granular that is, there are 78 different water systems in my county alone. For most of my life I assumed we had fluoridated water but apparently only 1/78 of our water systems are. I only checked when we had kids and I needed to know whether or not I needed to give them Fluoride Drops.
never the concern
It is when you’re responding to people who think 5G is turning the frogs gay and activating hidden vaccine microchips.
Also “because I’m an expert and I say so” is a good way to convince someone to let you poison them.
Oh yeah? And what if someone ignores that, simply lies and says it’s toxic? I’m convinced!
And both of these people telling me about fluoride in water are both experts in their field. One an expert toxicologist, and the other an expert liar. Now I don’t know what to believe.
The fluoride added to water gets it up to 0.7mg/liter.
That ends up to be 2 or 3 drops in a 55 gallon drums worth of water. Not much.
Fluoride is a natural substance and is found in many areas drinking water already. Many areas in much higher concentrations than 0.7mg/liter, so realistically people all over the world have drank fluoridated water for thousands of years.
You have to well over double the 0.7 before any health issues may appear and the first to appear is at about triple the concentration in kids under 8 years old who drink it for years getting spots on their teeth. The spots are only superficial.
Going into concentrations even higher than that CAN cause health issues when drank for longer periods of time. All of those cases being from naturally occurring fluoride, which actually effects somewhere north of 20% of the world’s population.
Which makes the argument that fluoride in our water keeps us passive as being extra stupid, since water sourced around Columbia (the country) is far higher than .07mg/liter and Columbia seems to be caught in violence and turmoil and instability quite a bit over the decades.
*edit: Colombia
Its presence in groundwater is how we discovered it’s good for teeth.
In fact, there used to be so much in some areas,it actually stained the teeth. In Colorado Springs a dentist noticed that the children were developing brown stains on their teeth. In researching it, it was discovered that the “Colorado Brown Stain” was caused by excessive fluoride in the drinking water. But it also lead to the discovery that regions with natural fluoride present but in lower levels than Colorado Springs didn’t have stained teeth, but did have lower levels of tooth decay.
Yep. In fact, 21% of the world’s natural drinking water used falls within the recommended range for fluoride, while over another 20% is higher and in some countries actually does cause some non-superficial side effects and problems. Those don’t pop up until in concentrations at least 3 times higher than recommended.
Just because a concentration is low doesn’t mean it’s safe. Water with 0.7 mg/L of Po-210 is lethal.
You can put an amount of it in a 55 gallon drum that is not visible
It’s a natural substance
Fluoride is in fact safe at the amounts that the FDA regulates but saying it’s a small concentration or that it’s natural are not the reasons it’s safe. It’s the hundreds of peer reviewed research articles that show that it’s safe
Small note: the country name is spelled “Colombia,” and spelling it correctly means you don’t need to specify which one!
Fair enough!
Toxicologist, toxicity, minuscule, fluoridated – your big doctor words are just trying to trick us!
So, once again, DHMO is the chemical we need to fear.
The stuff also known as hydric acid. People just don’t talk enough about how corrosive it is. Plus, it gets in the air and gets in your lungs!
There was an incident involving it on April 14th 1912 that took over 1500 lives.
I heard that anyone who’s ever come into contact with it has later died
terrorists will drink vast amounts of it every day before an attack
Its a common component of all cancer cells, and trace amounts have been found in the blood of dead lab rats.
It’s so pervasive that they have found it in the bodies of every single child worldwide.
It’s 10 million times more acidic than drain cleaner!!! And the government is trying to force you to drink it by forcing it to be used in municipal drinking fountains
Any chemical that can exist as a solid, a liquid and a gas at the same time isn’t safe to put into our bodies!
Fun fact. Literally everyone who has died, ever, has had DHMO in some form. You’re even exposed in the womb!
This is a conspiracy by fluoridians.
Thats what the fluoridiots say.
thanks Ron DeSantooth
fluorida man strikes again
Shawty had them blackened-out teeth (teeth)
Tooths with the fur (with the fur)
The whole clinic was looking at her
She hit the fluor (she hit the fluor)
Next thing you know
Shawty’s teeth got glow, glow, glow, glow, glow, glow, glowArtist: Fluo Rida
Song: GlowEdit: formatting
Them crooked molars and the braces with the gaps (With the gaps)
She turned around and showed her grill all full of plaque (yikes!)
She hit the floss (She hit the floss), next thing you know
Shawty’s blood flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow
Tooths with the fur (with the fur)
This is too much
Drink your water, or get the FOOF.
Fluoridated water doesn’t seem to make a difference on cavities. It does have neurological effects. It’s simply not acutely fatal. It’s already in our toothpaste. We don’t need it in our municipal water supply and the majority of developed countries don’t.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluoridated-drinking-water/
Counterpoint: I live in an area without fluoridated water, and I’m told that dentists can reliably identify people who didn’t grow up here by the state of their teeth.
Anecdote in scientific debate? Wild
It’s actually exactly in line with what the link above says.
In June 2015, the Cochrane Collaboration—a global independent network of researchers and health care professionals known for rigorous scientific reviews of public health policies—published an analysis of 20 key studies on water fluoridation. They found that while water fluoridation is effective at reducing tooth decay among children, “no studies that aimed to determine the effectiveness of water fluoridation for preventing caries [cavities] in adults met the review’s inclusion criteria.”
In other words, water fluoridation might not make much difference for adults, but it can for children.
deleted by creator
This is a disingenuous take. This is a cherry-picked article that does not come to the conclusion you draw here. You also state “It does have neurological effects” but leave out the most important piece of information for that to be true: high doses.
Why should anyone trust what you say when you’re twisting the information to suit your narrative?
I appreciate that you put some reputable sources, rather than relying on a random tweet/post.
It’s an opinion piece by a geneticist (so not a chemist or biologist or a field that could be related) and she ignores all the direct evidence that every city and county that added fluoride started having fewer cavities than neighboring areas that hadn’t yet added it.
She then further points out that it only causes health issues in much higher concentrations than what the US was getting our water supply up to. You know, like literally anything that you get too much of is bad for you. You can literally die from drinking too much plain water. Too much of anything will kill you.
Your link is more or less an opinion piece from a geneticist, so this isn’t even her field of study.
All her health issues she points out are for fluoride concentrations over triple the amount that tap water is brought up to.
The reason it’s usage spread across the country was because while the entire country had access to things such as fluoridated toothpaste, counties and cities that started fluoridation of their water supplies consistently had fewer cavities than areas that didn’t fluoridate the water. This alone outlines the glaringly obvious flaw in her argument.
Further still, while the US adds fluoride to the tap water in a concentration to reach 0.5mg to 0.7mg per liter of water (a couple drops per 50 gallons), natural drinking water for over 20% of the world is in concentrations well over that (to be clear, being well over that can cause health issues. Too much of anything can cause health issues.)
In other words, there is no evidence that this low concentration of fluoride causes health issues. There is loads of direct evidence that it reduces cavities. Plus, this woman from your opinion piece is talking out of her field. Not to mention that 21% of the world’s drinking water supply naturally already falls within the recommended range of what the US takes theirs up to. It’s just that most of the US water supply naturally falls below that amount.
No, the reason fluoridation in water is widespread is because fluoride is produced far more than there is market to sell it otherwise.
Sounds to me like municipalities are able and willing to use it because it’s cheap.
It’s cheap because it’s industrial waste that has significant cleanup and disposal costs. It was sold to municipalities after there was “research” that it helped tooth health, which it can in much higher concentrations than is in any water supply. But the reason it’s added to water is because the companies that otherwise would have to pay for clean up now make money off the waste product and can afford kickback funds.
By that reasoning, we should start putting all of our waste products in our water supply - since we weren’t able to sell them otherwise.
… Or perhaps there are other reasons to consider?
You seem to have confused me with someone that is for putting industrial waste, i.e. fluoride, in drinking water, I’m against it personally.
Interesting. The article doesn’t actually say that fluoridation in water supplies is dangerous but that some researchers are questioning. Generally code for lack of scientific evidence. It also finds that early studies may have had a flawed basis (pretty much all early studies have been found wanting by later scientists) but doesn’t refute the results.The study mentioned in the article talks about high levels of fluoridation which I assume is in lab tests however these levels are not the case in water supplies.
The correct way forward is more actual science based studies.
The bad part about Rfk jr is he probably mixes in some science with quackery. I honestly assumed all his ideas are insane. That’s what’s so hard about being discerning right now, you have to be on one side or the other.
Only 3% of Quebec’s population has access to fluoridated water and we have way more dental issues than any other province in Canada.
The people who need to hear this sadly would not believe that too much water can kill you even if you showed them someone die from it, I fear. I’d also be shocked if they read “water poisoning” and didn’t think of poisoned water.
I didn’t know this was a thing when I was younger, but not young enough to not be classified as a moron.
Drank about 7-8 litres of water in 3 hours without going to the bathroom as a contest against a work colleague. Suffice to say I started feeling a little off on the way home, even after going to the bathroom. Years later I finally learned you can drown yourself from drinking too much and the symptoms were eerily close to what I experienced that night.
Oh don’t get me wrong! I also only learned about water toxicity when I was very much an adult.
But the difference between us and the type of person I’m talking about, is that we (I’m presuming on your part) don’t think fluoride in water is a bad thing.
The kind of person who hears “the government adds CHEMICAL_NAME to water” and assumes that’s a bad thing is the kind of person who will not believe drinking too much water can kill you, even (or especially) if they are told by an expert.
Back when I was in college, people didn’t like fluoride because it calcifies the pinneal gland. I assume that rhetoric has only been further exaggerated over the years
It does do this. However so does ageing, low sunlight exposure, low altitude, ethnicity, sex, nutrition, neuro-divergence, cell phone use, EM fields… you get the idea.
Don’t forget the gravitational pull of Betelgeuse. In a very, very small way, that also effects calcification of the pineal gland.
Another point that conspiracy bros will bring up is that fluoride is a toxic byproduct of aluminum manufacture and dumping it into the water supply is a cheap way for Alcoa to dispose of it benevolently.
Honestly it really is sad, we have so many more uses for it
Every atom of fluoride going into our water is another atom that can’t go into chlorine trifluoride production. Putting it into the water is a huge sacrifice we make for the health of society.
Real men make chlorine pentafluoride anyway. We have no use for pathetic hypergolic oxidisers with only three fluorine atoms.
Weird. The only argument I heard, and successfully made it to policy in my area is that it costs tax money and takes away choice. All thus smart stuff is for those damn yankees.
His joke is that fluoride can be used to make extremely dangerous substances
From the wiki on the one he mentioned:
This oxidizing power, surpassing that of oxygen, causes ClF3 to react vigorously with many other materials often thought of as incombustible and refractory. It ignites sand, asbestos, glass, and even ashes of substances that have already burned in oxygen.
They have a choice, they can drink bottled water or well water.
The majority of fluoride that is released into our water supply is a by-product of fertilizer production.
Even better!
edit: I didn’t say that people drink ocean water, my point was about the ubiquitous nature of fluoride. The majority of life lives in the ocean, so if fluoride really was as toxic as some people say it is, there would be a lot less life on Earth. There are many lakes and other water sources that people have been drinking from for ages which naturally contain higher amounts of fluoride than what is in fluoridated tap water.
I don’t understand your point.
Nobody drinks the ocean. Fluoride is barely active topically. Most humans rarely if at all swim in the ocean.
Talking about the ocean is odd, but there are towns in the UK (and most countries I’d assume?) where the natural level of fluoride is higher than the concentration they aim for when adding fluoride. I think that’s a pretty good argument for it being safe - the people of Hartlepool have been drinking fluoride rich water for 13 centuries and don’t have any noticeable issues compared to the rest OF County Durham.
Yeah. It’s not an entirely salient point. It does, however, underline the ubiquitous nature of fluorine.
The biggest source of Flourine in the environment is just the normal weathering of rocks that contain it. The biggest of the anthropogenic sources include brick production, phosphate fertiliser application and coal burning.
The minor amount added to drinking water really wouldn’t be the biggest issue if it was as toxic as it’s made out to be.
From what I have read, fluoride’s action on teeth is purely topical. Which is why it is in toothpaste (which is not swallowed). The “minuscule” amount in drinking water is reported as not enough to be toxic, yet somehow enough to strengthen teeth through internal blood circulation. Any fluoride you ingest, even a few atoms, is considered a toxin by the body and removed. So while the minuscule amounts added to water may not harm you, they are still adding to the “workload” your body has in dealing with all the minuscule amounts of other toxins you acquire daily.
i know this guy has a fancy degree and everything, but is he really as reliable a source as rfk junior? you don’t need fluoride when you have an army of worms ready to eat any kinds of bacteria that may enter your system.
I feel like I woke up in the movie Dr. Strangelove
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Second time I got to post this today, unfortunately because it’s almost ceased being satire.
For what’s it worth, in my country (Netherlands), we don’t add fluoride to our tap water anymore since the early 70s. We just have it in our toothpaste (though you can also get fluoride free toothpaste for those who don’t want it).
Sure there’s still traces of fluoride in our water, as it appears in nature. But it’s not artificially added by our water companies.
Most places that do add it to the water supply match the levels of places where flouride occurs naturally
Agreed but can we turn down the chloramine valve? It tastes awful.
Why not just get a water filter?
The question to me is - do we even have to fluoridate water and is this really the best approach?
For example, most European countries do not commonly use fluoride in their water supply, and everyone’s just fine! No extra cavities, no special health risks. People commonly drink tap water and do not care about potential for any adverse effects, because it’s just that - clean water. And for any teeth-related issues, you already have your toothpaste providing more than enough fluorine.
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Water fluoridation reaches over 13 million Europeans through programs in England, Ireland, Poland, Serbia and Spain
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Children in deprived areas benefit most from water fluoridation according to 2018 English health agency report
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Over 70 million Europeans receive fluoridated salt through programs in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland and other countries. Salt fluoridation is recommended when water fluoridation is not feasible
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European Academy of Pediatric Dentistry endorses water fluoridation as “core component of oral health policy”
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Fluoridated milk programs have operated in Bulgaria, England, Hungary, Russia and Scotland
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Several European countries provide free or subsidized fluoride treatments through national healthcare:
- Sweden: free dental care through age 23
- Denmark: free dental care until age 18
- Finland: public dental clinic access for all legal residents
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Scandinavian schools offer fluoride varnish, tablets and rinse programs
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Some regions in Europe have naturally fluoridated water, such as parts of Italy. Italian health officials support water fluoridation but don’t implement additional programs due to naturally optimal fluoride levels in some areas
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Evidence shows that water fluoridation prevents tooth decay by providing frequent and consistent contact with low levels of fluoride, ultimately reducing tooth decay by about 25% in children and adults.
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evidence shows that schoolchildren living in communities where water is fluoridated have, on average, 2.25 fewer decayed teeth compared to similar children not living in fluoridated communities.
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A study to compare costs associated with community water fluoridation with treatment savings achieved through reduced tooth decay, which included 172 public water systems, each serving populations of 1,000 individuals or more, found that 1 year of exposure to fluoridated water yielded an average savings of $60 per person when the lifetime costs of maintaining a restoration were included.
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Analyses of Medicaid claims data in 3 other states (Louisiana, New York, and Texas), have also found that children living in fluoridated communities have lower caries related treatment costs than do similar children living in non-fluoridated communities; the difference in annual per child treatment costs ranged from $28 to $67.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9544072/
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community water fluoridation continues to decrease cavities by 25% at the population level.
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Even with fluoridated products such as toothpaste and mouth rinses, this public health practice can reduce an additional 25% of tooth decay in children and adults
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In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first U.S. city to fluoridate its public water supply. Five years later, Grand Rapids schoolchildren were found to have significantly fewer cavities than children from the control community of Muskegon, and additional water districts, including Muskegon began fluoridating and seeing similar results
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Studies have shown that populations from lower socioeconomic groups within fluoridated communities have less tooth decay when compared to peers in nonfluoridated communities
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The cost of a lifetime of water fluoridation for one person is less than the cost of one filling
More info: https://www.ada.org/resources/community-initiatives/fluoride-in-water
Thanks for provided context!
I’ll look into the data.
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It depends if you believe in the apocryphal story behind fluoridation. This is a story that justifies the state and it’s right of medical intervention into your life with the need of your informed consent.
These types of stories are designed to justify the right to act of an entity/egregor using the least objectionnable scenario possible. Once this precedent is established it can built upon to justify other actions in other scenarios. All the other unobjectionnable things done to you or in your name
