…
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.
Should the government put all beneficial substances in our water? Only some? Which ones? Why?
I don’t want drugs in my water.
If you water had nothing in it, it would be dangerous to drink. Distilled and/or 18 MΩ water can kill you, if you’re not careful.
LOL! I’ve been drinking distilled water primarily for 25 years! You can order it for your water cooler from Sparklett’s.
Sorry, you’re right, I was a bit… hyperbolic. You can drink it every day without problems since 1) it’s not as pure as we like to think it is and 2) you can easily get all your minerals and stuff from your food.
The danger is if you decide to chug a bunch of water for one reason or another. It’s easier to give yourself water intoxication with distilled water, essentially because the osmotic pressure is so much higher relative to the inside of your cells. This isn’t actually a problem most people have to worry about, water intoxication is pretty rare, but I’m used to thinking in terms of hardcore athletes. It would be foolish to drink only distilled water for a marathon, for example.
That all sounds about right, appreciate your candor.
After 25 years, just this last year I started getting rib cramps which I suspect are a mineral (electrolyte) deficiency caused by distilled water (+ bad diet of UPF), so it’s not necessarily completely without problems if your diet sucks. I started taking a mineral supplement and the cramps went away.
You drink distilled water, which causes you issues you have to remedy by taking additional supplements.
Clearly your stance is not viable for general populations. You sound like people that don’t want to allow blood transfusions because it makes them feel icky and fringe cases exist of it going poorly.
Did I say distilled water should be what the general population drinks? Did I say we should replace tap water with distilled water?
My mineral deficiency is due to a bad diet of primarily ultra-processed food and maybe exacerbated by nearly 3 decades of distilled water consumption. Oh, and it was cramps, fluoride causes brain damage.
Someone who gives themselves mineral deficiencies should absolutely not be listened to when it comes to general public health issues lol
Fluoride in the doses allowed in water doesn’t cause brain damage, you sound like an anti-vaxxer.
There aren’t drugs in your water. There are minerals though.
Any substance, mineral or otherwise added to the water to affect the functioning of my body is a drug.
You started with serious questions, worth talking about, but thinking fluoride is a drug killed it. That tells me you’re not educated enough to have the conversation.
lol, and why would fluoride not qualify as a drug?
Drug: A substance used in the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of a disease or as a component of a medication.
If the government didn’t add anything to water, you’d die from bacteria and viruses after it sits stagnant in the pipes.
According to this line of reasoning, I guess it’s OK for the government to add some Ozempic to the water?
There’s a vast difference between sterilization agents and a purpose-made drug designed to treat a specific illness. There’s a vast difference between a purpose-made drug and a simple elemental supplement. I suspect you know this. Nice strawman though, it’ll burn well.
A simple elemental supplement can still be dangerous and is still a drug. One can overdose and cause health problems by consuming lots of tap water, dental fluourosis is not uncommon, I’ve actually seen it in people.
Ok. Sure. This is a valid argument that we can tackle. Comparing it to ozempic isn’t.
You’re going to have some level of fluorine from any water source – whether there’s any extra added or not – unless there’s processing to remove it. Just part of groundwater.
Saying “use a filter to remove some naturally occurring X” – sure ok
Saying “use a filter to remove drugs added to your tap water that your tax dollars pay for” – not ok
You know tap water literally has chlorine in it, right?
I don’t drink tap water, but yes I’m well aware. I don’t believe chlorine can be considered a drug added to our water as it’s intention is not to affect my body, it’s to prevent growth of bacteria in the water system.
Either way, I don’t really want that in my water either, but practical reality necessitates it, hundreds of millions could die without it, this is not nearly the case for fluoride.
Lol
I’m sure your rational, considered opinion deserves as much weight as doctors and utility engineers.
I don’t want drugs in my water.
I don’t drink tap water
Well then, I guess you don’t have to worry about “drugs” in your water.
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.
Calling someone an idiot while having multiple typos and a run-on sentence structure filled with unnecessary commas. Hell yea. Pot calling the kettle black.
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.
Uh, have you read their comment history? They’ve literally told other people to go read a dictionary. Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.
Actually assuming makes an ass out of you and Ming
Stop bothering Ming. She has done nothing to deserve that
🪦
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.
Thank you for your input.
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’.
They’re after our precious body fluids.
Have you ever seen a communist drink water, major?
Teeth…the haves vs. the haves not…another Florida experiment.
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.
You know that eventually free healthcare is still paid by everyone ? We add the cost of generally preventable tooth decay to the tab? It’s not mutually exclusive…
yeah and a car accident is generally preventable too.
how about an impacted wisdom tooth? should have thought about that before growing teefs nerd, enjoy your crippling debt.
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.
It is free as in beer, in the sense that you as a patient never have to spend out of pocket for medical care.
There’s always someone arguing “It’s not free cause your taxes pay for it,” but you’re paying those taxes anyway regardless of where the money goes. You as an individual would never notice the difference in your taxes.
“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
state and local taxes work that way - state and local governments spend tax dollars to buy goods and services
federal taxes just delete money from targeted people, choosing who to make poorer in order to regulate inflation - the federal government creates new dollars when it needs to buy something
US healthcare is the most expensive healthcare in the world because it can push people and insurance companies around. The rest of the 1st world pays LESS than the US does for itd healthcare because governments have the power to tell healthcare providers to go fuck themselves if they try and charge too much
That’s unrelated with the need of prevention over having comprehensive healthcare coverage… I mean it’s not a bad point, but it’s unrelated.
Let healthcare be free for the patient thanks to magic money it still sucks to experience tooth decay that would have been prevented by chemically treating water as it’s always been.
Its not the magic of free money, thats literally what tax $ are for. And when the government pays for healthcare, suddenly, for some reason, they care more about legislation that keeps its citizens healthier. Stop eating the propaganda that private healthcare tries to sell you, universal healthcare is as free as libraries, paved roads in cities, and clean water in proper 1st world countries is. Private healthcare is more expensive in literally every sense than universal healthcare is.
tl:dr: You want flouridated water? A government that has to pay for the dental costs of its citizens is going to have a hell of a lot more incentive to keep flouridating the water as long as it doesnt cause healthcare costs elsewhere
I thiiiiink the point they’re trying to make is, why not both? It’s cheaper to have some kind of subsidized public healthcare, versus what we have now. Doing that, but then removing the fluoride from the water will still be cheaper than today’s plan, but more expensive than better healthcare AND fluoridated water. Why choose one when there’s no real reason not to have both?
I even put it in the Tl:dr though, a government paying for its citizens healthcare is likely going to push for Flouridated water, both is the default, “why not both” is a redundant arguement, and OP is still referring to universal healthcare as “magic money” which is disingenuous, stupid, and a private healthcare propaganda sound bite
Yeah, so few people advocate for this though. It’s either fluoridation is unbalancing my humors or let’s fluoridate a bunch of water that will go down the drain.
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.
Fluoride 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?
How does that contradict any of my comment?
Weirdo
How?
You’re username, for one.
Downplaying the usefulness of Flouride, writing it off as though to imply it’s some kind of scam, while even acknowledging its usefulness is a fucking weird take.
“Yeah we added it to the water supply because it prevents people teeth from falling out but GUYS did you know they get it from companies that don’t want it? What a fuckin SCAM huh?” Is how you comment comes off
I was going to help improve public health, but then I learned we’d have to pay someone money in order to do it, so I chose to keep my hands clean of such a disgusting act.
“Yeah we added it to the water supply because it prevents people teeth from falling out
Europe has seen near-identical falling rates of tooth decay in the past fifty years without mass fluoridation like the US.
but GUYS did you know they get it from companies that don’t want it? What a fuckin SCAM huh?”
Introducing industrial waste to the water supply is generally referred to as a bad thing. Incentivizing the nitrogen fertilizer industry by making even their waste profitable is also a bad thing. Forcing medical procedures on people so that tax dollars can be funneled to the private sector is not good either.
People can be fucking ignorant and unfortunately Covid made this all worse. There are simple measures we can take as a society to make everyone’s health better but people succumb to misinformation spread by those who profit from the alternative.
I don’t think covid really made it worse, it just appeared at the right time.
The world has just gone bonkers with misinformation.
Ugh! This is why we can’t we have nice things.
Forget sending these idiots to re-education camps. Just send them to 5th grade science class and don’t let them out until they pass with at least a C.
But… these people are on the school board deciding what can be taught in science class
Clearly the solution is to make fifth graders dumber 🫠
Republicans are literally trying.
I am SO tired of being at the mercy of idiots.
“Never Underestimate The Power Of Stupid People In Large Groups” -George Carlin
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
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.
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.
PRECIOUS
BODILY
FLUIDS!
Children’s ice cream, Mandrake!
We were satirizing this in 1964. People like want regressivism.
That movie is so fucking good.
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 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.
They can buy bottled water and pay for their stupidity.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Do you drink your toothpaste?
It demonstrably makes a huge difference, even with people who brush on a regular basis.
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.
We fluoridate the water so we don’t have to actually help poor people with their health in this country.
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.
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.
They should change nothing and say that they got rid of it. It’s not like these people are smart enough to tell the difference.
The best is there will be hard, medical and scientific data to absorb and see if cavities spike in these areas and compare them to past data. I might have a hypothesis of what will happen.
The article already has one example: “Juneau, Alaska, voted to remove fluoride from its drinking water in 2007. A study published in the journal BMC Oral Health in 2018 compared the dental records of children and adolescents who received dental care for decaying teeth four years before and five years after the city stopped adding fluoride to the water. Cavity-related procedures and treatment costs were significantly higher in the latter group, the study found.”
