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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.
So lead, plastic, and PFAS are fine but fluoride is where they draw the line…?
This
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.
Same with Switzerland
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.
I am SO tired of being at the mercy of idiots.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, and TB.
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.”
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.
It demonstrably makes a huge difference, even with people who brush on a regular basis.
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?
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 can buy bottled water and pay for their stupidity.
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 trust this stuff. I only drink water straight from the creek and- excuse me, my diarrhea is acting up.
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.
Common misconception - to Floridate water, a man wrestles an aligator and one of them must pee in it.
When 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.
There are plenty of places that deliver bubbly, cloudy, milky water and it ain’t from fluoride
Ban the fluoride and give universal dental care like Canada is planning.
A pipe dream. The dummies will likely just ban the fluoride with no other plan or solution.
Or, ya know, keep the fluoride in the water and also give universal dental care. Removing the fluoride from the water is the more expensive solution.
You know that eventually free healthcare is still paid by everyone ? Why add the cost of generally preventable tooth decay to the tab? It’s not mutually exclusive…
Free universal healthcare is cheaper than the current US system for a whole pile of reasons, mainly by consolating the consumer into one giant bargaining group. But there are secondary savings, like enabling people to get regular check ups to catch things early before they get expensive. It also enables them to go to the doctor when they need it, instead of gambling that they’ll get better; it’s cheaper if many people go in for small things than if a few people go in for large things.
“Free Healthcare” is free as in libre, not free as in beer.
Everyone is free to get it. We all pay for it. We would pay far less than what we pay now in premiums. It works on other countries, and there is no reason it wouldn’t work here in the USA.
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.
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.
Just fighting against the most insidious of communist plots.
Have you noticed that I only drink grain alcohol or rain water?
Ugh! 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”.
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.
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.
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.
IIRC 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.
The biggest risk is that it renders your pineal gland completely useless. (not the face, not the face, not the face)
