flouride

Yeah, by this argument lead in the water isn't a concern.

never the concern

It is when you're responding to people who think 5G is turning the frogs gay and activating hidden vaccine microchips.

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?

We probably have enough A/B data now to make some inferences yeah? Compare countries with fluoridated water to countries without.

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.

Yeah, it seems to me like he got the right idea and wanted to convince people by making an extreme statement..

Also, isn't it recommended to not give infants fluorided water, hence why you can buy it in virtually every grocery store?

Also "because I'm an expert and I say so" is a good way to convince someone to let you poison them.

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

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.

https://www.dhmo.org/

Why is some dumb scientist expert trying to tell me, a person who pays for an internet connection, what the truth is?

Thats what the fluoridiots say.

Drink your water, or get the FOOF.

Most places that do add it to the water supply match the levels of places where flouride occurs naturally

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.

Small note: the country name is spelled “Colombia,” and spelling it correctly means you don’t need to specify which one!

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

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!

Fun fact. Literally everyone who has died, ever, has had DHMO in some form. You're even exposed in the womb!

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!

I mean, trump got reelected. I hope it's the flouride.

Like the ol' General said / s

We 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.

Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.

And that's why you should only drink grain alcohol and pure, natural rain water. To preserve the essence of your precious bodily fluids.

</s>

Eating seeds as a pastime activity

I've heard it works much better and actually reverses the mind control if you first mix the bleach with ammonia.

(Also, please, don't actually do this, some people still die every year from this)

The real Chads use raw organic free-range non-GMO pesticide-free lemon juice with baking soda. It'll leave your teeth as white as they'll be sensitive! Keep it crunchy. You're welcome.

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.

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.

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.

many toothpastes have it, no need to use multivitamins

There’s a follow up meta study from 2020.:

In conclusion, based on the totality of currently available scientific evidence, the present review does not support the presumption that fluoride should be assessed as a human developmental neurotoxicant at the current exposure levels in Europe.

A study in Canada was published in 2019 looking at the differences between 2 neighboring cities where on stopped fluoridating water in 2011. They saw that saw a significant increase in cavities in children in the city that stopped fluoridating vs the other. This is despite the fact the the city without fluoridation actually has somewhat higher adherence to brushing, flossing, and going to the dentist. No difference was seen yet in permanent teeth, but that's because the study would need more time to see effects there.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdoe.12685

Of course, we still should do more studies on fluoride neurotoxicity. Most studies look at levels of fluoride at 1.5mg/L or higher, which is more than double the recommended level by the US (0.7 mg/L). There is a hard limit in the US of 4mg/L, but the EPA strongly recommends a limit of 2mg/L. This only really matters for locations with very high levels of fluoride in the groundwater, and is thus quite rare. The EU's limit is 1.5mg/L.

I also came across the same study while looking to disprove a conspiracy nut. We should really do more research on the effects of fluoride.

You want some fancy rebuttal to a single linked study that the article states was a bunch of partials thrown together, that came from a country famously known for half-assing and cutting corners to get ahead? The country that was caught mixing lead into ground Cinnamon to sell it for a higher weight? The one where buildings sit half done or the cement falls apart by the time it's together? The ones who lay sod over cement in order to pass the amount of vegetation present on new construction?

That's the article you could and and latch onto in order to believe? Are you even aware that fluoride occurs naturally in water and that about 40% of all the drinking water across the globe already has around the amount the US gets theirs up to, or a larger amount(some places so large they do actually cause health issues)? It's literally been drank for thousands of years.

But you trust an incomplete study from China more than anything else? Why?

Why not just get a water filter?

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.

"I can't wait for RFK Jr to stop this, he knows all the chemicals!"

Overheard while at the polls on election day.

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.

This is a better argument than the one in the post. No one is worried about acute toxicity of fluoride but rather long term. But it's not long term toxic, doesn't accumulate in the body, and is only present in very low amounts in water. However it should be enough to use fluoridated toothpaste to get the positive effects.

Welcome to Science Memes, where the science isn't memes and the memes aren't about science.

Without Fluoride all the humour in the world dies.

The meme is now this is not US policy.

Its like stating the world is not flat... when in fact NASA's official stance is that the world is, indeed, flat.

0.08mg per half cup serving, but may vary depending on water used. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessional/

10mg is the accepted daily upper limit for an adult. So 62.5 cups of oatmeal to reach that max safe limit. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-Consumer/

Acute poisoning symptoms may appear as low as 10-15 mg/kg, lethal dose might be 32-64 mg/kg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride_toxicity

So 200 to 400 cups of oatmeal per kg you weigh for a lethal dose. (32/0.08/2=200, 64/0.08/2=400)

https://static.spokanecity.org/documents/citycouncil/interest-items/2020/09/city-council-information-on-fluoride-2020-09-08.pdf

• Water fluoridation reaches over 13 million Europeans through programs in England, Ireland, Poland, Serbia and Spain

• Children in deprived areas benefit most from water fluoridation according to 2018 English health agency report

• 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

• European Academy of Pediatric Dentistry endorses water fluoridation as "core component of oral health policy"

• Fluoridated milk programs have operated in Bulgaria, England, Hungary, Russia and Scotland

• 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

• Scandinavian schools offer fluoride varnish, tablets and rinse programs

• 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

https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/about/statement-on-the-evidence-supporting-the-safety-and-effectiveness-of-community-water-fluoridation.html

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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/

• community water fluoridation continues to decrease cavities by 25% at the population level.

• 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

• 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

• Studies have shown that populations from lower socioeconomic groups within fluoridated communities have less tooth decay when compared to peers in nonfluoridated communities

• 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

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

Thank you for the link. It's worth mentioning that there are response letters to the publication you linked from other experts, the majority of which are critical and point out misinterpretations and omissions by the author. It's always good to question, but in this instance it looks like the consensus amongst experts evaluating that publication is still that fluoridation is safe and improves dental health. The response letters can be read here.

Edit to add: The responses include a letter from the dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine stating that the publication is deeply flawed and requesting a retraction, and a similar condemnation from the students of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. The article was given greater weight by being linked to Harvard, but in fact Harvard dental experts explicitly disagree.

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?

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.

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.

I appreciate that you put some reputable sources, rather than relying on a random tweet/post.

Only 3% of Quebec's population has access to fluoridated water and we have way more dental issues than any other province in Canada.

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.

Well look at the statistics:

Fluoride:

• Water fluoridation in the United States began in the 1940s
• By 1949, nearly 1 million Americans were receiving fluoridated tap water
• In 1951, the number jumped dramatically to 4.85 million people
• By 1952, the number nearly tripled again to 13.3 million Americans
• In 1954, the number exceeded 20 million people
• In 1965 an additional 13.5 million Americans gained access to fluoridated water.
• By 1969, 43.7% of Americans had access to fluoridated tap water.
• In 2000, approximately 162 million Americans (65.8% of the population served by public water systems) received optimally fluoridated water
• 2006: 69.2% of people on public water systems (61.5% of total population)
• 2012: 74.6% of people on public water systems (67.1% of total population)

Autism:

• First recognised in the 1940s
• During the 1960s and 1970s, prevalence estimates were approximately 0.5 cases per 1,000 children.
• Prevalence rates increased to about 1 case per 1,000 children in the 1980s.
• 2000: 1 in 150 children
• 2006: 1 in 110 children
• 2014: 1 in 59 children
• 2016: 1 in 54 children
• 2020: 1 in 36 children

Seems pretty clear cut to me.

/s because people think I posted this in seriousness.

Sadly, flouridation conspiracy theories predate RFK Jr. by a long, long time.

"Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?"

I don't avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.

I don't avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.

Non-fluoridated toothpaste is mainly for kids who are too young to be able to consistently spit it all out. The concentration of fluoride in toothpaste is high enough that you shouldn't be swallowing it, because doing that on the regular is harmful to your teeth. Gray discoloration is one of the first symptoms.

If your kids are capable of doing "rinse and spit," then they should be using fluoridated toothpaste.

Always buy flouride toothpaste.

For other toothpaste that still strengthens enamel, there is toothpaste with hydroxyapatite (which can be ingested, at least that specific ingredient). Though it is probably more expensive.