Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

FYI:

The CDC recommends breastfeeding infants, as breastmilk contains significantly less fluoride than fluoridated drinking water. If breastfeeding is not possible, the CDC also endorses using fluoridated water in infant formula, though it suggests mixing the formula with low-fluoride bottled water to lessen the risk of dental fluorosis.

Infants who are fed formula made with fluoridated tap water can have three to four times higher fluoride exposure than adults, warned Lanphear. He added that before an infant's teeth erupt, there's no benefit to fluoride exposure. "There are vulnerable groups we have to be worried about," he said, "and that's not being brought out adequately by these agencies."

View on HN

Hmm, its been a while since I worked in the area of dental fluoride (was part of my PhD) but my understanding was systemic exposure pre-eruption was still beneficial. This (possibly biased source) agrees:

https://www.dentalcare.com/en-us/ce-courses/ce334/pre-erupti...

Excess exposure can cause fluorosis but nothing to do with the brain.

None of the studies I have seen properly account for the lifetime effect, and instead only deduce lack of harm from flawed isolated studies.

It’s in the entire water supply.

You were gestated in a womb of a woman consuming highly fluoridated water.

You were fed formula made with fluoridated water tuned to dose a 200lb man when you were 8lbs.

The water you drank as your bones were growing was similarly overdosed

The food you eat is washed in fluoridated water. The coffee and beer you drink is brewed with fluoridated water. The bread you eat is made with fluoridated water.

Basically, the dose is insanely wrong from the get go and then it’s applied to everything so there’s no way to accurately measure exposure. Then factor in the bell distribution and you are massively overexposing huge numbers of people a few standard deviations out.

> You were fed formula made with fluoridated water tuned to dose a 200lb man when you were 8lbs.

Er, no. A baby only consumes 4-8oz of water per day while an adult is consuming 125oz. The concentration is the same in both cases so the adult is getting 30X more.

> Then factor in the bell distribution and you are massively overexposing huge numbers of people a few standard deviations out.

How are you defining 'overexposed' and 'highly' in these statements. Do you have any studies or evidence? How are you deciding this consumption isn't factored into how much is put in water?

Its kind of hilarious to picture what a new born baby taking in the amount of water a 200 lb man would in a day.

And of course "overexposed" is exactly the dose that fits their narrative.

I'm suspect they'd also have an opinion about not showering as much to not absorb the flouride through their skin.

> The concentration is the same in both cases so the adult is getting 30X more.

That should read 15-30 times more, according to your own figures. And then, the baby's mass is about 15-30 times less than the adult, so at the end you are in the same ballpark again, percentagewise.

Yep, but the implication was that the child was getting a megadose. They're not. They would be if they were drinking 15-30X as much water per unit mass. That's not a child, that's a water balloon.

> It’s in the entire water supply

Not quite. In the US about 15% of the population get their drinking water from private wells. I wonder if anyone has compared groups that are similar except for whether they are on a well or municipal?

It shouldn’t be hard to find such groups by looking at the boundaries of municipal water systems. For example on my street everyone east of me is on city water and everyone else is on wells. Both groups are demographically very similar.

Possibly biased?

It's two clicks away from an online shop for (fluoride) toothpaste.

Didn't check conflicts of interest closely but here are more sources: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21701194/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0528.... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002203459207100...

My n=3 test would tend to confirm this.

First kid was born and lived for a year or so when we had city water, which was flouridated. 2nd and 3rd kid were born where we were on well water, with no flouride.

First kid had no baby tooth cavities. Second and Third wound up with cavities on the front teeth, and we used topical flouridation for re-mineralization.

Every chemical imbalance in infants is going to have much greater effects than on adults. They are literally a fraction of our body mass

Reply on news.ycombinator.com