Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water
bbc.com
bbc.com
The idea is to remove fluoride from water and advise pregnant women to use fluoride-free toothpaste.
Everyone else can get enough fluoride from modern toothpastes, or regular dentist treatments.
The logic is that fluoride in tap water made sense in the era before toothpaste had it, but now it is “overmedicating” a vulnerable fraction of the population.
In the actual research the main "risk" posed by flouridated water is actually fluorosis. This causes minerals in your enamel to be replaced with flouride which can cause them to be brittle in the long term. It's pretty uncommon but the thought is that now that flouride toothpaste are commonplace, the benefit of flouridated water is also way less. Which changes the calculus.
A not insignificant number of researchers are advocating for the view that flouridating water just isn't worth it anymore and the (slight) risk of flourosis is more significant than the (slight) benefit of decreased dental caries.
Was that intentional? (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dental_calculus for those who didn't get the reference.)
Not really: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43523900
I can only assume once you see those very valid criticisms, you will update your references
No, this is the original claim:
> but it turns out that there are a decent amount of good studies showing a link between fluoride in water and (slightly) lower IQ when pregnant mothers ingest the fluoride.
Then the parent replied that this IQ link is lacking evidence, which it's not, per the meta-analysis I cited.
For fluoride measured in water, associations remained inverse when exposed groups were restricted to less than 4 mg/L or less than 2 mg/L but not when restricted to less than 1.5 mg/L
There were limited data and uncertainty in the dose-response association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ when fluoride exposure was estimated by drinking water alone at concentrations less than 1.5 mg/L.
Which is not a claim that was being discussed in this subthread, since the original claim being refuted specify any such qualification.
This was a real problem in the San Jose school district until recently. They started fluoridation of water in the last ten years, and were the biggest US city that didn’t fluoridate. The evidence of the above is clear according to SJ dentists I have talked to.
[1] - https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
> It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ.
---
"Since 1945, the use of fluoride has been a successful public health initiative for reducing dental cavities and improving general oral health of adults and children. There is a concern, however, that some pregnant women and children may be getting more fluoride than they need because they now get fluoride from many sources including treated public water, water-added foods and beverages, teas, toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash, and the combined total intake of fluoride may exceed safe amounts."
---
So the issue is trying to isolate the exact amount and source of fluoride people are getting. And that probably has no answer because it's going to vary dependent on how much fluoridated water somebody drinks, the rest of their diet, their other dental hygiene composition, and more. So levels that would be safe for one percent of the population, will be dangerous for another percent of it.
https://theunbiasedscipod.substack.com/p/the-well-runs-deep-...
The NTP report is flawed and likely biased.
Makes sense, but the intention also is that many people do not brush their teeth, or at least do not brush them as often as they should, and so fluoride is added to drinking water to compensate so people's teeth don't start to fall out at an alarming rate.
But the "soda" category these days is also pretty overloaded: full sugar coke vs Coke zero is a very different calory intake.
That's why SNAP money is restricted to particular categories. So caring about how it's spent is already a foregone conclusion, and rightly so.
If someone wants to spend money however they like, they'll have to earn it themselves. Even inherited money carries a sense of obligation to honor the family with how it's used (like not blowing it all in a week of lavish partying in Vegas, as an extreme example).
You know on a serious note, it occurred to me that Liquid Death's slogan "Murder your thirst" isn't far off. Wonder if it's a not-so-subtle nod.
If you're replacing sweat, wouldn't you want sports drinks?
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1969/03/27
But anyway, in most cases, the fact that drinking milk doubles as a source of food is clearly a benefit. It's hard to explain a common behavior by reference to a rare circumstance.
Water has zero calories, is reasonably filling, neutral-tasting, and gives me what my body needs, without any other junk. What's not to like?
Also, what you think cheese consists of.
One can enjoy something without it being good for you. I like cheese. I'm under no illusion that it is healthy
When I had to fly to NY for work I felt like I couldn't get water anywhere that was worth drinking.
I’ve travelled and lived across the country during my high school and college years; and I’ve travelled my extensively within Upstate very (Adirondacks, Catskills, and Finger Lakes) and the taste of local water is the first thing I notice.
Bad building pipes aside, I have not tasted any water that exceeds NYC’s tap water in taste.
I’m not the only person who’s expressed this, and guests from other regions have also admitted the same consistently over the years.
Countries where the tap water is drinkable without chlorination have quality that exceeds bottled water, and it might even be sourced from the same aquifers.
many? (!!!)
Googling it all I found was one dentist website that said 2%, but didn't seem that reliable
I have no doubt most people brush their teeth in one capacity or another, but do you really think 98% of people brush them regularly and sufficiently? I reckon that drops down quite a few double digits at that point, and since we're talking about populations here that's quite a lot of people.
Even if the fluoride somehow manages to overcome all that and prevent you from getting cavities, the gum disease will eventually cause all your teeth to fall out.
Given that everyone gets enough in toothpaste I just don’t see the reason to keep doing it, too much can go wrong. It’s kind of a strange mass medication that I’m not sure the government needs to be involved in.
The advantage of putting it in water is that it ensures all children get it, not just the children whose parents can and do make sure they brush their teeth and go to the dentist.
Bad parents are gonna be bad parents.
They banned it as part of the culture war. That's 100% of the reason. "The libs" want it, so it must be banned.
My understanding also is that if you’re a dentist wanting to get rich, move somewhere that has unfluoridated water.
There is also a host of things we use water for from cooking to preserving, distilling and cooling.. i wonder if any of these things could concentrate the fluoride.
Also since fluoride has a lower boiling point any studies tracked what breathing in fluoride gas over long periods cause?
What most people don't understand here are the levels of fluoride being ingested. You can very easily remove all fluoride from your water with a relatively cheap RO system. But the recommendation to use "fluoride-free toothpaste" is just plain misinformation.
The reason is that you don't eat toothpaste. And even when adults ingest small amounts of toothpaste, again, the amount of fluoride is basically beyond negligible. Fluoride can both be applied to teeth as a varnish and/or consumed in drinking water. Using a flouride-free toothpaste can oftentimes do more damage than good because of SLS in those alternatives and because those alternatives often have abrasives that do far more harm than good. It's amazing people will recommend a product that may likely be worse because they have no domain expertise. So, yes, people should talk to their Dentist about these things and ask questions of them vs the Internet.
Really the downside to removing fluoride from city water is that low income families will be worse off with respect to dental related issues compared to more well off families that spend time instilling dental hygiene and preventative care for their kids. As you mentioned most people who have decent oral hygiene get enough flouride.
Where we live we have well water. Fluoride in the water isn't a concern, and if it was in our drinking water it generally wouldn't be consumed because of the water filtration anyway.
Source: spouse is a DDS.
Dismissing things out of hand like this is a category of stupid in itself.
Look at the current research, listen to people who devoted their careers to studying this, make up your own mind. If you're on HN, then you're qualified enough to at least figure out who the genuine experts are and read what they recommend.
Putting any science-based debate into a "category" to dismiss is turning yourself into one of the stupid people.
> Look at the current research, listen to people who devoted their careers to studying this, make up your own mind.
Do you honestly do this with every single belief you have? Even every single controversial belief? Have you looked, yourself, into whether the world is flat? Whether the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true? Whether crop circles were created by aliens? These are all absurd conspiracy theories, but I assume most people don't know the "up to date" research on any of them, or what people who have "devote their careers" to research them say.
And those are incredibly common and well known to be false theories.
You have to take some things on faith to at least some degree - though to be clear, by "on faith" I mean "on faith of people you trust", which should really start with professional scientists etc. Also, it's totally fine to just say "I have no actual idea" about most things, and just go with what your current understanding of the status-quo position is.
Yes.
> Have you looked, yourself, into whether the world is flat? Whether the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true? Whether crop circles were created by aliens?
Yes.
In the USA, dental care is not covered by public insurance, and is an optional add-on to insurance through one’s employer.
So without addressing at all whether fluoridation is effective or safe, there doesn’t seem to be any compelling need to fluoridate public water, and there’s no economic down side for the public if governments choose not to do so.
Given this, why not just leave people alone to make their own choices? If the citizens in a city or state want to fluoridate the public water supply, then do so; if they choose not to, then leave them alone. It’s a free country and voters are grownups; let them choose for themselves.
If you live in a place that chooses the choice you dislike but for some reason fluoridated public water supply is a critical issue for you, either campaign to change it or vote with your feet.
This issue just doesn’t seem important enough to me to spend any effort arguing either way.
I wonder how many people really brush their teeth on a regular basis.
> either campaign to change it or vote with your feet.
I imagine that campaigning to change it requires notifying people there is a problem, and getting it into the news and spreading that news.
Whatever the number is it's not appropriate for the state to medically intervene on their behalf.
In countries with some form of universal health care, simple proactive health interventions can save the State large amounts of money.
Why is it appropriate especially in light of many people actively opposing the intervention?
These are questions about what is the proper relationship between the state and the citizen.
And they are a litmus test for current political belief bifurcation in the US.
You talked about dental care not being covered by public insurance — is it not worth considering that some basic level of dental care is already being applied to the country via fluoridation? It's a minimal, cost-effective way to prevent tooth decay at scale. Fluoridated water is one of the few dental protections available to everyone regardless of their income.
I'm completely sure that any people that don't brush their teeth is just because they are too lazy to even bother.
This trope of justifying everything with "but there are millions of poor people in the USA" is really tiresome.
Your comment is well-stated, and in the spirit of a free and liberal society. The problem—not with your argument, but with the world—is that today there seems to be literally no issue unimportant enough not to argue about, or use as the battlefield for an unending ideological proxy war. My guess is that few of the people arguing this issue on HN have strong feelings about flouride qua flouride, but have strong feelings about the kinds of people they believe oppose or support the use of flouride in water, and this notion is what they're really railing against.
So my instinct is to really be afraid of this anti-fluoride wave, even tho practically I don’t care one way or another.
I’m not sure what your anecdote proves because I’m wholly in support of a polity being able to make that decision.
It is trivial today to get whatever level of fluoride is recommended for dental health, via toothpaste. So there is no compelling need to fluoridate as there exist viable alternatives to achieve the same that fluoridation is for any other purpose than dental health.
Presumably when they voted to get rid of fluoride in the water in Calgary, they didn't do so expecting the outcome would be that people in their town would be less healthy overall. Nonetheless, that was the outcome of their vote.
The anecdote shows that it's not trivial, because when the fluoride in the water went away, people were not able to trivially replace it, leading to worse health outcomes. Ultimately people found too high of a cost, seeing as that they reversed the decision.
Sadly it took a decade for them to realize their mistake. I worry people today are making the same mistake, and we will reverse it in a decade after health outcomes are shown to have worsened.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed...
All previous data is ignored because of political reasons.
Teeth to slowly rot in heads.
Sometime in the 2030s, local voters will notice they have very bad teeth.
Locals will debate if adding fluoride is going to make teeth great again.
The actual high quality evidence shows that water fluorination has minimal impact on tooth health in 2025: https://www.cochrane.org/news/water-fluoridation-less-effect...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdoe.12215
Perhaps more could be done. The situation is complex because of several compounding factors for sure. There are European countries that have no water fluoridation and better oral health outcomes than in North America.
Regardless, there’s 10 years where a city in North America turned off water fluoridation and we have results of that decision to study.
"For all tooth surfaces among permanent teeth (Table 1a), there was a statistically significant decrease in Calgary, for the overall mean DMFS, which was not observed in Edmonton."
Based on their data, you could argue that fluoride increases cavities in adults... I'm not making that argument. I agree with you in that I think confounders are at play and the difference attributed to fluorinated water isn't as large.
People will use this study to take about the rampant tooth decay in Calgary, ignoring that there is roughly as much decay in Edmonton which had the fluoride on the whole time.
I'm sure there are plenty of chemicals that could be forcibly put in the drinking supply that, based on current scient, would be beneficial for the public. But I would still be skeptical. Sell me these substances in my food or toothpaste, but don't put it in my drinking water by default.
It's also worth noting about 3% of western Europe has fluorinated so let's not pretend like this is unprecedented
Also realistically, if people cared about bodily autonomy cars would've been banned immediately thanks to the amount of particulates and local pollution produced causing far more adverse health effects.
Also important to note no one is banning flouride. They're preventing it from being put in the drinking water. The equivalent would be if cars were distributed upon arriving to the state.
I don't know enough to form an opinion about whether Utah's new policy is good or bad, but it is clearly on the side of individual freedom. (of course that's not the only concern)
Imagine if 70% of Salt Lake City wants this but can't because of people living hundreds of miles away. Not sure if that's a huge win.
That 70% can use floride toothpaste or mouthwash. What happens to the 30% who don't want it in your scenario?
Local is better than State. State is better than Federal. If this was going from the federal level to the state, I would agree that it's a win for personal liberty. Unfortunately it's local going to the state level. If a water district of 100,000 people all want this, they simply can't do it. It doesn't seem fair that people who won't be impacted get to decide.
I agree. When issues require collective action, it should be decided at the smallest capable level.
In this case, the smallest capable level is the individual. To extend your comparison: individual is better than local.
This _isn't_ an issue that requires collective action; people can treat their own teeth with fluoride or take fluoride supplements.
Personally I see states as an artifact of the 20th century. Why can't municipalities govern themselves? Why shouldn't my city be able to leave my state and join another. States made sense before the internet and communication was difficult. Now they're just a middle man without a lot of value.
If eastern towns of California don't want to be grouped together with San Francisco or Los Angeles: why should they be forced to be? Because someone in the 18th or 19th century determined it?
Are you not allowed to pay for bottled water instead of paying your local utility for drinking water?
The bodily autonomy argument seems bad to me because you are buying water from the government when you could buy water from any other source instead.
Is the argument that the government water is too convenient and so it should be unfiltered? Who is to say that filtering out poop is not infringing on my right to consume unfiltered water?
So you're looking at a small positive improvements in dental outcomes, for what may be a permanent decline to IQ. That's obviously not a trade I think anybody would make, so the real issue is not whether or not it improves dental outcomes but whether it's having measurable effects on IQ as we have seen in other studies. [2] I don't understand why a study operating in good faith wouldn't also pursue this question in unison, or in fact as the primary question. I think relatively few people outright doubt the dental benefits of fluoride, but rather are concerned about the cost we may pay for such.
[1] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdoe.12685
[2] - https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
So for instance of the 19 low risk-of-bias studies, exactly 0 came from the US. 10 were in China, 3 were in Mexico, 2 in Canada, 3 in India, and 1 in Iran. 18 of those 19 studies found a significant reduction in IQ that corresponds strongly with increases in fluoride (the outlier was in Mexico). With the current administration we'll certainly be seeing funding for such studies in the US and so there should be much more high quality data on the 0.7 level forthcoming. But in general this is a major problem that needs solving. Exploring the breadths of science, including the fringes, should not require an activist political administration.
To me, using the 1.5 mg/L doesn't tell anything about lower levels but it does make me interested in seeing such study whereas before I'd have just dismissed it.
This isn't remotely true; it's just something people say on message boards.
This is why meaningful studies on IQ are basically dead in the US and similarly why we were one of last countries to confirm the absolutely critical reversal of the Flynn Effect. I think the political tide started to turn really hard after the decades long Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study ended up definitively proving the opposite of what it intended. [2]
[1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...
I particularly like their trend of publishing editorials with ledes like, "We are leading Nature on a journey to help decolonize research and forge a path towards restorative justice and reconciliation." How can that not make you cringe? People are going to look back at this as the equal but opposite of phrenology. Or perhaps we've had our own Al-Ghazali [2] moment and people will look back at this era as an inflection point in science shifting from one culture to another.
[1] - https://www.nature.com/search?q=iq+intelligence&journal=natu...
When you get into population stratification issues you're already again flirting with taboo depending on what is being studied. So yeah - low sample sized, poorly controlled, correlation exclusive GWAS studies are the gold standard in genetics publications. I'm so completely surprised that such, alongside the rusty hacksaw that's CRISPR, failed to live up to even a zillionth of their 'potential'.
That being said, your dentist can apply fluoride to your teeth (boggles the mind why insurance won't pay the $50), and flouride toothpaste is still much more common than not. It's probably not needed in the water supply for dental purposes.
That being said, what are the other fringe benefits: such as microbe control?
There is probably more nuance to both stories tho.
[0] https://houstonherald.com/2018/11/lindsey-and-long-win-count...
https://chatgpt.com/share/67e8572d-c5f4-8000-9393-c2e894c922...
https://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-30229-portland-voters-so...
To the extent this is a polarized left-right issue, it's only recently and only because everything is polarized right now.
The top 10 most fluoridated states went 5/5 Rep/Dem in 2008 and 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2024. These were Kentucky, Minnesota, Illinois, North Dakota, Virginia, Georgia, South Dakota, Maryland, Ohio, and South Carolina. Hardly a blue wall.
The bottom 10 least fluoridated states with 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2008 and 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2024. These were Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Louisiana, Alaska, Utah, New Hampshire, and Mississippi. Hardly a red wall.
The bottom three least fluoridated states are all hardcore blue: Hawaii, New Jersey, and Oregon.
I just don't see any evidence here that this has been a left-right polarized issue until this year. The distribution of fluoride by political leanings is just too random.
AFAIK, HFCS is one of the worst offenders.
HFCS is not worse than sugar unless you're consuming such an outrageous amount that the fructose leads to a fatty liver (which does happen). But if you're consuming that much HFCS, it's only a small amount more of sucrose to yield the same outcome, as of course both have loads of fructose.
The one viable argument to vilify HFCS is simply that it's so convenient and inexpensive (courtesy of massively subsidized corn production) that it led to many more products having added sugars. But people who carefully pour over ingredients looking for HFCS, but treat sugar as wholesome, are usually operating on ignorance.
In the body it's literally all the same with minor variations in ratios. Indeed, the revered Mexican coke with cane sugar...the sucrose is broken down to component glucose and fructose in the acidic environment [1], exactly as happens with HFCS variants, and it would have been the moment it hit your digestive tract anyways.
There is zero scientific justification for the weird focus on HFCS. Yes, glucose and grossly excessive amounts of fructose are a serious problem. Especially in forms that rapidly get absorbed and go off like a glucose bomb -- our bodies are not adapted to the extremely rapid intake of glucose forms of food we eat now, including ultra-processed foods fill with refined carbs.
The #1 source of glucose in most diets is white breads, rices and so on. White flour is 60-80% starch, while white rice pushes 90% starch. Starch is strings of glucose molecules, and indeed enzymes turn that starch to free glucose almost immediately when eaten. So from a glucose perspective flour is much worse than an equal amount of sugar.
And of course nutritive sweeteners in all their forms should be avoided. But table sugar isn't more wholesome or better than HFCS.
[1] - Fun video about the sucrose in Mexican coke - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY66qpMFOYo
I live in New Zealand and my town doesn't put fluoride in the water but it seems like they'll be made to do so fairly soon. I don't really care one way or the other from the point of view of ingesting the stuff, but I do consider it a bit of a waste of money. People who brush with toothpaste don't need this and people who don't are probably drinking too much soda. A more useful thing to do might be to subsidize toothpaste for people who can't / won't buy it for their kids.
I think every person in my social circles with any kind of illness or disability would be incredibly grateful for fluoridation, and it's not because of drinking too much soda
Is this real?
As an American, I wish we didn't do this, but it's a collective action problem that's very hard to solve.
The reason I wish we didn't tip is because I think the list price should reflect the true cost of whatever I'm buying. I think that is more honest, encourages healthy competition, and is a pleasant consumer experience.
I was really glad when the DOT forced airlines to include taxes and fees in ticket prices in 2012, and wish there were a similar law/regulation that applied to all commerce. (And yes, I realize this is hard, given the incredible complexity of U.S. tax laws in a bazillion different—and often overlapping—jurisdictions.)
> $2.65/hr+
Bottom line, if your business can't afford to pay its people a living wage, then it can't afford to operate.
(Well, they also make espresso drinks and made-to-order deli sandwiches, so I guess it's appropriate to tip if you order those.)
I disagree. I tip for delivery, and for table service. Not for a service that does not require leaving the counter.
In my area, pizza delivery drivers (read: not DoorDashers, etc. I am not sure what they make since I refuse to use those services) make about $12 - $15/hour and get paid for mileage (usually between $0.50 - $0.62 per mile.) I'm not seeing a reason to tip them. They are making well above minimum wage in my State, unlike the restaurant servers/bartenders that only just barely crested $4/hour as of 2025. The latter is in a position to rely on tips, the former is far from it.
I ask because we don't seem to have an established "hard line" on when tipping is appropriate in the United States, and when it is not. This extremely fuzzy understanding is allowing companies like DoorDash, coffee shops, etc to under pay their staff by off-loading part of the cost to the customer, which makes your $7 latte cost $10, or whatever. It's steamy bullshit and needs to be shoveled into the bin.
If we had a hard line on when tipping is justified, we'd quickly see a change in the other direction. I've always felt that the hard line should be "if you are making less than minimum wage, then tipping is justified." That's it. No soft maybes, no washy-washy justifications.
That being the case, if a barista (avg $15/hour in the US) is not happy _without_ the tips, then they have two options: demand more from their employer, or find a different job that pays better. Either way, the employer is left to consider either raising wages to keep people satisfied, or doing the same just to keep people in the door and stay in business. The barista is, in essence, the face of the company. They do the work the customer sees, which makes them important to the sustainability of the company. Ergo, the company needs to put more resources in the barista's pocket to ensure quality work.
It sort of blows my mind why everyone else in the US does not think this way, but I have tried to dissect my own stance on tipping (from the standpoint of having spent nearly a decade working front-of-the-house in restaurants), and I'm really having trouble poking holes in my own logic. So, I'm always interested to hear other people's takes on why they tip the way they do.
This is the problem. You basically said "we do it like this because that's the way we've always done it," which is the weakest form of justification for anything.
Rain, snow, etc...do you tip the person who delivers your mail? They do it in an LLV (a rather treacherous vehicle with little to no climate control) or on foot, but nobody tips them. When the pizza delivery person applied for the job, they did so knowing they would have to deliver in bad weather, but somehow we reach the conclusion that the responsibility of making sure that driver is being paid adequately for their risk and efforts is shifted to the customer, rather than than their employer.
Now, I should clarify that despite my years of restaurant service where my $2.65/hour paycheck existed nominally for the sole purpose of covering taxes (hence, my "take home" pay coming directly from the customers to my pocket), that I am in the camp of abolishing tipping altogether. Raise the wages of all service workers to a livable wage, which all these companies can certainly afford, and we'd be done with it. But I know that's a huge leap, so we need to take baby steps to get there.
Having a well-defined notion of which positions should be tip-based and which should not is the first baby step.
I guess what I am getting at with my other comments is that we do not have a clear understanding of said appropriateness, and thus, we, the consumer, along side the food service worker, are generally taken advantage of by the companies that perpetuate the idea while said companies are off the hook for labor costs.
Now, before someone (if anyone is still following this thread) chimes in with "but if the restaurants pay the bartenders/servers a full wage, the food and drinks would be way more expensive!" I am here to tell you "travel more." I have been to many other countries where tipping is not at all a thing, and the food costs about the same as it does in the US.
When you walk into a restaurant in the US, you're getting ripped off. The dish you just paid $16US for cost them about $3 to make, including wage. It's not like the cooks are prepping one dish at a time, or the servers are only taking one table at a time...not to mention most restaurants in the US are using frozen, prepared ingredients that they are really just heating up or re-hydrating. Overhead costs like electricity and rent? A drop in the bucket compared to what small businesses have to deal with. The staff is making bare-minimum wages as it is while the parent companies and investors are making bank. That money from your $16US meal goes up, but very little of it actually comes back down.
Tipping exists because greed at the top exists and its unfair to both food service workers and the customers, but we've been at it so long that it's been normalized. And now it's spreading to other industries, like retail and online sales.
It's pretty nice to go to a cafe, pay a fair price, and not be guilted into 20% extra by a PoS machine.
Are you worried the machine will think less of you if you don't tip? Where does guilt come into it?
I live in France and it's just so obvious that people grew up without fluoride — even celebrities try to talk without showing their teeth when they're on TV!
I'm all for getting consent in most cases, but sometimes you'd have to be an idiot not to take the obvious win.
It's like we were delivering flakes of gold with the mail and people complained — that's not what mailboxes are for!
https://davidfisherdds.com/how-long-does-it-take-for-porcela...
People in the US pay a lot of money to have very straight teeth. You can see this clearly with American celebrities and actors (versus European counterparts), but the culture of cosmetically modifying teeth is very strong all across "middle class" and up America as well.
Perfect white teeth doesn't mean they're healthy.
"The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children."
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
So it is also not clear, if the lower concentration typically found also has this effect.
"It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ."
But the solution of just using (cheap) Fluor in toothpaste to apply the Flour where it should go - to the teeth and not the stomach, sounds smarter to me.
And there are other sources besides water from the tap, so I don't think it is intelligent to raise the base level, when the option of local applying exists. What is wrong with toothpaste?
So fluoride would somehow magically replace braces or teeth whiteners?
And yet France does not have a dental health crisis so it's just for cosmetic reasons we don't need fluoride
US is an outlier there, so there is that.
https://cascadefamily.com/images/WaterFluoridationLevelsUtah...
Or, toothpaste has enough extra fluoride, adding it to water is just a waste of money.
This is not that. This is the US health system being lead by a bunch of woo-woo people who don’t understand how research works.
The majority of the developed world does not fluoridate their water supply. The US has one of the highest rates of fluoridation in the developed world. Within America, fluoridation rates are highest on the East Coast and in the South, and lowest on the Left Coast.
Ultimately, the woo woo people are the ones who rely on someone in a labcoat to tell them whether ingesting government approved (there's your first red flag) synthetic fluoride from industrial byproducts is "necessary".
If it's useful, brushing it onto your teeth and into your gums 56,000 times in your life is probably sufficient, particularly given that we don't know with absolute certainty beyond any shadow of a doubt that the industrial waste options are totally without health consequences. I'll literally just take care of my teeth and cross my fingers over listening to modern medical consensus on a range of topics where I simply trust intuition and common sense more.
But people get used to it. Specially when they don't get to experience the alternative. Most people rationalise it is a good thing. Stockholm syndrome.
> The European Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (EAPD) recently called water fluoridation "a core component of oral health policy" and adds that salt fluoridation "is suggested when water fluoridation cannot be implemented" due to technical, logistical or political reasons.
https://static.spokanecity.org/documents/citycouncil/interes...
But I guess freedom to pollute matters more than bodily autonomy in terms of mental priority.
Perhaps you could take a dive into the youtubes, and find "crash detectives" (Welsh-based, so you may have to put captions on), but none of those professionals check for mouthwash.
Haha, some [police forces] do.
I personally don’t buy the passive health benefit. Even if it’s true, there’s no proof that fluoridated water is superior to topical application.
Not to mention that if we’re going to just roll over and accept stuff in the water for public health reasons, what really should be added are more vitamins, not fluoride. In particular vitamin D
> Regular use of fluoride mouthrinse under supervision results in a large reduction in tooth decay in children's permanent teeth.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6457869/#:~:text=Be...
Would love to see evidence to the contrary (ingestion is superior to topical application w.r.t. fluoride).
You really want to strengthen teeth as they’re developing. It’s critical. Your “fact is” is wrong although you want to do that too. Continue to fortify after they grow in.
May I ask what motivates you to post things here where you clearly have 0 knowledge about a subject and you just write things that sound logically right in your head but are wrong?
> Preventing cavities is far more effective with topical application of fluoride on the teeth, rather than ingestion.
Since you don't seem to disagree, there's nothing to discuss then. Cheers! Also, it is a fact that fluoride is most effective towards preventing cavities topically. You can Google Scholar this and see for yourself. There's a reason dentists prescribe high-fluoride toothpaste or gel, instead of just saying drink more fluoridated water.
Europe (and many parts of Asia,) is objectively healthier than most of the residents of the USA; so maybe rather than knee-jerking against anything RFK Jr., perhaps the so-called experts should start doing their jobs and looking at what healthier places in the rest of the world are doing. The status quo in the USA is default fat and unhealthy. Why aren’t the fluoride cheerleaders not using their “expert” status to shout against high fructose corn syrup, artificial coloring, or the fact that most American food tastes like sugar?
Americans do not want to hear about how they should eat healthier.
If you are poor you can't go anywhere or buy anything. You're not free if you're poor. If you are sick, you may be confined to a hospital bed or not feel good enough to do anything. If you are sick you're not free.
Putting fluoride in water reduces dental costs and incidence of cavities and therefore tooth infections, particularly among societies poorest. Therefore, due to fluoridation in water some people are less sick and have more money and therefore are more free.
The contrasting view is that putting fluoride in water is literally medicating people without their affirmative consent. It is the government forcing you to take a medication. It is coercive and therefore an attack on your freedom to not take medication. It is the government interfering in your life.
The contrast between positive freedom, the freedom to do something, and negative freedom, the freedom from interference in your life, is the core political argument in America right now. Negative freedom, freedom from government interference, is being promoted by those seeking to weaken the government enough to supplant it. People who are poor and sick are likely unable to stand up for themselves or participate in solidarity against authority. This individual issue is relatively small, but you take 100's of issues like this, and the effect is to create a class of people who aren't able to do anything but be obedient workers.
Interesing take but I don't buy this part at all. The core political argument in the US is epistemological. What's real and what counts as true? There are some axiological differences but I think they are minor in comparison to not being able to agree on how the world is in the first place.
I feel the majority of epistemological disagreement is the result of propaganda (not exclusively from MAGA). With only a small bit that is actually a disagreement on core values. Suchs true disagreement does exist, but it is no longer what the political discourse is about.
Public healthcare systems in other countries have procedures they don't cover, and significant wait periods (i.e., shortages) to see doctors and specialists and have procedures done. Because of the cost.
I'm not saying they aren't better than America's, but the idea you can just let people have it and not worry about costs isn't true. Health is like around quarter of entire government expenditure, it's fantastically expensive. Around the same amount of welfare expenditure, so you could double the number of people receiving welfare or double the amount that welfare recipients get for the same price, for example, which would be lifechanging for millions of the poorest and most disadvantaged people.
> except the one where measles is making a comeback?
Measles is growing globally. In the "European region" there were double the number of measles cases in 2024 as there were in 2023. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/european-region-report...
I mean, raise taxes on businesses (wanna guess how many walmart employees are on government aid, i.e how much we tax payers are directly subsidizing their exorbitant profits while they pay their employees below a living wage?)Tax the rich, (3 individuals hoard more wealth than 50% of the country combined) + Cut some large percentage of insurance jobs, military spending, and use that money to provide healthcare to every american, without spending time and money making sure they're poor before we deign them able to receive help. really, it's quite simple.
>Public healthcare systems in other countries have procedures they don't cover, and significant wait periods (i.e., shortages) to see doctors and specialists and have procedures done.
Agreed there. Ever wonder why?
Taking your point earnestly for a moment, can you earnestly tell me that's not still miles better than America, with more expensive outcomes, worse care outcomes, lowering life expectancy compared to poorer nations, record maternal mortality rates, and tons of medical bankruptcies?[2]
Cmon, be serious. Go fund me is one of the bigger health insurance systems in the country.[3] Btw, medicare for all saves tremendous amounts of money vs our current system.[1] Much like ubi, the science is clear, but the rich and the naive are too brainwashed or dumb by the propaganda of the oligarchy owned media to think American's deserve healthcare, housing, a dignified life.
Seriously, Compare your "worst case" to america, where people simply can't afford to see the specialists, or get the procedures at ALL. I know which one I would have and my opinion is backed by the sentiment, and empirical data of, like I said, literally every even half developed nation in the world. Your can offer nothing against this. It's simply fact.
That's not even to speak about women dying from things like birth complications because their draconian state let the theocratic fascists dictate what a women and their doctor can and can't do with their own body.[0]
>because of the cost
Drastic, brazen or glib misunderstanding of history and politics. Throughout conservative governments, from reagan to thatcher to bush to trump, the objective of these ayn rand reading dummies, (read, austerity politicians) are as follows:
1. cut funding to vital social agency.
2. point to resulting difficulties as proof it's a silly system.
3. sell it off to private corporations and get hefty kickbacks.
THAT is what causes all of the (still lesser than ours) problems you lament.
>the idea you can just let people have it and not worry about costs isn't true
Where did I say that again?
Man, if only someone had thought of that. If only we had a 1% that controls almost 40% of the wealth in this country. We could raise taxes to pay for such a program. Btw, I reiterate, every study, (even from neocon think tanks) recognize it would save us hundreds of billions.) But austerity/conservative politicians don't want to improve the lives of us, they want to enrich their fellow oligarchs.
Even thinking about this for a second will validate the notion. Instead of hundreds and thousands of employees whose job it is to give the least care to the least people for profit, maybe spend that money oh, idk, giving people healthcare? How much healthcare could've been provided from Luigi's cough victim's salary? If instead of getting paid millions to use AI to deny healthcare to those in need, that money was oh idk, spent on healthcare?
>Health is like around quarter of entire government expenditure, it's fantastically expensive.
Gee, I wonder what the cause of that is. Oh wait, I know this one too. Pretty common conservative talking point. Have you heard of the phrase "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"
Do you think a system where people are afraid to go to the dr for economic reasons contribute at all to the drastic healthcare expenses? I know someone that works as an ER nurse, people do not come in til they're at deaths door, with an issue that would have been remedied for a 100th the cost had they simply been able to see a doctor when first troubled. And again, all studies point to medicare for all saving hundreds of billions vs our current system.[1]
>Around the same amount of welfare expenditure, so you could double the number of people receiving welfare or double the amount that welfare recipients get for the same price, for example, which would be lifechanging for millions of the poorest and most disadvantaged people.
Or we could idk, just stop wasting money on evil "who deserves help" jobs and just you know, give that money directly to the people our government is supposed to improve the lives of? This goes for welfare, healthcare, unemployment, etc, too. How much of our social safety nets' budgets are spent in bureaucrats meant to make it difficult to get those benefits? To subsidize billion $ corporations? To bail out banks who speculated on subprime mortgages? To fund a $9T war on terror that did nothing but make us more enemies?
[0] https://steady.substack.com/p/women-in-texas-are-dying
[1]https://www.commondreams.org/news/medicare-for-all-introduce...
[2] https://www.pnhp.org/docs/AJPHBankruptcy2019.pdf
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/02/gofundme-...
> Drastic, brazen or glib misunderstanding of history and politics
while pretending you weren't just spouting on about measels htat you had no idea about.
Healthcare is extremely expensive and taxing more won't magically make costs irrelevant or the cost of healthcare having to be weighed against other important and worthwhile government expenditure like welfare. That's just the reality of it no matter how much you're going to prattle on.
Complains I didn't answer every one of his points AND that my response was too long. Clearly a dishonest propagandist or a fool.
Sure, but I was talking about costs in other developed countries, not USA. Healthcare in Australia is about 1/4 of government expenditure with welfare being another 1/4, for example.
> Therefore the concern about costs does not add up.
Non-sequitur. Costs obviously do and I explained in very simple terms why (e.g., you could double welfare payments for about the same cost). Please explain your reasoning if you want to support the claim that cost is not a concern.
Giving $x to healthcare is almost always better than giving $x to welfare, as well funded universal healthcare reduces OOP costs for citizens, which reduces their need to consume other welfare services.[0,1]
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10733771/
[1] https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/214481/a...
I'm not equating the spending, only the costs.
> To suggest that we fund welfare more instead of putting more money in to healthcare?
I'm not suggesting that, I'm explaining what the cost of healthcare is in terms of another enormous government programe.
> Why??? Are you simply stating that giving x money to one social program is the same as giving x money to another?
No.
> What is your point, your policy proscription?
To try to give you some perspective about the enormous cost of universal healthcare.
> Giving $x to healthcare is almost always better than giving $x to welfare, as well funded universal healthcare reduces OOP costs for citizens, which reduces their need to consume other welfare services.[0,1]
Calm down and take a breath and try re-reading what I wrote in my first comment. It's extremely simple, maybe the fact I pointed out you were wrong about measles set you off badly. I'm not saying healthcare expenditure is bad or worse than other welfare or that America has a good healthcare system. I said that healthcare is cost gated in countries with universal healthcare systems. Which it is. In your hypothetical fairy land of unicorns and pixies where corporations and billionaires pay for everything, sure it's not cost gated, and neither is your government issued pony. But that is not an answer to my point that healthcare in countries with universal healthcare systems (and America, if it were to adopt one), is cost gated. Cost gated meaning people who need or want treatment will not be able to receive it in a timely manner in all cases.
Yeah, I was a little heated, because I misunderstood what you meant by cost-gated, and thought you were being rhetorical and bad faith. My bad there.
We simply had different definitions of cost-gated, and talked past each other because of it.
>my point that healthcare in countries with universal healthcare systems (and America, if it were to adopt one), is cost gated
Sure, but... who cares? It still produces better outcomes, better coverage, better in nearly every measurable way. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
>Cost gated meaning people who need or want treatment will not be able to receive it in a timely manner in all cases.
Yeah, sure, but that really isn't the point. The point was that free at point of service (what I meant by not cost-gated) healthcare produces better outcomes, covers a larger % of citizens, and is generally simply a better way to do healthcare. Not receiving in a timely manner is miles better than not receiving at all because you can't afford it. That's a pretty worthy delineation to make, even if you could in the abstract call both "cost-gated".
The overall point is socialized medicine costs less, provides better outcomes, covers more people. All the rest is besides the point I was trying to make. Sorry again for coming in so hot, I'm clearly much too used to arguing with much more dishonest people than yourself.
I respond in good faith until the other party shows themselves not to be, and his glib rhetoric of "what do you mean, cost-gated?" while in the next sentence demonstrating he knows exactly what I'm speaking of - a public healthcare option - made it clear what type of person I was dealing with, and it wasn't a good faith commenter.
I've heard every argument that guy made and can make 1000 times over from fox news talking heads or an equivalent level person.
What strengthens my positions are, well, the truthfulness of them. All of the facts and studies support my message, playing nice with a bad faith commenter has no bearing on any of the facts I presented.
Not to mention he calls a thought out, four citation response "unhinged prattle" because he refuses to engage with any of my responses (he knows i'm right) to his dishonest comment. It's the conservative m.o, I've seen it a thousand times.
If you can't/won't accept reality because there was some extremely mild condescension, that's on you. Plus that guy deserved no good faith, I've heard his exact comment from every conservative talking head for a decade+, I know guys like him backwards to forwards (politically)
That was my first comment.
> and his glib rhetoric of "what do you mean, cost-gated?" while in the next sentence demonstrating he knows exactly what I'm speaking of - a public healthcare option
Public healthcare is cost-gated though. The recipient doesn't see the cost, but they see wait lists and procedures and medications and devices that are not covered. It is cost-gated. Prattling on about taxing the rich doesn't change that, it's just deflecting and changing the subject. If governments had unlimited money then healthcare would not be cost gated. Great. Astounding deduction. Now back to reality...
I think your attempt to spread disinformation about measles -- or worse, simply being willfully uninformed about simple facts yet trying to make statements of authority about them -- shows exactly what kind of person I'm dealing with.
Ok, I see where the misunderstanding arose. Cost-gating in this context meant, to me, preventing access to healthcare based on if the individual can pay at point of service, not if the state program can pay to see people quickly or whatever. Apologies for not giving the best faith interpretation to your comment, but you can hopefully see why I misunderstood your use of the term.
Sure, as a byproduct of systematically underfunded social health programs, you see a similar effect in countries with social healthcare, but I refuted the importance of that point pretty completely by explaining the m.o of austerity politicians and worse than gilded-age levels of wealth inequality[0] as the sources of social healthcare systems' ails and the clear fact that it's still a much better system by any measure.
The outcomes are still better, cheaper, and more have access to healthcare. So, not really relevant to the point that public healthcare > privatized healthcare? The rest is semantic word games. We're talking about which system provides better outcomes to more people for less money. And there is no question as to the answer of that.
>Disinformation about the measles
Sure, I was unaware how severe the anti vaccination rhetoric has taken root in europe too. My tongue in cheek dig at measles being back in the US was not meant to be taken that seriously, but more like a "point and laugh at the us" addendum.
But you are right, though it's besides the point completely. That we're the only country suffering from anti vax idiots is incorrect, sure. But it is not even really part of the argument here, more just a dig on the US. Idk why that tiny part of the discussion was fixated on. Probably because it's the only point I wasn't correct about.
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/02/trump-musk...
I could also say, that discussing slippery slopes (a linguistic discussion) is itself what moves the discussion too far from the original topic. You protest too much.
Putting aspirin in the water would be incredibly dangerous: brain bleeds and stomach ulcers would quickly knock out any other health benefits.
Source? Moreover, how much of a market can municipal water fluoridation create that companies would bother lobbying for it?
That is a very big generalisation. There are many legitimate reasons for reducing government interference and reducing the size of government.
Is that a rephrasing you could live with?
Policy makers make things happen by passing laws that make it a requirement or provide financial incentives to do it, and make things stop by outlawing it or taxing it. It is what they are elected to do.
This is not "big government" - democracy does not mean that small groups that disagree should be allowed to do whatever they want, and water additives is a quite signficant thing to mess with.
Letting small groups that disagree do what they want is the definition of small government. Outlawing water additives is a significant thing to mess with, it’s a meaningful intrusion on people’s heath and general welfare.
What makes this entire thing silly is many areas of the US ~11% naturally have fluoride levels high enough not to need supplementation, but nobody seems to want to drop that to some ultra low level when they argue for outlawing adding fluoride. It’s not an argument that these levels are unhealthy, just the naturalist fallacy in action. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/fluoride-occurrence-united...
Where I live the city subsidizes rain collection barrels.
I’m not talking about having a barrel. Most states don’t care about that quantity. I’m talking about storing on the order of 10k gallons. A rain barrel is nothing. An average family in the USA uses hundreds of gallons a day. It doesn’t rain daily so you’d need thousands of gallons. Most states do not allow this, nor is it actually feasible for everyone to do this due to space constraints, which is why it’s generally not allowed.
In fact, generally the places in Connecticut, and New England that have well water are because they specifically cannot have the other.
I don't know much about western USA, but I suspect it's similar.
The only states with restrictive surface water policies, generally, are the western ones, because every drop of water is allocated according to interstate agreements and letting peasants take what falls on their land is like the toddler version of letting privateers crap on a treaty.
In New England and the east generally, you can either have a well or municipal water, not both, because they don't want to worry about back flows and contamination of the municipal water supply, etc. It's not the big deal you're making it out to be.
this just isn't true. Can you have private well water in Boston, Hartford or Portsmouth? The answer is no. In general in the northeast, those who have well water have it explicitly because they're not served by the municipality. Feel free to give counter examples with specific cities or towns that serve both and actively let you switch between both for a given address that supports both.
There are some towns in New Hampshire for example where the town has municipal water but a given house does not (it has well water), but usually that’s due to specific characteristics of the lot that forbid it from having a municipal without a large cost, so the developer sets up well water instead.
What you're saying doesn't even make sense - municipal water is routed to a treatment plant, so it wouldn't matter anyway.
Why do you think that is?
But if your point was that it’s illegal to collect enough rain water for XYZ purpose or scale I think that’s a bit different.
You are getting into something there. You understand the necessity of municipal water collection mandates due to space constraints, but when it comes to public health (e.g vaccines) or public dental health (e.g fluoride in water), that's beyond comprehension and an infringement on your right (to have bad teeth)?
Also, in the real world, most (emphasis on most) states don't have any restrictions on collecting rainwater, and some actively encourage people to do so.
- https://todayshomeowner.com/gutters/guides/states-where-it-i...
- https://sfyl.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn-and-garden/saving-and-using-r... (Florida highly encourages people to collect rainwater)
I like it how when it comes to fluoride in water, that's the nanny state pushing things on people, but when it comes to municipal water, said people can't bother to use their freedom and get their own water supply. It's the same that parents refuse to vaccinate their children for measles and then hurry to the doctors when the child inevitably gets sick. The freedom to die of preventable diseases is a great thing!
Also, there are simple (and cheap) water filters that are quite effective at removing fluoride. As fluoride is often naturally present in water anyway, it is only really necessary to remove the majority of the added fluoride to get the water back into a ‘natural’ state.
As for a loose argument for why fluoride in water is medicinal: the FDA classifies toothpaste as a cosmetic and also potentially a drug (depending on whether it contains fluoride and the claims the product makes):
> Ingredients that cause a product to be considered a drug because they have a well-known (to the public and industry) therapeutic use. An example is fluoride in toothpaste.
> Some products meet the definitions of both cosmetics and drugs. [...] Among other cosmetic/drug combinations are toothpastes with claims to freshen breath and cleanse the teeth that contain fluoride. [Both quotes are from https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws-regulations/it-...]
My early years were spent in Melbourne, where fluoridation was introduced around 1970. That's the only time I lived with fluoridated water, for about 3 years. yet dentists can see the effects 50+ years later.
I don't use a toothbrush or toothpaste, and haven't ever really, as my ASD makes it unbearable.
I also don't see what access to toothpaste has anything to do with neurodivergent conditions.
99% of the world does brush their teeth, so I don't see how this is relevant to their health.
[0]: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/03/22/un-26-of-world-lacks-...
I've heard similar rumours about army recruitment in the 80s though.
I find the lack of science in this thread disturbing.
The inviolability or integrity of one's own body to me is more important than any of this. You have the right to decide what medication to be given to you with informed consent always, or you have no freedom. Otherwise the freedom argument collapses and you stop having reasons to allow abortions, or a bunch of other informed consent situations.
And "knowing better" than poor people "for their own good" usually doesn't go well (for the people).
Article 3 - Right to integrity of the person
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity.
2. In the fields of medicine and biology, the following must be respected in particular:
(a) the free and informed consent of the person concerned, according to the procedures laid down by law;
(b) the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at the selection of persons;
(c) the prohibition on making the human body and its parts as such a source of financial gain;
(d) the prohibition of the reproductive cloning of human beings.
But yes, adding additional vitamins or minerals to food products is generally unnecessary when supplements are generally cheap and highly available these days.
I feel like for better or worse we are being forced into an era of individual responsibilities where the safeguards that we used to rely on without having to think are being actively dismantled.
That certainly doesn’t mean that whoever decided to put extra iron into flour knows that you need it.
IIRC iron deficiency is pretty rare in men.
Also it might have made sense 100 years ago when most people had very similar diets and lacked similar nutrients, not these days though.
Freedom to is the Canadian way.
That's why Canada becoming an American anything is ridiculous and pisses off Canada so much that, for example, we've reduced our flights to America by +70% over the coming months.
Redefining freedom as “forcing something on people for their own good” is not how anyone actually defines freedom.
It’s like saying children have the most freedom because their parents force them to do things that will benefit them.
As a duel citizen of the US and another Commonwealth nation, I have to say that this is exactly the ridiculous self-caricature perspective that gives foreign nationals a sort of combination of pity and contempt for the average US citizen.
While it's true that your cartoonish portrayal of freedom is one possible interpretation, there are most certainly others, many of which present citizens with actual measurable freedoms that they would not enjoy in the US.
For instance, Australians have, since the late 1990s, been relatively free of mass shootings, especially in schools or other public areas. Because the police are allowed to force you to take a random breathalyser test without probable cause, we are generally substantially freer of drunk driving. Because we have a social safety net, people are free from the need to opt out of life saving surgery because they fear the abject economic violence that the US visits upon the "uninsured".
On the other hand, the US has substantially more sensible libel laws than most Commonwealth countries. These things can cut both ways, but it would be a mistake to interpret other countries as attempting a childish breath holding exercise just to differentiate themselves from the hip and cool nation.
Ahh, you see there you made a mistake. I'm not American.
And your examples of "this is better" don't address the point I made - how Canadians identify themselves.
"freedom to", a prevention will be provided. You can always decide to take alternatives, if you can afford it. A significant portion of the population can't. They will be able to enjoy life.
Equating freedom with the liberties the rich have is absurd. In any society, the rich will have the most freedom, even in the most oppressive ones. The true litmus test for freedom is seeing the freedoms the poor can enjoy. By that standard, the US doesn't score very well.
Would you choose to be a randomly chosen citizen? You could be anyone in that country with all the rights, privileges - or lack thereof - that that random person has.
I think I'd rather be a random Canadian with healthcare and education than a random American.
It's an interesting thought experiment.
Which country would you choose if you had to be poor?
I’d probably choose Cuba.
The American way is completely devoid of that concept. It's all built on that Pilgrim Fathers founding myth and only ever cares about keeping the state from getting in the way of individual beliefs. It's so focused on that part and only that part that even an almost-all-out theocracy would be fine as long as it did not mess with individual beliefs. "Freedom to" without the tiniest trace of "freedom from".
I find this quite contrary to my experience of e.g. modern Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy where many politicians are explicitly religious, laws are written with majority religious affiliation in mind, religious taxes may still be levied. Even France still feels in many ways like a "catholic country", even if they do have good explicit separation of church and state.
I would have said that government and (Christian) religion are completely inextricable for most Europeans, even if the majority of the population isn't seriously devout or even practicing.
When you dig deeper in Germany it gets surprisingly murky, e.g. bishops not paid out of those church taxes but out of regular state taxes, e.g. those paid by atheists and Muslims, which dates back to Napoleonic age secularization when those payments were introduced as a (meager) compensation for the enormous income the (catholic) church had from being worldly lords of enormous realms. But this as well contribute to keeping the churches out of politics. They know pretty well what is their place and what isn't.
There are even countries which have political parties that are Islamic affiliated.
The separation between religion and state refers to two things: the state not being able to enforce any religious aspects on citizens (freedom TO exercise any religion without interference from government), and religious entities not being able to influence or pressure the government outside the electoral process (freedom TO govern without interference from religious entities). Neither of these things prevents a political party founded on religious beliefs to participate in the electoral process.
The USA is overtly and intentionally Christian: American banknotes have "In God We Trust" emblazoned on one side, and schoolchildren (usually) recite an oath pledging allegiance to "one nation under God". Christian democracy, on the other hand, usually stands for a loosely defined, mildly conservative political ideology in a strictly secular system of governance.
I rather define freedom by the government not deciding what's good for me
Does that mean you are against this bill?
Before the bill, your community could either use your own water system, without fluoride, or use the wider system, which has fluoride.
After this bill, your community no longer can use your own water system with fluoride, and the wider system also does not have fluoride.
On a first read, this bill makes the government remove a choice for you, deciding what is good for you.
(I don’t have a horse in this race honestly. Assuming everyone can get toothpaste and toothbrushes, the effect is the same. But the wording of the bill is strange: “may not add fluoride” rather than just “is allowed not to add”.)
Source: https://archive.is/Nustz
Corporate owners are people engaging in voluntary transactions. Their freedom was essentially the question in Citizens United. "Corporations are people" emerged from the media as an oversimplified version.
This has also been the case for the entire history of corporations, which is longer than the history of the US.
"Not keeping people trapped in poverty" would be nice too but for some reason that one seems off the table.
It's incontrovertible that, under certain conditions, an unrestricted price system (a "market") is the most efficient allocation mechanism possible. There's a lot of research on that kind of thing.
The myth is that we have ever tried anything resembling that on a nationwide scale, or maybe even that it is achievable at all. There is a fundamental "paradox of tolerance" in economics, where market participants have strong and persistent incentives to distort or damage the market. This is why business interests so often align with free-market liberalism or conservatism.
Most of the so-called deregulation under the current Trump administration for example as little to do with improving the efficiency of market allocation. It's much more about making sure very large and powerful corporations can get even larger and more powerful, and removing the regulatory apparatus to prevent them from distorting and damaging markets to suppress competition, or to suppress labor costs.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
It's not freedom from government but freedom from tyranny. They believed that governments existed to promote the protection of rights.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
This demonstrates an intentional effort by the founders to strictly limit federal authority by explicitly enumerating government powers and leaving everything else beyond federal reach. It underscores that their conception of freedom involved a government that was deliberately restrained, designed primarily to safeguard individual liberties by minimizing governmental interference, rather than merely protecting from outright tyranny.
Timothy Snyder is the modern embodiment of founding father ideology/enlightenment philosophy and my original post was almost directly lifted from his talks/books.
Yes they may have been in favor of small government, but we have the tyranny of corporate power now. When healthcare is tied to a job, women are working instead of doing child care, the combined wages are not enough/barely enough to afford rent and necessities, and there are no savings for emergencies, that leads to the tyranny of business and wage slavery.
It leads to individuals without the means to withdrawal consent from a tyrannical government. It structurally disables acts of disobedience. Jefferson said rebellion unto tyranny is obedience to god, not rebellion unto governments. They were not subject to the levels of concentrated corporate power that grew out of industrialization. Robber Barrons were also tyrants who acted tyrannically.
There's probably something to be said about self reliance and protestant work ethic which can result in obedient workers willing to work under poor conditions for cultural reasons, but thinking that government is the only entity capable of unchecked power when we have businesses with a higher revenue than some entire countries/states shows a dogmatic chasing of a justification for a belief, rather than following the principles towards an assessment the principles themselves would lead to. It's a kind of originalism. The appearance of their beliefs, but not the substance of them.
A republic... If we can keep it.
Well good luck keeping it if the average citizen is too weak to project any kind of political power. Good luck having strong citizens (or a cohesive society) without strong social programs like public education.
> rather than merely protecting from outright tyranny.
Enlightenment ideology at it's core, the very central point of it, which our documents were written into respect to, says you give up some rights in order to have other rights protected [from tyranny]. That is why man leaves the state of nature... Greater protection from tyranny.
The constitution was a document meant to be adapted. The goal of the implementation is plainly stated:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
USA: 69th
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/healthies...
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-and-care-b...
> We believe that water fluoridation is the single most effective public health measure there is for reducing oral health inequalities and tooth decay rates, especially amongst children. We welcome these proposals and believe they represent an opportunity to take a big step forward in not only improving this generation’s oral health, but those for decades to come.
This ban is anti-freedom. (Just like forcing them could be argued to be, even though that's what you argued against.)
So, this ban is arguably reducing freedoms on multiple levels.
10,000 food additives that are banned in Europe are perfectly fine in US.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-food-additives-banned-europe...
https://isitclean.org/the-ingredients-banned-in-the-eu-but-l...
Use the same argument on air and it falls apart. "The Free individual is also Free to not breathe air in a community that decided to add lead to their air supply." This was a big debate in the 70's btw due to car emissions.
Then it shouldn't ban fluoridation when it could instead simply not mandate it.
even as recently as the early 90s, my civics classes emphasized the importance of other people’s rights and that of the expression of your individual rights infringed on the rights of others then it was an irresponsible and improper use of individual rights.
it seems like this has devolved into people whose perspective on individual rights loosely aligns enough to coalesce and shout the loudest to create policy. until someone in the in-group’s individual freedom is impacted and the group fractures into smaller coalitions. rinse. lather. repeat.
(I'm not being serious, I'm pointing out that you may not have found your first principle just yet)
Banning fluoride does not restrict freedom—it prevents government overreach. In contrast, forcing fluoride on everyone would violate personal autonomy. Protecting individual choice is a fundamental principle, backed by real-world safeguards like constitutional rights, judicial review, and bodily autonomy laws. The burden of proof is always on those seeking to impose a policy, not on those defending individual freedom.
Really? 'Why is the government providing potable water'? Because that's the point of governments: to provide a framework and the bare essentials of civilization.
And well, libertarian led governments are TERRIBLE.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
The whole argument gets weirdly metaphysical. Not many people have a problem with local authorities removing things from the water. That is, I don't see many Americans demanding that their local authority provide them with completely untreated water. But apparently modifying the water by adding something to it is importantly different. You'd think that a more interesting discussion would be a practical one (about the pros of cons of treating water in different ways). But a certain current of American discourse would rather return again and again to essentially theological arguments. We must locate the original sin against freedom in our local water infrastructure!
Because there is a government monopoly on water, you need these protections to prevent government overreach, because this is the only way for the consumer to express their preferences.
Looking around the thread, the idea seems to be that there is some kind of important metaphysical distinction between the government "adding" something to the water that people could in principle add themselves or merely "filtering out" bad stuff like pathogens — and that this metaphysical distinction is somehow linked to the difference between positive and negative liberties. As an aside, I think this probably makes no sense on a chemical level, as you generally can't remove stuff without also adding something else. But in any case, this strikes me as a uniquely American perspective. I think a more common perspective is the following:
* Essentially no-one wants raw untreated water supplied to their homes.
* The local government therefore needs to decide in which ways the water is going to be treated.
* This has to involve some compromises (because there's one set of pipes).
* These compromises are boring practical issues of municipal infrastructure and have no interesting philosophical or political implications.
Oh, I very much understand the libertarian 'argument', and I dismiss it as childish anarcho-primativist horseshit.
Almost all (aside the rare Lefty libertarian types) libertarians utterly leave out the fact that helping each other and coming together collectively can fix problems in what amounts exponentiation, compared to the collective action problem of individualism.
If everyone generated their own power, then grids would be mismatched and slow everyone down.
If water grids were individual wells, we would tap out natural aquifers in short notice. By collectively coming together, desalination plants and mass water purification is doable.
Libertarian types will demand absolute indepenendence for everything, but also want the spoils of a framework of governance. But even when they get their own community, as I linked, they so overwhelmingly fucked it up.
Communism is a better idea than rugged right-wing libertarianism (the common one in the USA). Turns out, none of the richies want to pay for anything.
The issue arises when that water is fluoridated against the will of a significant portion of the population. It effectively forces dissenters to either accept it or go through the hassle and expense of sourcing their own water — which defeats the original purpose of providing low-cost, universally accessible water.
Today, the marginal benefits of fluoridation are questionable, especially with fluoride available in toothpaste. So forcing it on everyone, despite objection, becomes harder to justify — and that's why some places have stopped adding it.
In the US, it most certainly does. We have freedom to associate, and associations also have freedoms. Were it not so, we wouldn't have even been able to arrive at the conclusion we have with regard to corporate money in politics.
But law doesn't define philosophy — philosophy defines law. And from a philosophical standpoint, freedom is a property of individuals, not collectives. Only individuals possess consciousness, agency, and moral responsibility. Associations, corporations, and groups are abstractions — tools created by individuals, composed of individuals, and led by individuals. They cannot make free choices; they can only be directed.
Freedom of association means individuals are free to join or leave groups as they see fit. But the moment something is mandated, such as being forced to participate in a fluoridated water system, or coerced into accepting the political will of a corporate “person,” the individual's freedom is compromised in favor of an artificial entity.
Philosophically speaking, rights flow from individuals to associations, not the other way around. The association has no legitimacy that exceeds or contradicts the will of its participants, especially when it undermines individual liberty.
So yes, associations may have freedoms under law, but only because individuals granted them those freedoms. The moment those freedoms infringe on individual rights, they lose their moral legitimacy, regardless of legal precedent.
"You can't tell me what to do" has been a religion in the USA for a long, long time.
By that logic is the first amendment "anti-freedom", because it prevents communities from instituting censorship laws, even if they actually want them?
So, is Germany less free or more free?
They have more of one, less of the other.
The OP contrasts adding fluroide to water vs. not adding fluoride to water and brings up the freedom question. I find that very interesting. But he omits that there's also the variant I sketched, namely that fluoride could still be made available to the population, but not through water.
Now, how does this factoid relate to the freedom (positive or negative) question?
So, please don't read my post as negative, my intent was to bring an additional perspective to the table.
Can communities choose to fluoridate their water at the utility level or are they banned from doing so by legislation like they are in Utah?
You're using an extreme definition of freedom that I suspect is not quite the trump card you think it is. No, "communities" can't just do whatever they want because they "choose" to, and nobody ouside the lunatic fringe thinks that's a prerequisite for freedom.
https://www.bad-reichenhaller.de/de/produkte/alpensalze/alpe...
People who want to be free from government interference should be prevented from using public roads, or public infrastructure of any kind. Want to mail something? Hire a courrier to deliver it for you. Etc.
No taxes in exchange for you not benefiting from anything taxpayer-funded. How does that libertarian paradise sound?
https://www.nyruralwater.org/news/study-shows-nearly-64-bott...
This is the real problem. That dental care, or any medical care, is costly.
Here in Sweden we decided against fluoride for this reason and the fact that it is in fact toxic. It isn't sensible to use systemic exposure when we can use topical exposure and can improve mouth health by education, so that people do what they're supposed to.
The fluoride approach achieves a basic level of health, but you can do so much better.
Relatively few of the poor have the disposable income, time, education, and long-term worldview needed to reliably do that.
EDIT: This comment is about America's poor. Though the same applies in much of the world.
Freedom comes at a cost, the US and Sweden are paying that cost in different ways.
If there's no will to raise up the poor, you it should be straightforward to use the state directly to ensure that everyone is taught how to brush their teeth and ensured to have access to brushes and toothpaste.
This might have been true 200 years ago, when there was a whole unexplored continent to exploit, but it's less true now.
How?
Please don't express that it damages development. That's trivially refutable by statistics. We can compare Canada's and UK's IQs for example, or some other proxy to the G factor, said countries were chosen for their similar cultural demographics, we find then that the metrics are mostly identical, while the difference in consumption of fluoride is staggering.
Later that night, he got a desperate phone from his friends mum, screaming at him "What did you take! What drugs did you take!!!", he replied that they hadn't taken anything, but wasn't really believed. His friend was rushed to hospital with severe seizures and convulsions. The doctors eventually put him on a saline drip and he recovered.
Basically his friend lowered the salt content in his body so much that his body could not pass electrical signals. My friend was fine because he had consumed a bit of salt in his snacks. Kinda crazy.
I found that almond milk had a good bit more by volume and the US dairy industry probably just had some good marketing in the 2000s with the Got Milk campaign.
IMO the right fix is better dental hygiene, and a better (less sugary) diet. These are in turn are in part symptomatic of other problems (poverty, long working hours with regards to lack of supervision of children).
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/water-fluoridatio...
There a really unfortunate use of "significant" in that document. The scientific meaning and the general meaning will cause very different interpretations from laymen.
All water collected from natural sources contains some level of fluoride and other salts (which varies greatly from place to place). Does then your local water authority remove these naturally-acquired chemicals?
If there's too much fluoride in the rock water we take soil or surface water instead, for example. If there's too much fluoride in the water we do not supply it to people's taps, but this is for values like 4 mg/L.
So we mostly don't take any measures. In Stockholm it's apparently less than 0.2 mg/L though.
Fluoridated water is the reason I've never had a cavity despite growing up poor with a terrible diet, dental hygiene and care.
I don’t follow the leap here. You could just be blessed with a good oral microbiome, proper calcium, D3 (sunlight exposure?), K2 etc.
Going by your logic, there should be no dentists in the US.
It’s worth noting that it’s also slightly different in that processed flour is deficient in thiamin and calcium, so the fortification adds back these nutrients.
On the other hand, processing water to make it potable doesn’t remove fluoride and so fluoridation is not the process of adding back something that was there beforehand.
*I searched this page and found flouride and flouridation four times before your comment.
Brush your teeth in the morning and in the evening. Standard dental hygiene - If a person can be an obedient worker they can probably brush their teeth twice a day. If they cant, they have bigger problems to sort out.
However this comes with the weighty caveat that there are public groups that actively agitate against public health campaigns.
On balance I think defluoridation makes sense where you have good public health communication.
If we go that way, we should have some sort of Department, to make sure Of the Education being consistent.
Let’s dismantle what you did here that you think is so clever.
You took an absurd comparison of a tried and tested naturally occurring substance with a substance that public health professionals are trying to get us to use less of.
You took that, and replaced it with an even more far-fetched and even more generalised hypothetical.
At least, given your ignorance around antibiotics you might be forgiven for thinking it would be a good thing to give antibiotics for all. I mean if it’s good enough for your food supply it should be good enough for humans right? Ignore egg prices going through the roof cause your flock has no innate immune system.
So then you replace that reasonable sounding but stupid supposition and you replace it with “a word” that you pulled out of the air that sounds like it might be a thing and then wowed us with your abuse of glyphs™
You are nothing but a depressing waste of time and whoever is putting you up to this I’d suggest you go back to them with your cap in hand and admit you’re not up to it.
I enjoyed that. Thanks for the run-out.
It's ironic that you assert this, and then go on to claim that I'm ignorant, when you seem to be the ignorant one. Penicillin was originally derived from a mold and is one of the popular antibiotics out there, so it's arguably "tried and tested naturally occurring". The same is true of lithium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_(medication)
>with a substance that public health professionals are trying to get us to use less of.
Under the hypothetical of "if the Science™ said it was good", this would not be a problem. If you can't understand how hypotheticals work, I suggest you stop wasting my time.
Please go on, the sun is out and I’m enjoying this.
1. If you do a quick skim of the comment section, you'll find no shortage of people unironically making such argument.
2. It might seem I'm making such claim if you're rushed or have reading comprehension issues, but if you read my comments more carefully you'd see I'm not making no such claims, only posing it as a hypothetical.
This is the definition of the principal-agent problem.
Also, “positive freedom” is a hilarious rebranding of dictatorial decision making.
Why not grant more “positive freedom” to the people by deciding exactly what these poor people should do for a living, how they should live, and how they should spend their money. The experts know best, after all.
I’m not even particularly against fluoride in water, but this kind of reasoning is insidious. If the people have voted for representatives that are against it, we should follow the will of the people. This is the definition of democracy.
Is that the contrasting view, or the contrasting view that is preferred, because it is more easily demolished?
The stronger contrasting view isn't that the government is medicating people without their affirmative consent. It's that it's poisoning people, and no amount of consent by laymen to be poisoned would be acceptable.
Anything, including water itself, is toxic (not poisonous, but I’m guessing you meant toxic, since fluoride is definitely not poisonous) in high enough doses. So you could say that about ANY mineral we may add to water to adjust its taste or health effects.
I happen to think adding fluoride isn’t worth the effort. But the hysteria against it is also really dumb.
For those who don't know many countries including the US mandate the inclusion of folic acid in bread and certain other foods to ensure pregnant women get enough. A deficiency of folic acid during pregnancy causes birth defects in infants. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate
2023 Study:
"Despite Public Health Initiatives across Europe recommending that women take 0.4 mg folic acid before becoming pregnant and during the first trimester, the prevalence of NTD pregnancies has not materially decreased in the EU since 1998, in contrast to the dramatic fall observed in the USA. This study aimed to estimate the number of NTD pregnancies that would have been prevented if flour had been fortified with folic acid in Europe from 1998 as it had been in the USA."
"Conclusions: This study suggests that failure to implement mandatory folic acid fortification in the 28 European countries has caused, and continues to cause, neural tube defects to occur in almost 1,000 pregnancies every year."
The most famous NTD is Spina Bifida, and most of them aren't really fixable by modern health care. So this is 1000 babies a year who are either born with severe birth defects, or, in what I'm guessing is many cases, terminated when they could have been born healthy with a flour enrichment mandate.
https://aacrjournals.org/cebp/article/17/9/2220/169762/Folic...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13668-018-0237-y
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1463-1318....
(And you know that the first line cancer treatments, like methotrexate, are anti-folates.)
So while we are lowering birth defects, are we increasing cancers at the same time? Has this ever been studied?
We are not a homogeneous population.
The same is true for fluoride. Some people have a fluoride allergy:
https://www.aaaai.org/allergist-resources/ask-the-expert/ans...
And while fluoride is known to prevent cavities, it also makes tooth enamel brittle:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-024-00709-8
https://www.medindia.net/news/healthwatch/fluoride-strengthe...
So I prefer to medicate myself, according to my own needs and my own genetics, thank you.
I'd imagine that must be very difficult for you.
BTW, that fluoride reference refers to excessive fluoride in water whether natural or added. I've not entered the fluoride debate here except to ask a question. I'd certainly object if fluoride levels were excessive in my water supply.
Do not get me started on the IMP and GMP they are adding to foods now...excitatory purine flavor enhancers in the form of things like "Malted Barely Flour"
https://www.eurofins.com/media-centre/newsletters/food-newsl...
https://www.cspinet.org/article/guanosine-monophosphate-gmp-...
https://www.cspinet.org/article/inosine-monophosphate-imp-di...
The above quote from that Springer reference reminds me of plant toxins in common foods especially in dark-green leafy ones, spinach, rhubarb, etc. Oxalic acid is one of the main ones but there are many others.
If you worry about what you eat you ought to be concerned about these. It's understandable that these toxins exist in these plants as they use them as protection against insects etc. Incidentally, I use oxalic acid industrially and I'm very careful how I handle it.
If we take your claim to its logical conclusion (that we shouldn't add those vitamins and minerals to our foods because they might hurt a small percentage of people), the other side of the coin is that we should _remove_ extra vitamins and minerals. If we don't, we're just implicitly medicating a whole population rather than proactively medicating them. Peanuts hurt some people; let's ban them everywhere. End-stage kidney patients without full renal failure often can't tolerate salt or phosphorus; let's not salt any of our food and ban the sale of eggs and meats. Diabetics can't easily tolerate a high glycemic load; let's be extra safe and not use any sugars or alcohols.
Or...make reasonable population-level interventions and let people with special needs handle their own special needs. There are gluten-free breads, no-excess-folate flours, and all sorts of things on the market.
While we're talking about baseline levels of B vitamins (folate), did you know that most bakers are also dumping a rich, broad-spectrum source of most B vitamins and trace minerals into your bread? It's not just folate. They then let that yeast further multiply for 2hr+ just to bump the vitamin levels up (or, worse, add extra yeast at the start to speed up the baking cycle).
It’s doubtful that this stance is being promoting in good faith.
Second, it completely ignores any debate over effectiveness or side effects. It could well be that fluoride in water is great for teeth but bad for brains. The objections to fluoride in water I’ve seen are more along those lines. Im not clear the validity of those claims but for example anti fluoride advocates don’t typically object to chlorine in water to kill germs. That seems the core issue- without bias from stakeholders, is the benefit of fluoride proven and the risks disproven? It’s hard to answer because a study needs to span many years and exclude many variables.
And in general I think that is what needs to happen with these type debates. Take them _out_ of the sphere of charged political opinion and focus on getting to the objective truth of risks and benefits, then be transparent. People can handle “here are the known pros and cons and what we think that means” over “there are only pros and no cons and if you disagree you hate poor people”
Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains.
> Im not clear the validity of those claims
Thoroughly scientifically debunked. Repeatedly, over decades.
> That seems the core issue- without bias from stakeholders, is the benefit of fluoride proven and the risks disproven? It’s hard to answer because a study needs to span many years and exclude many variables.
No, it's not hard to answer, because all those studies have been done and the results were that fluoride is safe.
> And in general I think that is what needs to happen with these type debates.
What needs to stop happening is people ignoring objective reality just because the results happen to align with the other "team's" position on something.
"Out of a population of about three-quarters of a billion, under 14 million people (approximately 2%) in Europe receive artificially-fluoridated water."
The problem I continually see in the USA is the ascription of differences of opinion on [any topic] to America's Great Divide between enlightenment and barbarism. I find it often helpful to just check, what do these policies look like outside of America? It doesn't mean Europe got it right on fluoride, it just suggests against adopting the framing that your POV is 100% objective reality proven beyond doubt by Science™ and no rational person not in the throes of "own the [other team]" bad faith might disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_country#...
European policy isn't based on modern fluoridation being dangerous, it's based on having alternative systems in place (which vary by country)
In Windsor Ontario, across from Detroit, they took fluoride out of water for nearly a decade before reversing that decision based on results: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/fluoride-water-system...
Maybe Utah will be a place with alternative systems, based on another thread it sounds like they have an interesting Mormon safety net. But I would hope states do pilot tests first at least. If studies show that the historic gap in dental health between fluorinated & unfluorinated communities no longer apply, then that would be data driven policy
But it seems like this policy is based on someone's common sense that you shouldn't put minerals in water
This Nevada health info has an in depth response on page 5 https://dpbh.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/dpbhnvgov/content/Programs...
Never knew that France fluoridated their salt.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24308394/
(Sea salt and Kosher salt are the salts that aren't fluoridated and iodated in those countries, fancy, more expensive salts, regular table salt- and the salt added in commercial/restaurants has both.)
So sure, you don't need to fluoridate the water, if you fluoridate the salt instead. But you have to do it some way or another. And the US and Canada doesn't, at present fluoridate the salt because we have it in the water. Remove it from some people's water but don't add it to the salt because everyone else has it in the water? Bad combination.
laughts nerviously in Dutch
That said, WHO does profiles of dental health, providing comparison:
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/country-profil...
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/country-profil...
& for my own interest, Canada: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/country-profil...
It never made sense that dentistry somehow is considered a separate form of healthcare from the rest of your body.
Especially considering researchers are increasingly finding links between oral health and other conditions such as Alzheimer's heart disease. And that preventative dental care is so much cheaper and less invasive than treating major decay when care is delayed.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/dental/dental-car...
as long as you're Mormon. Approximately 60% of the state.
You mean like this: Fluoride Exposure and Children’s IQ Scores A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
"Findings: Despite differences in exposure and outcome measures and risk of bias across studies, and when using group-level and individual-level exposure estimates, this systematic review and meta-analysis of 74 cross-sectional and prospective cohort studies found significant inverse associations between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ scores. [...]"
Maybe you should reconsider that what you heard once was the definite truth.
What the study measured:
"For fluoride measured in water, associations remained inverse when exposed groups were restricted to less than 4 mg/L or less than 2 mg/L but not when restricted to less than 1.5 mg/L"
And what the US federal government recommends (or I guess soon, previously recommended):
"Through this final recommendation, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) updates and replaces its 1962 Drinking Water Standards related to community water fluoridation—the controlled addition of a fluoride compound to a community water supply to achieve a concentration optimal for dental caries prevention.1 For these community water systems that add fluoride, PHS now recommends an optimal fluoride concentration of 0.7 milligrams/liter (mg/L)" [1]
Note, too, the study's section on Study sample;
"No studies were conducted in the United States."
Also: fluoride works topically, not when ingested. That implies we should try to deliver fluoride to teeth in a way that is focused on topical application (toothpaste), not ingestion (water supply).
wrong[1]
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/oral-health/data-research/facts-stats/fa...
Both toothpaste and water supply cause some fluoride to touch the teeth (topical) and some fluoride to be swallowed (ingestion). However, toothpaste has a higher ratio of topical application to swallowing, vs water supply which has a lower ratio of topical application to swallowing. That's why I said toothpaste is focused on topical application and water supply is focused on ingestion.
* Initially, fluoride was considered beneficial when given systemically during tooth development, but later research has shown the importance and the advantages of its topical effects in the prevention or treatment of dental caries and tooth decay. [The Fluoride Debate: The Pros and Cons of Fluoridation; Prev Nutr Food Sci, 2018; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6195894].
* The actual mechanism of fluoride action is still a subject of debate. A dogma has existed for many decades, that fluoride has to be ingested and acts mainly pre-eruptively. However, recent studies concerning the systemic effect of fluoride supplementation concluded that the caries-preventive effect of fluoride is almost exclusively posteruptive. [Systemic versus topical fluoride; Carries Res, 2004; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15153698/]
* As noted by Thorrez, your link does not mention topical application vs systemic ingestion. There is a publication from the CDC however stating that the benefit of fluoride is mainly topical:
> Fluoride's caries-preventive properties initially were attributed to changes in enamel during tooth development because of the association between fluoride and cosmetic changes in enamel and a belief that fluoride incorporated into enamel during tooth development would result in a more acid-resistant mineral. However, laboratory and epidemiologic research suggests that fluoride prevents dental caries predominately after eruption of the tooth into the mouth, and its actions primarily are topical for both adults and children (1). [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4841a1.htm ; 1999].
This material was covered in depositions for TSCA Fluoride trial in 2018, where Casey Hannan (director of the division of oral health at the CDC) was the examinee for the deposition. A temporary upload of a clip from this deposition may be found at https://0x0.st/8Lom.mp4.
The law does not mention any public health concerns related to the mineral, but Republican state lawmaker Stephanie Gricius - who introduced the bill in the state legislature - has argued that there is research suggesting fluoride could have possible cognitive effects in children."
You're lying through some linguistic convolution. What you said is wrong on a factual level. Communities cannot decide to include fluoride in their water, as that is banned, so fluoride is banned from Utah water. This is what words mean
I only really have enough general understanding of chemistry and biology to note that dosage generally is pretty important and often non-linear in its effects -- I write JavaScript, not drug formulations -- but "dosage makes the poison" has always struck me a good general purpose aphorism to keep in mind.
https://journalistsresource.org/home/how-to-read-this-study-...
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abst...
I would be careful throwing a single study around as proof of anything, here is one with a different conclusion:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00220345241299...
There is no conclusive data to support your assertion and there is a lot of data to support the benefits of fluoridation.
Did you actually read any of what I posted to understand it or is your mind already made up?
So this study found no negative effects on IQ when the fluoride concentration is less than 1.5mg/L
The U.S. Public Health Service recommends 0.7mg/L of fluoride[1]. This study supports the idea that the amount of fluoride used in the US drinking water is safe.
I couldn't find any information on how much fluoride is in utah drinking water as a whole, but a report from Davis County shows that they stay between 0.6mg/L and 0.8mg/L [2]. I'd say its fair to assume basically all the water in Utah doesn't have too much fluoride, and if it did, lowering the amount to 0.7mg/L would be enough to address the health concerns.
1: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4547570 2: https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/962361.pdf
Also note that in reality 0.7 mg/L is the “low” value and 1.5 mg/L is the high water mark from the study. That’s not a huge window by any means…
We can never be sure who funded the studies and whether or not the results can be trusted. Studies have shown that studies cannot be trusted. I err on the side of caution.
You're welcome to put it in your own drinking water if you trust the studies.
> What needs to stop happening is people ignoring objective reality just because the results happen to align with the other "team's" position on something.
Nobody can perceive objective reality. Everyone is delusional concerning just about everything. The people who think they know what's going on, are most delusional of all.
Dark times are ahead, I'm afraid, and people's trust-meters are going to be valuable again.
What does this mean for you in practice? Do you see just fluoride studies this way, or "studies" in general? If the former, what makes those different? If the latter, what is your stance on science-backed decision-making and policymaking in general?
> Nobody can perceive objective reality. Everyone is delusional concerning just about everything
This is just hyper-cynical fear mongering. An excuse to reject inconvenient things you see and substitute them with your own alternative reality.
The people who sell fear and things like alternative medicine love to push this angle: They want you to distrust everything. Everything except what they tell you, of course.
the growing prevalence of anti science thinking like this has been a disaster for humanity. There's so much time and good faith effort put into trying to better understand our reality then people like you come along and handwave it all away because "well can we really know anything"
Well, that's basically the end of the debate, isn't it? Before we can have reasonable discourse, everyone has to agree on some points. Sure, individual studies have problems. That's why we make them reproducible and aggregate the results. So yeah, don't trust some individual paper; but if you're distrusting the aggregate, well, you're distrusting all of science.
> Nobody can perceive objective reality. Everyone is delusional concerning just about everything.
This is the entire point of the scientific method. It's why we make sure tests are reproducible by other people in other teams in other countries. Each with their own funding and biases. What remains after all of that is as close to objective reality as possible without decompiling the universe.
> Dark times are ahead, I'm afraid, and people's trust-meters are going to be valuable again.
You know what else has been shown to be unequivocal bullshit? People making decisions based on their "gut". Your personal "trust-meter" is just another form of that. Dark times are indeed ahead, but it's because there are people out there who want to do whatever the hell they want- and it's easier for them to get away with it if they discredit science and get the population to do so as well. This is what you're helping by spreading such things. Please stop.
It's also worth nothing that 1) over-fluoridation is pretty bad and can affect poor or malnourished communities (ex, [2]); and 2) there are alternatives to fluoride that may be equally effective with fewer risks at higher concentrations (ex. nano hydroxyapatite).
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2222595/
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1064338060067811...
Would you like to debate the reality of anthropogenic climate change next? This will be another area where any links you dig up will only point to a single conclusion.
That's not what was being debated. What was asserted was that fluoride in water lowers IQ, a position that has been so thoroughly debunked at this point, that if, much like being anti-vax or thinking climate change doesn't exist, any continued movement reinforcing it is almost by definition bad faith. The information exists and short of purposely going out and looking for contrarian nonsense relative to the established position of science on the subject, you and everyone else can find it.
As frustrating as it is that "do your own research" has been basically ruined as a phrase by the professional internet bullshitter industrial complex, you really should, with a nod to the need for critical analysis of sources, an important part of that that frequently gets left to the side.
> Your statements very strongly supposed that this is a solved case closed topic
Because it is, and we need more of that and less endless citation. Not because citation is impossible or bad, but because we don't need to keep arguing every last point. If you think certain things, like fluoride lowers IQ, or that climate change doesn't exist, you are not needing an intellectual rebuke, you're needing enough people making fun of you that you stop spouting horseshit and go learn about things. All of humanity's knowledge is at your fingertips. It is not the responsibility of reasonable people to educate you against your will.
0 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089203622...
https://apnews.com/article/fluoride-water-brain-neurology-iq...
There are also other harmful side effects of fluoride, such as fluorosis, which I have. It’s not a huge deal, and I personally still think it’s a huge net positive, but people should be allowed to make their own decisions, and the science is far less settled than you claim, and not comparable at all to the debate over climate change.
Going to hijack this comment to ask about something I've always wondered: how robust are "appropriate" drinking levels to the different things you can reasonably expect people to do with the water? Not all water is simply drunk as is.
For example, I like to make beans in my slow cooker. This involves simmering them for 9 or 10 hours, periodically adding more water. In theory, this will increase the concentration of fluoride because the fluoride doesn't boil off while the water does. I assume, based on how much water I need to keep adding, this could double the fluoride concentration. Is that still appropriate levels? What about a cup that has been left out such that a lot of the water evaporates? That won't increase the amount of fluoride, but will increase its concentration.
I have to assume the "wiggle room" they build into the fluoridation rate handles these cases, but it's been hard to find any details on it since most of the results are about stuff like boiling water removing fluoride or turning it into poison fluorine gas and stuff.
Nevertheless, every time I see discussion where people talk about safe levels, I wonder how that works with all the things people do with water other than just drinking it as is.
Flouride added is in a chemical state that makes it stable, like the chlorine in table salt. It will stay at the same concentration as it travels in the pipe.
I remember this from a water chemistry course at university.
For the sake of argument, assume that only 1% of the US has levels that harm IQ. Would it not be worth it to remove fluoride from the water to improve the intelligence of 1% of the population? Especially when you consider we can get fluoride from toothpaste?
"The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children"
This is from an NIH meta-analysis. Its a pretty rigorous study.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
"It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ"
This is why there's such a fierce debate. Based on the most recent scientific literature there seems to be evidence of a dose-dependent effect of fluorine levels in water and lowered IQ in children, meaning it has some kind of neurotoxic effect. But we don't have robust evidence to say 0.7 mg/L has a similar effect. That doesn't mean it is DEFINITELY safe, it just means more research needs to be done and the current research that does cover the 0.7 mg/L range may not reach statistical significance.
The fact though the NIH suggests 1.5mg/L is likely unsafe, which is only 2x what America's tap water contains, I would not blame people for being uneasy about. It is often the case the that the FDA regulates food additives that have potential negative side effects to be limited to concentrations 10x lower than what is seen as unsafe.
I am not suggesting it's a straightforward choice to defluorinate water, but I see people often repeating claims like you have that dangers of fluoride are "thoroughly debunked" and that's simply not true. I don't blame people for having that sentiment either, because 0.7mg/L is seemingly still considered safe, and some of the loudest advocates of defluorination have no shortage of thoroughly debunked crazy views on things (possibly due to brains half eaten by worms). It makes it very easy to brush off the skepticism.
But it's also important to keep in mind science is built on the premise that one must be ready to re-evaluate past assumptions when new data arises, and generally speaking the new data around fluoride I hate to say seems to show there is indeed smoke.
It's also the case that when the US initially fluorinated water supplies it was a massive public health success, but these days it seems to make a much lower impact now that fluoride toothpaste use is ubiquitous (plus the levels were lowered from 1.0mg/L in the 70s, likely reducing its overall effectiveness). It is IMO both very reasonable to fund more research into this to know conclusively if 0.7mg/L is indeed safe, and also consider public health policy that focuses on promoting dental hygiene through other means in places that do defluorinate.
I do not agree with Utah's decision here mostly because it seems to neglect that defluorination will create a void that requires other public health policy efforts to fill it, poorer and less educated communities will suffer unless government led efforts to promote and make dental hygine affordable are not also undertaken.
How exactly do you propose we do this? It's tough to prove absence of harm.
The meta-analysis put together tons of research under different situations, and found a weak and relatively small dose-response relationship above 1.0 mg/L and failed to find a relationship below. The evidence between 1.0mg/L and 1.5mg/L is particularly weak. And, of course, most dose-response curves are sigmoidal, so the failure to find a response under 1.0 mg/L is most easily explained by the inflection point being above that level.
If you're not satisfied when combining 74 studies fails to find a relationship, will you be happy with 75? 76? 100?
(Sure, a big proportion of the studies and study power focused on higher levels of fluorination-- and I always support filling gaps in research; but it's not like we have an absence of research below 1.5 mg/L).
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
The Cochrane Collaboration's research is near the gold standard, and yet they find surprisingly limited evidence of benefit for CWF in the modern research:
"These low‐certainty findings (a 4 percentage point difference and 3 percentage point difference for primary and permanent dentition, respectively) favoured CWF."
3-4% reduction in cavities is not nothing, but it's a far cry from the 60% drop observed in the 1940s and certainly much less than what I think most strong proponents of water fluoridation would have you believe. The ongoing discussion I find quite legitimate given we're no longer living in the 1940s and CWF seems to have a substantially lower benefit than it once did, and likewise we do notice a concerning trend with fluorine neurotoxicity that has only emerged in the last few decades of research.
Public health policy is all about a risk/benefit analysis, and CWF is one of those topics that I feel legitimately should be discussed because much has changed over the many decades since the US first introduced it and since then the risks seemingly have gone up and the benefit has astronomically gone down.
Again, I do not think there'd be much discussion if current water fluorination was at 0.15mg/L, and we started seeing a negative trend at 1.5mg/L. But I don't think its actually at all unreasonable for public health officials to be worried and possibly start considering alternatives to CWF out of an abundance of caution.
But it is?
>> "It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ"
Yes you would need a higher powered study to rule out the potentially smaller effect, but when your treatment can affect tens of millions of children, it doesn't seem crazy to ask for more funding.
> But it is?
But it isn't. There's 7 studies included in that meta-analysis looking at levels below 1.5mg/L, covering 2832 children. The effect measured so far across all of the studies is a statistically insignificant increase in IQ.
I'm in favor of additional research; I just don't think getting to n=10,000 showing little or no effect is going to convince anyone. I also don't think that these possible modest effects are going to be in the top 5 most important environmental stressors to measure the effects of.
Also, for other commenters: the 2832 children number I believe comes from the supplemental content from the supplemental material for the NTP Fluoride Monograph: https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journal/peds/... (this url is very long because of some hashing measure, sorry: if it is no longer accessible, it is the supplemental content for doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.5542), on page 51 of the PDF. I have a small summary table of data I view relevant here:
The columns are:
* Studies used; Fluoride Exposure; Number of Studies / Number of Observations (number of Children)
* Estimate for slope in linear Model, given as increase in IQ points per mg/L increase (95% CI) (p value)
All studies; < 2mg/L; 8 / 10 (N = 3682); -0.18 (-0.40, 0.03) (p = 0.096)
All studies; < 1.5mg/L; 7 / 7 (N = 2832); 0.05 (-0.36, 0.45) (p = 0.816)
Low risk of bias studies; < 2mg/L; 4 / 5 (N = 1632); -0.33 (-0.53, -0.13) (p = 0.001)
Low risk of bias studies; < 1.5mg/L; 3 / 3 (N = 879); -0.32 (-0.91, 0.26) (p = 0.276)
I don't necessarily assume this, but even if you assume linearity, 0.7 * -0.32 is pretty dang small at baseline. I think if you generate n=10000 showing MLE=-.32 or +.05, few people are going to change their minds. I might, but I don't think it does much to shape the debate.
What's amazing is these anti-science wackos are rejecting the largest-scale experiment of all time, with the best evidence that anyone is ever going to have on the subject. We have both temporal and spatial boundary conditions with and without community water fluoridation, where a large population has it and another large population doesn't have it. There is no evidence that the without-fluoridation population has higher intelligence! There is a huge body of evidence that the people without fluoridation have more decayed teeth.
There is high quality evidence that fluoride at levels contained in some US water supplies is associated with lower childhood intelligence. For lower levels, the conclusion is "we don't know", not that there is no harm.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
There is also high quality evidence that in the age of fluorinated toothpaste, fluorinated water "may slightly" improve dental health.
“The evidence suggests that water fluoridation may slightly reduce tooth decay in children,” says co-author Dr Lucy O’Malley, Senior Lecturer in Health Services Research at the University of Manchester. “Given that the benefit has reduced over time, before introducing a new fluoridation scheme, careful thought needs to be given to costs, acceptability, feasibility and ongoing monitoring."
https://www.cochrane.org/news/water-fluoridation-less-effect...
We have a natural experiment running for 80 years where each arm of the experiment has N > 100e6. If there was going to be evidence of community water fluoridation lowering IQ, it would have emerged by now.
They found drinking water with levels that lowered IQ. The actual conclusion was that higher levels (that were found in drinking water) lower IQ.
For lower levels the conclusion is we don't know how it effects IQ. The actual bold face conclusion is "More research is needed to better understand if there are health risks associated with low fluoride exposures".
in 2020: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555056/
and again in 2021: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/26030/chapter/1
Why was this substandard draft even published?!
It seems that this team found what they wanted to find. Are they scientists or ideologues? Were they creating the 'evidence' for the San Francisco trail?
While I’m sure there are many causes I’m of the opinion that no stone should remain unturned when looking for answers. Fluorine in water has a viable alternative (toothpaste that is spit out) so out of an abundance of caution my preference is for unflurinated water. In my past life as an applied researcher I have learned to be rather distrustful of academia and the ‘science’ that is produced, ‘fruit from a poisonous tree’.
"The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children"
They found fluoride in drinking water concentrations was associated with lower IQ, the opposite of your claim of "proven safe".
Show us some evidence that is proven safe, so far as I can tell all evidence points to unsafe or "we're not sure".
> What needs to stop happening is people ignoring objective reality just because the results happen to align with the other "team's" position on something.
I couldn't agree more. The study that is cited above started when Obama was president by the way.
> The NTP review was designed to evaluate total fluoride exposure from all sources and was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoridated drinking water alone.
…or the following sentence, which they bolded to ensure the reader wouldn't miss it?
> It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ.
So no, they very explicitly did not find that fluoride in drinking water concentrations was associated with lower IQ.
It's because it doesn't help prove their incorrect point.
If there’s a problem with a study, or a study is particularly strong, that should be due to something about the study itself (methodology, significance of results, etc), not its political environment.
It did not find it lowered IQ in all drinking water concentrations, but it definitely found it in some drinking water concentrations.
So yes, they did explicitly find fluoride in drinking water at certain concentrations was associated with lower IQ.
Are you defining "drinking water concentrations" as "concentrations that have not been shown to be associated with lower IQ."?
Anyway, there's a pretty obvious definition of "drinking water concentrations": the recommended amount for US drinking water. Again, the authors of the study bolded this sentence to ensure you wouldn't miss it:
> It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ.
I was replying to a comment that said "fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe" (there is actually no proof of this).
I never claimed that all fluoride levels harm IQ.
It's great that the US recommends that fluoride doesn't exceed levels that are proven to harm children's IQ, instead they only recommend levels for which there is "insufficient data".
I suppose we will ignore the people who are still drinking water with levels above what is known to be harmful.
> areas including central Australia, eastern Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, south and east Asia, and western North America (Podgorski and Berg 2022). Regions of the United States where CWS and private wells contain natural fluoride concentrations of more than 1.5 mg/L serve over 2.9 million U.S. residents (Hefferon et al. 2024). The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 172,000 U.S. residents are served by domestic wells that exceed EPA’s enforceable standard of 4.0 mg/L fluoride in drinking water, and 522,000 are served by domestic wells that exceed EPA’s non-enforceable standard of 2.0 mg/L fluoride in drinking water (USGS 2020). [https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/2024-08/fluori... Page 2 or Page 22 of the PDF]
Note in the US this is almost all people drinking well water. So if we take the known harmful level at 1.5mg/L, then there are lots of people known to be drinking water above these concentrations. I'm not sure I would say we're necessarily ignoring them, but could argue regulations aren't up to date: the current EPA MCL is 4.0mg/L and secondary MCL is 2.0mg/L.
For more in depth data, we can take the EPA's Review of Fluoride Occurrence for the Fourth Six-Year Review (2024) [https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-04/syr4_fluo...]. Page 15 of the PDF shows artificially fluoridated water nowadays has fluoride concentrations between 0.6mg/L and 1.2mg/L. Page 18 shows that ~4.7 million are being served with concentrations of fluoride >1.5mg/L. This is higher than the Hefferon et al figure but it seems this figure is based on data from 2006-2011 (where the population was lower, but also the recommended fluoride concentration was higher, with the max at 1.2mg/L pre-2015). I also am not convinced Hefferon et al has any figures on private wells (although maybe I misread the paper).
We are experiencing an assault on objective truth in the US in order to get scientific institutions to submit to political authority rather than the authority of reason.
So I agree with you, it is policy that should not be handled by politicians but by experts, which none of us are. Unfortunately science is being politicized.
The problem is science challenges those who derive power from means other than reason.
Defending scientific consensus is seen as an equally political act as denying it.
We are experiencing a challenge to some existing status quo practices, some of which have come out of science in the past.
But nowhere in any conversation has the dialog been “we must question status quo institutional knowledge, and objective truth, to dismantle the institution”. (That’s left speak, actually, and I am acutely aware of leftist circles where that is the conversation.)
Look at RFK Jr. This guy doesn't need power and control. He’s a whacko with some different beliefs about health—who fundamentally believes he’s making humans safer because of his negative lived experience with health policy in the US.
Occam's razor points to there being a credible benign reason for him to be motivated to challenge existing policy. (And if there is one area of science ripe for iteration, it’s nutritional health.) We don’t need to grab for more extreme alarmist narratives to explain what’s happening.
It simply doesn't take some autocratic utopian agenda to question whether fluoride is worth it and advocate for political change.
It’s honestly really disingenuous and disheartening to hear people towing this “the right is trying to dismantle the fabric of western liberal democracy and install fascism” line.
> question status quo institutional knowledge
I am in favor of this when its done in good faith, but good faith hasn't been established.
> It’s honestly really disingenuous and disheartening to hear people towing this “the right is trying to take over the world and install fascism” line.
I find it disheartening that people are in denial about it.
“Anybody who wants to debate me must first demonstrate good faith by espousing my political stance before we can continue.” Really now…
People can’t be in denial about something that isn't happening. That’s called crazy.
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.
We want to put them in trauma.
Edit: Sieg Heil from Trump's ex Chief strategist in a speech to CPAC (Tea Party/GOP conference): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E9pXCuJnbc&t=10s
Occam's Razor says he is a crank.
You have to cook it thoroughly, same as any other game meat. Do not eat the central nervous system, again same as game. But dead is dead, and a car is no worse than a bullet.
That does not alter that we have a dangerous idiot running out health care policy.
NIH funding down 60% compared with one year ago: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/report-us-scientists-...
UMass disbands its entering biomed graduate class over Trump funding chaos: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/umass-disbands-its-en...
Not to mention the defunding of anything to do with climate change.
One of the signature pieces of Gingrich's "Contract With America" in 1995 was the elimination of the Office of Technology Assessment. The office had the unfortunate duty to communicate well researched facts, and these facts contradicted conservative policy positions. (OTA: The planet is warming. R: No it's not. Exxon says it's not.) So the OTA had to go.
There are a nearly endless list of these things over the last 30 years.
There's been a fundamental shift away from science in the last fifty years or so. Some is understandable—chemical pollution, etc. which is unreasonably blamed on science instead of industry's bad behavior—but there's another thread running here and it's an anti-establishment one.
The question I can't fully put a measure on is why nowadays so many people automatically reject anything that's mandated by government even when they'll benefit from that mandate. The fluoride debate is somewhat akin to the vaccination one, rather than weighing up the comparatively minor risks versus overwhelmingly beneficial outcomes of those mandates they'll simply reject them outright.
That doesn't make much sense to me.
The narrative around vaccines has been completely strong armed in different ways by both sides. Which has left legitimate cases of bad reactions to be largely ignored, underreported and/or not believed, and carries a negative stigma.
My wife has had a medically verified bad reaction to vaccine it was extremely severe. It took multiple doctors before it was recognized and by that point she progressed to having permanent disability
I'm frightfully aware of that. I'm old enough to remember the polio epidemic in the 1950s and the bad batch of polio vaccine that killed kids.
I wasn't in the US and the Salk vaccine wasn't available where I was living and it was another five or so years before we were vaccinated. Before that one kid in my school class died and another ended up in calipers.
Despite everyone knowing about the bad batch and the deaths I cannot tell you how relieved everyone was when the vaccine finally arrived. No one—not one single kid—at my school skipped the vaccine. To not have it would have been unthinkable, it wasn't even a consideration.
Frankly, it horrifies me how risk averse and timid people have become these days. How thinking has changed since that time is frightening.
That's not to say things don't go wrong—they do and all too often as you are aware, and even at this distance I can't help but feel sorry for both you and your wife.
Right, that Salk vaccine killed people but saved millions of others, even now the live attenuated Sabin vaccine occasionally goes rogue mutates and gives people polio but both of those vaccines have almost eradicated that fucking horrible disease from the face of the planet, it's only politics and misinformation that have stopped that from happening.
What are we to do when things are beneficial on a large scale yet are nevertheless responsible for a small number of tragedies? For instance, almost everyone on the planet loves their smartphone yet they kill innocent people—albeit indirectly when irresponsible drivers who are driving and texting at the same time hit and kill pedestrians.
When that happens we don't call for smartphones to be banned, same when a passenger jet clashes. But it's a different story with vaccines, fluoride in water, chemicals in foods. For some illogical reason suddenly all hell breaks loose and people become quite irrational.
BTW, over the years I've had many, many dozen vaccine shots for many different diseases and I've never had a negative reaction. That's not to say it won't happen on my next visit to the doctor or, say, to next person who's next in line in the doctor's surgery.
Unfortunately, life's dangerous and it's eventually fatal. As I see it, these scientific discoveries—whilst imperfect—ameliorate that condition somewhat.
Awareness too, and more testing never hurts. One thing we learned about post incident is that a test of her immune system would have likely shown she shouldn’t be vaccinated at all, due to potential reactions. Why not work on making such tests cheaper and faster so we can prevent needless harm?
I agree absolutely. What really pisses me off is how governments seemingly everywhere become misers—miserable bastards—and either deny responsibility or when cornered screw compensation down as far as possible.
It's not only in matters such as vaccine failures, or Flint's lead-in-water crisis but you see this miserly attitude with war veterans, and so on.
Trouble is, we the citizenry are ultimately responsible. For some reason we see someone getting something from government that we are not getting and that brings out the worst in us—we seem to forget too easily that the injured or those disadvantaged through no fault of their own deserve fair and reasonable compensation.
In my opinion that all-too-common attitude is a blight on the human character.
Awareness, that goes back to proper schooling. That that's lacking is another tragedy.
Edit: both government and the companies responsible for vaccines, pharmaceuticals, etc. ought to take much greater responsibly to inform people of the risks even if they are minor. One way of achieving this would be to hold those employees (both in government and in those companies) directly responsible for providing the necessary information. This would go a long way in stopping pharmaceutical companies hiding the unsatisfactory results of drug trials etc.
Don't hold your breath though, I can't see that happening anytime soon.
What about the vast population of “barely making it” people?
But have it your way. I’ve given up on American people (I exist as a 54 year old one amongst them). Decades of wealth have created a society so “me” centric it makes me nauseous sick. Never have I respected those older than me so little. It makes me so sad what we’ve done for those younger.
There are two basic categories of causes.
The first is being pure anti science - anti vaccine, anti fluoride, etc
The second is they are more concerned about “God and guns”, immigrants, and the demographic shifts in the US than their own interest.
Oh and the third is the cult of MAGA.
I’m 50, Native born American and on a meta level it concerns me. On a micro level, me and mine will be okay.
While I am not one of these shrill people saying I’m leaving the US tomorrow, my wife and I are definitely putting plans in place to have a dual residency (not citizenship) in Costa Rica closer to when I get ready to retire.
I also love SMBC's explanation of this: https://smbc-wiki.com/index.php/2010-09-23
With contradictions you know what is not true, and through knowing what is not true, you can approach what is true. Truth is expressed in consistency, not completeness.
That's why anyone should be extremely suspicious of anyone who is not, or doesn't care about, being internally consistent.
This is absolutely not a substitute for fluoride in drinking water, which is most important for kids. When your teeth are forming below the gumline, the fluoride you ingest strengthens them. Brushing gums with fluoride doesn’t help.
This is so incurious. Obviously most people, poor or not, have access to fluoridated toothpaste and toothbrushes, and can brush.
Yet OP cites data (not explicitly, but you can start here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6974062/, there are many like it).
Fluoridated water makes the most impact on poor and undeserved communities: Why?
Is it because poor people are less capable of brushing or have less access to fluoridated toothpaste?
Is it because poor people are poor because they have poor self control, which prevents them from regular brushing?
Does it matter? Nothing hinges on them being incapable at all - your conjecture can be as uncharitable - poor people are dirty and incapable - or charitable - poor people have less money and time to seek dental care, have higher rates of untreated mental and physical illness i.e. ADHD, disabilities that interrupt daily tooth-brushing routine - as you want.
But the result is still that if we want children from poor families to have less cavities by the time they reach adulthood - we should fluoridate the water! If you trust the western medical establishment, it's broadly safe. If you don't, then none of the evidence above matters to you anyways.
> We should find out why the poor have worse dental outcomes and address the root problem
The root problem is that parents that are absent, either for noble reasons (working multiple low-wage jobs) or less noble reasons (addiction, abandonment) will not have the presence to enforce good dental hygiene.
There will always be some subset of parents that are more or less absent, and the main solution that exists for that in the US currently i.e. the foster care system has measurably terrible outcomes, and so it is only applied in the most egregious cases.
Why should we let perfect be the enemy of good here? I'm all for removing fluoride from the water, once it has no benefit on the population. But currently, it has a huge benefit, just on people who are least likely to advocate for it.
"You're just pushing your "Benevolent But Superior Intelligence" onto people" is an appeal to emotion, not a solution to real problems that real children face.
More emotionally: it's fucking embarrassing we let bullshit arguments like this hurt people in real life.
> If you are poor you can't go anywhere or buy anything. You're not free if you're poor. If you are sick, you may be confined to a hospital bed or not feel good enough to do anything. If you are sick you're not free.
or, you know, you could avoid the problem in the first place and allow "even poors" to go somewhere or buy something... at least base items, and medicines...
this way they could afford dental costs, and you could spare the need to add fluoride in the water
If a right-wing voter thinks banning gay marriage is good for society, it is also positive freedom? If your counter-argument is "no, because while it would be positive freedom if it was good for society, it's not" then maybe I'm just disareeing on your terminology, but I suspect you would say "heck no, telling people what they can't do is not freedom, that's an abuse of the English language as well as being bad for society".
Governments exist to take away some freedoms, it's the whole point of them. People vote for governmets to take away freedoms (with laws and taxes) and get things like public services, justice systems and infrastructure in return. Ideally, they lean towards things that give you a lot of bang for your buck (like flourine), because taking away freedom is not good for creating a dynamic society, and they should be accountable to voters.
Just say that anyone who objects is an anarchist if you want to take the moral high ground from the right in terms they understand.
True.
> Negative freedom, freedom from government interference, is being promoted by those seeking to weaken the government enough to supplant it.
Tenuous. Then again, like you, all of my political opponents are either stupid or evil or both.
> People who are poor and sick are likely unable to stand up for themselves or participate in solidarity against authority.
Contentious. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it is not - giving negative liberty rights (e.g. first amendment speech protections) to individuals has proven an incredibly effective tool to protect the individual against the state. Not perfect, but incredibly effective all the same.
> This individual issue is relatively small, but you take 100's of issues like this, and the effect is to create a class of people who aren't able to do anything but be obedient workers.
Any supporter of negative liberty (i.e. someone who is for small government) would tell you, that is what government does, which is a big reason why they want small government.
You're free to drink water that's not from the tap. Companies sell this legally. The government doesn't force anything
The solution is lifting people out of poverty not papering over the cracks with fluoride.
There is no fluoride in the water here in Norway yet dental health is good because of good education, free dental care for children, students pregnant women, and little absolute poverty.
We have toothpastes and fluorinated mouthwash that both get the job done.
Probably there are some people that are unable to afford those and unaware how to use them, but probably are tiny percentage of the state population, especially with the cult of teeth care that the US has.
I also see the fortified flours as example (or iodine in salt) - but the US is different now than in the 30s. The US diet is more varied. Very few people get 80% of their calories from a single starchy staple so developing a severe deficiency of something requires some serious effort from the persons affected.
So who is this policy of fluorination for - the people that are too poor to afford toothpaste, but still have access to municipality treated water and don't drink copious amounts of soda or bottled drinks.
Hawaii does not fluoridate and has high rates of children’s tooth decay [2]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed...
[2] https://www.civilbeat.org/2016/10/hawaii-children-have-highe...
There’s this study I read that says the top five countries for dental health are Denmark, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and the UK. The US? It’s lagging at ninth. Funny thing is, out of those top five, only the UK messes with fluoride in their water, and even then, it’s just for like 5% of folks.
Honestly, it kinda feels like skipping the fluoride in water might be the smarter move.
Sadly noone has done this because the topic is too radioactive for most researchers or science funders to touch.
I on the other then havnt seen a dentist in 25yrs, have no fillings after 40, and wouldnt say i brush my teeth twice a day, everyday, as recommended. I do however consume water tainted with fluoride.
So maybe there are more factors at play here then simply washing our teeth. I cant fathom how dirty our parents generations teeth must have been before toothpaste to result in the amount of fillings they have compared to people my age (unless your a meth head).
Because I live in a small township that delivers well water to you tap. It tastes horrible, shortens the life of pipes and appliances, and smells like sulfur.
Every year they mail a flyer that explains how the lead levels are dangerously above the national standard and you should run the tap before you drink from it.
Like, sorry there's nothing we can do about it. =(
Also those dinky little TDS meters don't even measure TDS. They measure electrical conductivity and with a little math they use the EC as a proxy for TDS. It's typically only calibrated to one specific ion, others will be off by some factor. Also keep in mind TDS is expressed in PPM as CaCO3.
Oh man, I used to live in a place like this. You could smell if a restaurant served filtered water (lots filter for the soda machine, to keep mineralization in it down I assume, and use the same water to serve) or straight from the tap, without taking a drink. Like with your nose six inches above the cup, you could smell it. Luckily, almost all served filtered.
Turns out that carbon filters do filter fluoride, but only on the first few X litres of water, where X is in the first 0.01% or so of their expected lifespan. So, they do, but not really usefully in any sense.
My filter that I wanted to know about (so that my kid is getting fluoride) is a 2-stage filter, with the other stage being a particle filter, but fluoride is very small and unaffected.
Your filter might be different of course.
FWIW, in my city, the water has essentially zero fluoride if it isn't added, and it has been a great intervention.
The current shape of the US is already the best and people consider it a part of who they are, so suggesting a course correction may be seen as both wrong think and a personal attack and wanting radical change would be outright treason.
There’s an array of standard stencils for defense against change: this is the only thing that can work here, this is the only thing that guarantees freedom, this is actually not that bad, I actually prefer it like this, anything else would be expensive/impossible/unamerican.
It’s not even unique to the US, but who cares about other places.
Notice that nobody is arguing about keeping water-born pathogens out of the drinking water.
Meanwhile, mining industries produce—and must dispose of—a steady stream of fluoride compounds that would otherwise have to be dealt with as toxic waste (i.e. very expensive) if they ever lost the green light to dump them into the water supply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hodge
or per Google:
Three chemicals are used to fluoridate drinking water in the U.S: sodium fluoride (NaF); sodium fluorosilicate (Na2SiF6); and fluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6). Fluorosilicic acid is a byproduct of the manufacture of phosphate fertilizer.
Are you asking if there's room to believe it's just a sincere "everything you eat or drink should stay untouched, like it's found in nature" belief? OK sure, let's go with that. So why aren't they working to dismantle water treatment plants altogether and e.g. fighting against modern industrial farming practices in that case?
I'm happy to believe it if I can understand what is leading them to that belief, which is exactly what I'm asking. Is it a general aversion to unnatural stuff (hence my previous comment) or based on some evidence (hence my initial question) or something else (what?)?
Again, we go back to my initial question [1]: what is the best evidence in favor of this?
[1:20] "I do believe that autism comes from vaccines" [https://www.foxnews.com/video/6330950198112]
Does it matter what he actually believes? If it's different from the Trump's policy he'll keep it to himself.
The burden of proof should be on the people who want to add it. Because that is extra cost, extra chemical. If they can't prove it, then we don't do it.
> However, in 1973, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that there was no legal basis for fluoridation…. The debate hasn’t been meaningfully revived since then, Hofman told Euronews Health. "People started to say, ‘Well, the government should not give us some medicine [when] we cannot choose where to buy our drinking water from," she said.
That’s the “little c” conservative viewpoint. You don’t need to prove it’s harmful. The default should be not putting chemicals in everyone’s drinking water.
there is definitely an argument for an optimal amount of minerals in water being non zero (not only because having it that clean would be practically expensive) but also because we benefit from natural minerals. now if some natural water source isnt as good as another one, why not correct it? we have the technology.
especially at the community level. the little c stance should be to let communities decide, not ban it from the top down.
> and lots of water has natural flouride?
Fluoridated water seems not to have major effects.
I wouldn't want to drink, touch, or be near fluorinated water.
Could it have something to do with the increasing use of fluoridated toothpaste?
If the benefit is great enough then the risk makes sense. That is the case in a lot of areas. Is it worth taking a risk of an unknown effect somewhere in the body in exchange for… a marked but not even drastic reduction in cavities…? Not sure…
Let’s say that hypothetically there is a 3rd order effect on the excretion pattern of some neurotransmitter. Can we detect that? Could it negatively affect mood regulation? There are a million things like that.
Where do you get this from? If you ingest a random chemical (or imagine licking random objects...), do you really expect the chances of it being beneficial vs. detrimental to your health to be remotely close to 50/50?
This is only true if you assume that all effects are too small to notice. If you run an experiment on adding fluoride to water, declare an interest in enamel thickness, and then observe that 30% of the experimental group died within six months, you just made a finding that you didn't know you should have been looking for.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK109832/=
> .9 Radiographic detection of teeth and skeletal changes and microscopic examination of affected bone are helpful adjunct procedures for diagnosis.
> Histopathologic and radiographic examination of bones detects bone lesions and tentatively confirms osteofluorosis.14,26 Biopsy or rib or coccygeal vertebrae is used to obtain samples for skeletal fluoride analysis.23
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B03230...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_fluorosis
> We have developed a localized noninvasive nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) method for determining the accumulated bone fluoride content in human index fingers
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2339643/
---
It sounds like people who have time to pay attention to this have a better chance of discerning a methodology of assay.
I grew up in the PNW of the USA and lots of small hippie towns have been removing fluoride for decades. It comes up on city ballots every year in Oregon.
When it comes to things like radioactivity we assume a linear no threshhold model (e.g. that lower concentrations still have effects, just our measuring tools aren't good enough to detect it) and spend billions as a result. Why wouldn't we do the same for flouride?
2023 – NTP Monograph on Fluoride Neurotoxicity – National Toxicology Program (USA)
2020 – Till et al. – Infant Formula Fluoride Exposure & IQ – Till C, Green R, Lanphear B, Hornung R, Martinez-Mier EA (Canada)
2019 – Green et al. – Maternal Fluoride Exposure & IQ – Green R, Lanphear B, Hornung R, Flora D, Martinez-Mier EA, et al. (Canada)
2017 – Bashash et al. – Prenatal Fluoride Exposure & Offspring IQ – Bashash M, Thomas D, Hu H, et al. (Mexico/USA)
2012 – Choi et al. – Meta-analysis on Fluoride & Neurodevelopment – Choi AL, Sun G, Zhang Y, Grandjean P (Harvard/China)
2006 – NRC Report – Fluoride in Drinking Water – National Research Council (USA)
[1] https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31743803/
[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
[4] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP655
[5] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1104912
[6] https://www.nap.edu/catalog/11571/fluoride-in-drinking-water...
From the first link:
> It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ
It doesn't seem in favor of this?
> the first link [...] doesn't seem in favor of this?
To me that falls under "the best evidence [available] in favor of this." It's not great, but it's not nothing; it's certainly something in favor. After all.. I guess I don't know about you, but I feel like if someone told me dose X of something is toxic, I would not feel comfortable feeding myself and the entire country 50% of that dose, on that basis alone.
Granted, 35% < 50%, but not really that much less.
I don't know if what you are repeating is slop, etc. I can't trust the source.
A single recent systematic review is more trustworthy than that.
Also, nothing in that list of papers supports your initial claim? I know you'll say you didn't claim anything, so I will say also, that nothing in those links provides for what the prior commenter asked for evidence for.
Other than, fluoride consumption at high concentrations is bad (which is something that was already agreed upon, and is not being questioned in this thread)?
Put simply, it's a wall of links. No quotes. No claims. Its valid to ask if the person posting the links has actually read those articles, or if there is a primary source recommending them. (Or no source if it's LLM copypasta.)
I am the OP and someone asked for evidence and the only answer after an hour, falsely stated there was no evidence. I didn't want to challenge anyone directly so I posted what I thought were the top few more convincing links I have compiled out of 30+.
I am disappointed that I am getting downvoted and this is somehow being made into something political when people deserve to see the evidence for and against supplementing fluoride the drinking water of every living thing because the government wants to improve the health of our teeth. It is a fair question to ask.
The very famous meta studies with all the negative correlations get all the bad associations with flouride from regions where water naturally has extremely high (relative to most other parts of the world) levels of fluoride in addition to high levels of many other uncommon concentrations.
Some of these regions also have additional problems with industry waste.
Put simply, negative correlations about unattended children in swimming pools cannot be extrapolated to infer negative correlations about young children and sippy cups of water.
No? What is a coping response? I asked the commenter to provide context to their links that supposedly show evidence for what the initial question was (does fluoride at the concentrations in drinking water cause harm), which they definitely do not show evidence for.
Nah. I pretty much agree with what Utah is doing here (though I’d prefer just not mandating it and making the decision as local as it needs to be). OP’s link list looks AI generated. That’s just not a good-faith comment.
I suppose you want a summary, well read the abstracts of the papers. It's not that challenging, is it?
They first went defensive when asked about it up thread [1].
I didn’t downvote. (I don’t think.) But as a non-expert, I also didn’t see value in a wall of links. (Particularly when you wouldn’t confirm it wasn’t AI generated.)
A better presentation would pull quotes or make an argument, in your voice, with the citations as scaffolding for your arguments.
To illustrate the issue, I believe I could construct a context-free wall of links justifying just about anything.
If you could explain the process that led to the production of the list & what led you to the belief that those are the best studies/evidence so far, that would probably help people view it more favorably.
Perhaps I should note that I had indeed (believe it or not) already Googled this before asking the question. I asked not because I was too lazy to search but because I didn't know if my search was turning up the best studies from anyone's perspective.
So, no, this wasn't equivalent to saying "I don’t want to google this, so google this for me."
Agreed
There's a subset of researchers that argue that now that fluoride toothpaste is widespread, the benefit of fluoridating water is much much smaller than it first was and the (small) risk of fluorosis is now comparatively more significant
The CDC tracks some key indicators like mean decayed, missing or filled teeth (DMFT) and in critical age groups like 12-15 there has been no progress made in the past 20 years and the US continue lagging behind European countries: https://www.cdc.gov/oral-health/media/pdfs/Oral-Health-Surve...
And none of that has anything to do with fluoride in the water or not.
Sorry but this reddit consensus is out of step with actual researchers. The #1 paediatric journal has published quite a bit on this recently. Basically the evidence isn’t of high quality but what we have doesn’t look great.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
Highly recommend visiting the link for details about each point an references (it is not that long), here is a summary, don't comment if you haven't visited the link:
1) Fluoride is the only chemical added to water for the purpose of medical treatment. 2) Fluoridation is unethical. 3) The dose cannot be controlled. 4) The fluoride goes to everyone regardless of age, health or vulnerability. 5) People now receive fluoride from many other sources besides water. 6) Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. 7) The level in mothers’ milk is very low. 9) No health agency in fluoridated countries is monitoring fluoride exposure or side effects. 10) There has never been a single randomized controlled trial to demonstrate fluoridation’s effectiveness or safety. 11) Benefit is topical not systemic. 12) Fluoridation is not necessary. 13) Fluoridation’s role in the decline of tooth decay is in serious doubt. 14) NIH-funded study on individual fluoride ingestion and tooth decay found no significant correlation. 15) Tooth decay is high in low-income communities that have been fluoridated for years. 16) Tooth decay does not go up when fluoridation is stopped. 17) Tooth decay was coming down before fluoridation started. 18) The studies that launched fluoridation were methodologically flawed. 19) Children are being over-exposed to fluoride. 20) The highest doses of fluoride are going to bottle-fed babies. 21) Dental fluorosis may be an indicator of wider systemic damage. 22) Fluoride may damage the brain. 23) Fluoride may lower IQ. 24) Fluoride may cause non-IQ neurotoxic effects. 25) Fluoride affects the pineal gland. 26) Fluoride affects thyroid function. 27) Fluoride causes arthritic symptoms. 28) Fluoride damages bone. 29) Fluoride may increase hip fractures in the elderly. 30) People with impaired kidney function are particularly vulnerable to bone damage. 31) Fluoride may cause bone cancer (osteosarcoma). 32) Proponents have failed to refute the Bassin-Osteosarcoma study. 33) Fluoride may cause reproductive problems. 34) Some individuals are highly sensitive to low levels of fluoride as shown by case studies and double blind studies. 35) Other subsets of population are more vulnerable to fluoride’s toxicity. 36) There is no margin of safety for several health effects. 37) Low-income families penalized by fluoridation. 38) Black and Hispanic children are more vulnerable to fluoride’s toxicity. 39) Minorities are not being warned about their vulnerabilities to fluoride. 40) Tooth decay reflects low-income not low-fluoride intake. 41) The chemicals used to fluoridate water are not pharmaceutical grade. 42) The silicon fluorides have not been tested comprehensively. 43) The silicon fluorides may increase lead uptake into children’s blood. 44) Fluoride may leach lead from pipes, brass fittings and soldered joints. 45) Key health studies have not been done. 46) Endorsements do not represent scientific evidence. 47) Review panels hand-picked to deliver a pro-fluoridation result. 48) Many scientists oppose fluoridation. 49) Proponents usually refuse to defend fluoridation in open debate. 50) Proponents use very dubious tactics to promote fluoridation.
Sorry, that was the John Birch Society from the 1960's.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_water_fluoridati...
(I'm having some fun, but it is in fact the first thing that comes to mind when I hear objections to fluoridated water. Since we're talking about RFK and Utah, I kind of assume it more or less stems from the same fears.)
https://www.actoralcare.com/en-us/products/mouthwash/anticav...
Anyway, an llm suggested that eating some almonds can help neutralize pH. This is the type of solution I can work with.
A quick search didn't seem to turn up anything related, so maybe not (the concentrations might be too low to be relevant)?
GENERAL JACK D. RIPPER: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
GROUP CAPT. LIONEL MANDRAKE: Lord, Jack.
GENERAL JACK D. RIPPER: You know when fluoridation first began?
GROUP CAPT. LIONEL MANDRAKE: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
GENERAL JACK D. RIPPER: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.Flouride in Water: Ingest away.
I do not understand how these two can co-exist.
Radioactive isotopes in banana: consume away.
Understand now? I'm not even defending anything other than how two things that vaguely appear contradictory, are in fact, not.
Because your banana example doesn’t have additives meant to be reactive — so is unlike adding fluoride to water at levels which impact dental health.
That is why I do not understand how the two can co-exist. Either the concentration is so low that drinking it for dental health is pointless, or it is not something people should be drinking. If there was a middle ground, we would have a 1 a day pill for this and not bother brushing our teeth or putting fluoride in water.
We do; fluoride tablets are common.
> and not bother brushing our teeth
Brushing your teeth does a lot of things besides applying fluoride to the surface. It's mostly about getting stuff that's already there off the surface.
No, I don't. Does that matter?
Chlorine for water treatment in the backcountry when applied to a liter of water: Ingest.
Chlorine straight from a household bleach bottle: Do not ingest.
At higher dosages, every dietary mineral becomes harmful, then (generally) lethal.
Without iron, humans die. Yet accidental (over-)ingestion of iron supplements is a leading cause of poisoning in small children.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
Suddenly everything was up for debate.
They are experts in this field, and, unlike “random person on the internet who spent 2 minutes on google”, have informed opinions on this topic.
If you want a serious discussion on why fluoride is good or bad, that’s where you need to go.
Random person on the internet is very easy to disagree with, because we’re all idiots right? It’s a very easy lazy way of self confirmation.
…but if you are serious about critically considering the issue and facing your own biases, talk to an actual topic expert.
My dentist told me he had carefully reviewed the literature and determined to his satisfaction that public fluoridated water was in the best interests of public health, currently. He offered to share some reading that he was convinced by.
You can’t really ask for more that that.
Discussing this here is a bit like protesting by posting on social media; yes, I suppose it’s better than doing nothing and not engaging with the topic at all… but only barely, and not in any meaningful way.
Why do almost no other countries fluoridate drinking water?
Even if it does turn out to be unambiguously good, people have a basic right to make their own medical decisions.
Recent systematic reviews suggest an association between higher fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation
At some point, you have to accept that your random wikipedia page and 5 minutes on google is not a convincing argument.
This is right up there in the conspiracy theory territory.
Rational discussion means listening to experts and admitting that you are not an expert.
What do you want me to say?
You aren't a qualified expert on this topic. If you want an expert opinion, talk to an expert, not some dubious fucking provenance wikipedia page.
Who do you think conducted those peer-reviewed systematic reviews? I'm sorry if I don't take the word of some random guy's dentist over multiple meta analyses in major medical journals.
And I don't need an expert to tell me people should have the right to make their own medical decisions.
And finally, I live in a country where public health experts have decided against water fluoridation. This is represents the vast majority of countries. What now? Should I pick some other experts to listen to?
> Should I pick some other experts to listen to?
I think it's reasonably clear that you haven't spoken to an expert in this field.
> I'm sorry if I don't take the word of some random guy's dentist over multiple meta analyses in major medical journals.
Are you certain you're competent to review and understand the literature on the topic? It takes a lot of time and effort; that's what dentists do as a job. That's why they have to go to school. That's why random people on the internet do not do dentistry.
If you don't trust my dentist, then talk to your dentist.
This is literally my point: I'm not telling you how it is; I'm telling you, talk to someone who knows what they're talking about; and, don't believe that you are an expert because you put some trivial amount of effort into investigating it yourself.
You can't be an expert at everything. No one can.
As some point, you have to trust other people.
My previous dentist pushed these $80 (not covered by insurance) fluoride treatments on every cleaning visit. There's no research that shows much of anything about their effectiveness (good or bad). Yet they push them anyway, because it (their words) might help and probably won't harm. That doesn't give me a good feeling about their competence to have an expert opinion on this sort of thing.
I would, however, trust the opinion of someone who is doing medical/dental research, and holds a doctorate in a relevant field.
I don’t understand what you mean here. Are you just wholly rejecting the concept of expert knowledge, trials, meta analyses, basically the foundations of science, just because in order to participate in it you have to have tainted yourself by rigorously studying it?
I am embracing expert knowledge in trusting meta-analyses and the decisions of EU health experts.
If you’re this deep on the appeal to authority train, the NIH released a report in the last year linking fluoride exposure to moderate drops in IQ with moderate confidence.
It’s probably not the worst thing in the world, but is definitely not inert.
I’d say that’s a reasonable sign of someone qualified to have an opinion.
I think you’re getting confused with a dental technician.
Your dentist is well qualified to have an opinion on the effects of fluoride on your teeth.
They are poorly qualified to have an opinion on whether it should be added to the water supply at source.
Chemists who work in fluorine chemistry on the other hand have to become experts on the biological effects of fluorine exposure. Small and seemingly innocuous exposures can do a lot of damage and kill you, though not in a way that lends any support to the idea that municipal fluoridation will harm you. If you do understand how it kills you (basically by being exceptionally narrowly focused on making free calcium ions and to a lesser extent magnesium ions biologically unavailable), it is hard to describe a chemically plausible scenario that somehow avoids this basic fact of chemistry. Fluoride behaves the same way outside the body.
Municipal water exposure is far below the noise floor for fluoride. Food has far higher levels of fluoride than municipal water and the body has ample excess calcium and magnesium to absorb the loss of bioavailability of a microscopic amount of those minerals. Humans consume calcium measured in grams per day, multiple orders of magnitude more than can be lost via municipal fluoridation. Natural dietary variation will have a far larger effect.
There is a very serious mechanism of action problem. Fluorine poisoning is a thing that happens. The observed effects and empirical evidence, as well as the mechanisms of action that cause them, are incompatible with any mechanism of action that supports the hypothesis that it causes brain damage. Basically, it would invalidate the entire history of actual fluoride exposure.
The other serious problem is that people are exposed to far more fluorine through what they eat than through water. What is special about trace levels in municipal water? And many parts of the world have far higher natural fluoride levels in their water than any municipal water supply with no evidence of adverse consequences. This has been studied many times in many countries! In fact, the only consistent correlation with naturally high fluoride levels is better cardiovascular health (for which there is a known mechanism of action).
This notion that trace levels of fluoride in some municipal water is adversely impacting IQ based on thin evidence from the developing world is just the public health version of “faster than light neutrinos”. Someone thinks they measured it but it contradicts everything we know about the subject. The rational approach isn’t to discard everything we know without a hell of a lot more evidence.
I don’t think adding fluoride to municipal water does much these days but it also isn’t harming anyone.
That debate is framed around being vaccinated vs the scare of "vaccine caused autism" (or myocarditis), but that frame is missing the risk of things like measles.
Likewise tooth decay is not only expensive, but it can have dreadful health consequences if left unaddressed. Missing teeth is also socially costly. Being poor or "ugly" or poor looking is a serious adverse health consequence. Imagine parents barely making ends meet or working multiple jobs. It's easy to imagine disadvantaged kids missing out on dental care.
I also explicitly remember reading multiple reports of poor tooth health correlating with dementia development. I've also read that serious infections of any sort can harm IQ.
The bigger issue is that we have vast amounts of scientific data and empirical evidence around fluoride toxicity. People are injured and die due to fluorine exposure, we understand how it interacts with biology. Any mechanism of action that can support the hypothesis that fluorine causes brain damage necessarily invalidates all of this evidence and is difficult to explain as a matter of basic chemistry.
And then we have to explain why fluoride in water has this effect but the much higher levels of fluoride in food does not.
Fluoridating municipal water may not offer much benefit but there is no credible science that it is actually harmful. Large regions of the world have water that naturally has far higher fluorine content than municipal water and there is no evidence of IQ reduction in these regions either.
The vast majority of dentists are not public health experts, and will have little to offer other than “exposing your teeth to fluoride regularly is good”.
No they are not. The are experts are filling cavities and treatment. They have no additional knowledge of fluoride in water vs any other interested person.
For that you need to talk to someone in research, which is not someone seeing patients.
It's not a debate everywhere else because adding fluoride to the water is objectively an unusual thing to do that they just... don't. Presumably they get fluoride other ways.
I'm skeptical of results showing IQ loss but I also think fluoridation should be phased out as fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash are now widely available. Banning it seems like the wrong move to me...states should simply decide to continue adding it or not.
Isn't that exactly what's happening here? A state deciding to not continue adding it?
Did OP mean that municipalities should simply decide to keep adding or not? If so, how do we decide (from our various armchairs in most cases far away from Utah) what the appropriate level of government for making this call is?
I think the bigger complication though is going to be - depending on the state - how water districts are apportioned. I think even many counties (let alone municipalities) will share water infrastructure so it’s not really clear who has the jurisdiction to make that decision other than the state.
By having official country-level guidelines by the health ministries or similar for people to brush their teeth with toothpaste containing fluoride, and specific guidelines around it for kids, as trivial as it may sound. Along with experts' reviews providing more details on these decisions, and explaining tradeoffs properly.
Fluoride containing toothpaste is the main recommendation, even in places that fluoridate the water (which are the minority). There is not much to add to this apart from refining these guidelines. Eg in the EU where some countries fluoridate water, most don't, there is no huge debate about it overall. Most eu countries that fluoridated the water stopped doing it some point mostly because it was no longer needed in preventing cavities, and prob largely due to logistics/costs than possible risks.
Your second paragraph reflects my personal views on it, too. The "banning" is weird, esp since, according to the article, it comes from people that seem to advocate against use of fluoride in general in toothpastes etc. The discussion should be around best policies to prevent cavities etc, but it does not seem to be around that. I see nothing wrong with local communities deciding if they want to put fluoride or not in their water, based on their own opinions but also general situation. Maybe in some much poorer areas fluoridation of water could be beneficial until some other measures take place, for example.
How have other countries solved it?
Adding fluoride into tap water always sounds borderline insane to me. The only benefit is to protect your teeth, which, to me, strongly suggests that the correct approach is to put it into toothpaste or other oral hygiene products instead of water.
We're either bigger, or denser, or less dense, or ... essentially whatever suits the argument.
https://www.airportthai.co.th/en/aot-reiterates-the-guidelin...
edit: But I will say it works both ways. Most countries do not know what it takes to keep hundreds of millions of people of various backgrounds together under a common way of life with a certain risk vs entitlement balance. Americans as a whole are more risk tolerant AND accepting of failure and reinventing yourself. In most cultures it's a great shame to quit your job with benefits, start a business and not succeed. In the states it's not shameful. You tried? Awesome.
I have to assume many, maybe most, people that give reasons like you mention just flat out don't want the policy and reach for a reason to justify it.
I can say I don't want gun control laws. Not because it doesn't work elsewhere or couldn't work here. I just fundamentally disagree with it and don't want to live in a place where the only ones with guns are state officials.
It's baffling how despite numerous other countries outperforming the US in educational outcomes we do not even look at other approaches!
(If we had patriotic songs worth remembering im sure i would have)
The problem is this, hoe do you fix something you are proud of? It seems a contradiction?
Speaking as an American, though, I can both be proud of something and recognize its faults. I'm proud of the core principles that America was based upon, for example, but very much recognize how far we've deviated from them and how much we need to fix.
I think there's never much to gain in being proud of things you have nothing to do with or control over. If you like some principles you would be proud when you uphold them personally. It is when we start feeling proud in the abstract that we start having issues.
"Pride goeth before a fall" is a time-worn saying for good reason.
Hell, in some countries even the national anthem has no lyrics but is purely an instrumental track (Spain being a notable example).
Mexico's Pledge of Allegiance celebrated every Monday in schools.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_to_the_Me...
But even that was once-in-a-lifetime event to emphasise the importance of the first day at school at age 7, it did not happen every Monday.
Needless to say, it wasn't very effective. As evidenced by history, some of our parents definitely broke that pledge later in their life.
Claiming to be the best (at anything) is just tacky and arrogant. Especially with something as impossible to quantify as "best country". There's no such thing as the best country in the world. Every one has strengths and weaknesses, and you can't really balance and rank them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-th...
It’s kind of amazing that the left has forgotten that fact.
Poland,
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/national-anthem/...
Netherlands,
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/nati...
The difference between America the Beautiful and other anthems is how much it does, for how long, and making sure it gets everything it can possibly cram in there. It's like a bunch of people standing on a stand at a sporting match shouting "America, America, America" unremittingly, whereas most people might be satisfied to shout "Go {my country}" and be done with it.
And oh, that people used to talk about us and that despite they don't anymore we are still a pretty nice place to live.
https://www.tiktok.com/@guinnessworldrecords/video/747057742...
ha-ha f....
The cultural difference is that our rich people are too rich, our media is too centralized, and none of those in power want to enrich and empower the country, when they could enrich and empower themselves.
(For now, at least? How long until that gets cracked down on as dangerous?)
There is no person in the world who cannot have a toothbrush and toothpaste if they want to. And if you find one such person, they won't have access to any centrally treated water.
Considering that the number of such people is very low it would be very cheap to solve this issue.
> really?
Yes, really.
> So why are they poor?
Why is anything the way that it is?
It was referring to the comment where you said “less cynical”.
> Why is anything the way that it is?
America big? America different?
It’s more challenging to find non-cynical reasons for people being poor and suffering.
It's not perfect by any means, but it's definitely much better than nothing. So the US should absolutely be able to at the very least match that, but really most likely it should be able to do much better. That it doesn't is very much a choice.
I think the US would prefer a UHC if we were starting from a blank slate. The difficulty is mapping a path from what we have now to that.
Do you remember when Republicans went on and on about how "Democrats rammed through the ACA without a single Republican vote"? As if that represented a problem on the Democratic Party side, and not the Republican one? Despite the similarities to models proposed by Republicans in the past, and the relative conservative step it represented from "Byzantine kludge of often poor-to-no-coverage" to "something with a higher floor"? That's how hard it would be to find a Republican to "prefer a UHC if we were starting from a blank slate."
It's important not to underestimate the distrust of government services and regulation of any sort of the Republican base. The conservative media - talk-radio, then cable, then social/podcasts - has been intentionally undermining the credibility of government services at every opportunity for 40 years. And the politicians hamstring and sabotage whenever they get a chance to try to make sure that services offered in the US are sub-par compared to elsewhere.
It's a well-oiled machine running a cycle that keeps people focused on anything else but the services they actually use all the time so that cognitive dissonance can't creep in. (Granted, sometimes, when necessary to acknowledge those things, they'll fall back to making it clear that YOU earned/paid for the things you use, but those other gross poor people are just freeloaders.)
It's like with abortion - for decades "overturning Roe V Wade" was what Republicans said they wanted to do. And people kept trying to convince themselves "oh they don't really mean that, they wouldn't do that actually anymore." Take their word on it about wanting to tear down government services.
This is partly what I was getting at when I said the culture of the US is different and the scale is much larger than European countries. It's not just geographically larger, but it's politically and ideologically broader too. If you have a wonderful idea like UHC, you need to make it work with liberals, conservatives, and everyone in between. Like it or not, a universal healthcare or Medicare for all plan is either going to be DoA in Congress, or a considerably watered-down and Americanized version if it has any hope at all of getting enough senators to pass it without first seeing massive electoral college reform in this country first.
That is the scale of the US. You can't assume that an idea that's well-liked and popular in another country is going to be popular and well-liked here.
And the various countries in Europe do have different healthcare systems, sometimes significantly different.
It's difficult, but not as difficult as it's often presented to be, as long as you're okay with giving the finger to a relatively small number of wealthy health industry executives.
And that, is the difficulty. Sure, I agree that it wouldn't be too logistically difficult to implement universal healthcare in the US. But that doesn't matter when more than half the country has been propaganda'd into not even wanting it in the first place.
Hell, I expect that there are a ton of Medicaid and Medicare recipients in the US who would tell you that they think government-provided, single-payer healthcare is a bad idea, when that's essentially what they have, to some degree.
That's what it still has.
The current healthcare system is working perfectly (and by that I mean lucratively) for the 0.01% in control of the political system.
If you want to make that argument, actually make it, because if you try, 99% of the time its not actually true, its simply ignorance.
> US states used to be offered much more independence.
But even in your own example with the EU, the EU still mandates many health policies for its member countries: food safety; air and water quality; tobacco, sugar and alcohol regulations; and so on. That's not at all dissimilar to what the federal government does in the US, except our states don't implement those policies/directives themselves because the feds enforce it all.
The comment I was replying to pointed out that the US isn't several countries put together. As you describe, the EU is several countries put together and yet the US actually pushes more power to the states.
Doesn’t their comment claim the opposite?
Unlike the US Federal government EU has very limited direct means of imposing any if its laws or regulations on member states of they chose not to comply with them.
And are those conditions manmade? If so, would we be better off reversing the proximal issues rather than adding fluoride to try to fix it?
let alone the precautionary principle in a complex system with a gazillion variables... (i.e. things we don't know we don't know)
And this is known by people who do professional advocacy work, on topic I am familiarly with, such as city design and transportation. They take great care to make sure all the examples are from the US, even if those examples aren't nearly as good as others. Because they know, when speaking to American audiences, you lose the audience if you suggest in X town, they should do Y that is done in Europe. In the US selling something as domestic innovation is usually the best, "if people in Indiana can do it, you can do it even better".
To just ignore any explanation that points out that culture matters, and believing that only 'hard' factors matter, is incredibly foolish. Cultural believes, such as exceptionalism absolutely do a play a huge role in determining what happens in the real world. To point that out, is not cynical or lazy.
And this does not just apply to the US, it many countries have different forms of that.
I really don't buy it, at least not as a general statement.
As to rail, both the first-gen and second-gen Acela is based on the French TGV.
The comparison to the Dutch healthcare system is not apt. While the Heritage foundation may used ideas from the Dutch system our system is quite a bit more Byzantine and inefficient. We spend twice as much per capita on healthcare and have worse outcomes and fewer people covered. Our citizens have far more per capita medical debt than the Dutch.
We didn’t really implement the Dutch system and we didn’t really learn from the French how to build and maintain high speed rail. Saying we learned healthcare from the Dutch because we have doctors like they do makes as much sense as your argument.
Why does the US execution not match that of the countries it looks into? I think it's because talented people in the US disproportionately go into the private sector, leading to an incompetent public sector. American distrust of their government is arguably justified.
IMO the most distinct parts of the Swiss health insurance system is that (1) copay is obligatory but limited (i.e. healthcare isn’t free but it’s not expensive either), and (2) it’s individual, companies cannot pay for it, so there’s no US-like extreme benefit of having a good job.
It isn’t really bargaining power of the pool, but the risk assessment of the pool you are in. Being in a hodge lodge personal pool means you are sharing risk with people who will have more expenses. That’s why Switzerland throws everyone into the same pool, so no crème low risk can be siphoned away.
Due to the regulations it is not a big run to the bottom
> The average Obamacare plan costs $483 monthly for a 30-year-old, $544 for a 40-year-old and $760 for a 50-year-old.
> The bronze plan covers 60% of the costs associated with care.
I feel like they missed the most important parts of the Dutch health insurance system…
> While more than 90 per cent of Australians have access to fluoridated water, that figure is significantly lagging in the sunshine state, where local councils have ultimate authority over whether it is adopted.
> A decade after the Newman government handed responsibility for fluoridated drinking water to local governments, 51 out of 77 have opted out. That means about 28 per cent of Queenslanders do not have fluoridated drinking water
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-24/fluoride-dental-care-...
There’s evidence that despite widespread availability of fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash, fluoridated drinking water improves dental outcomes at the population level.
There’s also evidence that at high levels (not the normal levels it is added at, but at higher levels which can happen on accident) fluoride may reduce IQ.
I’m ok with either trade off but the “solved” phrasing makes it sound like there is an obviously superior choice.
Meanwhile, back here on Earth-1, there's no right thing, and countries all over the world have "by and large solved" the issue by doing completely different things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_country
> Water fluoridation is considered very common in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Chile and Australia where over 50% of the population drinks fluoridated water.
> Most European countries including Italy, France, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Switzerland do not fluoridate water.
Unfortunate that the color scheme is confusing, but not any weird borders.
You can see the uncolored map here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlankMap-World6-Equirec...
These countries largely publicly recognise the benefits of fluoride, but don’t add it because:
- Some countries opt for intake via supplementation.
- Some have a naturally sufficient supply in drinking water via natural processes.
- Some even need to reduce the abundance of fluoride in their water due to over supply.
I think you can pretty easily infer his opinion about toothpaste containing a "dangerous neurotoxin".
The latest report from the National Toxicology Program has found a causal reduction of ~1.63 IQ per additional mg/L concentration of fluoride in their urine [2], which would seem sufficient to also call it a neurotoxin, though the NTP under extensive pressure chose to avoid any particular label after having previously declared it a "presumed neurotoxin."
Notably the study from NTP also mentioned something most people here seem to be missing: "There is a concern, however, that some pregnant women and children may be getting more fluoride than they need because they now get fluoride from many sources including treated public water, water-added foods and beverages, teas, toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash, and the combined total intake of fluoride may exceed safe amounts."
Fluoride being seen as desirable at safe levels, may have drove excessive multi-domain inputs of it, which can combine to drive it to unsafe levels.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride_toxicity
[2] - https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
No it is not. It is sensational and intentionally inflammatory. It is especially damming coming from someone in his position.
Vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin B, iron, and caffeine are all deadly at that level. The first 4 are mandatory for life, shall we call them dangerous too? Or perhaps we have some nuance and acknowledge the co spirit oriel background (and other beliefs) of the people pushing the anti-fluoride message.
But with fluoride we're talking about extremely low doses, well below the lethal level, being able to potentially permanently damage the mind's of children. Such an extreme risk justifies an abundance of caution, especially when the reason we're doing it is for some relatively modest dental gains, which are likely increasingly obsolete with fluoride being in tooth paste and many other sources besides water. In fact, as per the study I linked to up above, this is precisely the problem!
"Since 1945, the use of fluoride has been a successful public health initiative for reducing dental cavities and improving general oral health of adults and children. There is a concern, however, that some pregnant women and children may be getting more fluoride than they need because they now get fluoride from many sources including treated public water, water-added foods and beverages, teas, toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash, and the combined total intake of fluoride may exceed safe amounts."
See the rest of this thread. If you think the group (at RFK doing so in an official government capacity) using such inflammatory language is going to stop at removing fluoride from just water I don't know what to tell you.
Tooth paste, and other commercial products, are opt-in systems. And indeed there are already numerous unfluoridated options available.
EDIT: I checked. It is possible to buy salt with added fluoride in Germany but it comes with the health note "Zusätzliche fluoridhaltige Präparate sollten nur auf ärztliche Empfehlung eingenommen werden.", which means you should only use it on recommendation by your MD.
I can't find any information on this, do you have a source? According to Wikipedia fluoride toothpaste is recommended by health officials in Germany for children(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_countr...)
Tooth paste with more than one per mille of fluoride has either to be marked as unsuitable for children or has to have a note that children have to be supervised using it and a doctor or dentist has to be consulted in case the child swallows more than a pea-sized amount.
So, not quite prohibited, but far from recommended.
In France, for example, the limit is 1.5 mg/L in tap water. https://www.anses.fr/en/system/files/NUT2007sa0315q.pdf
Supplementation mainly concerns iodine for non-marine salts. Sea salt naturally contains iodine and fluorine. Salt from salt mines contains much less. For this reason, iodine deficiency was relatively common in the Alps until the beginning of the twentieth century.
To my knowledge, there is no debate or controversy on the subject. Endemic goiters are exceedingly rare and are linked to behavioral and eating disorders.
> In England, approximately 10% of the population, or around 6 million people, receive fluoridated water, either naturally or through water fluoridation schemes, mainly in the West Midlands and the North East.
Uh oh. I know it is better now but in 1978 a third of people in the UK didn’t have their natural teeth.
You saw it too in Canada when the Inuit went on food stamps and went from eating mostly meat to mostly plants: their teeth went all over the place and full of holes within a single generation.
We also saw that with the advent of agriculture in general, along with a massive decline in average height.
https://www.yongeeglintondental.com/blog/healthy-primary-tee...
That, of course, is not quite the same thing as perfectly white, perfectly aligned teeth.
No, not really. There are a couple municipalities (Portland, OR, e.g.) that have famously not fluoridated their water forever, but for the most part this is not something most places argue about. UT is an exception.
I think most cities manage their own utilities. So, Portland has to make some decision on this issue. Utah doesn’t, it was an active choice to intervene.
downplayed? you judge.
The British abolished slavery with a vote of parliament. The Russian emperor signed a decree, and freed the serfs. Compromised were made, compensation provided and people were made free. But for some reason, Americans felt the matter is important enough to start a civil war around it.
People complain about America being divided and both sides there being unable to compromise, but if anything, that's been the defining feature of the nation since it's creation. "Y'all should take a chill pill, this ain't that important" is a perfectly valid position to have.
It sure is bizarre for the parts of the world where people are born to do as they're told and shut up.
What's rare is for a nation to have a civil war between sides that agree on almost everything, from the structure of the government to the economic system.
The situation was fundamentally different. Colonies that allowed slavery had no representation in parliament and the slave owners received massive “compensation” that the British people had to spend decades paying off..
Also AFAIK most slaveholders were living in Britain and just viewed their plantations as just another investment. There was very little ideological/“way of life”/racial supremacy stuff involved. So if some Liberals wanted to buyout their not necessarily very liquid “property” with cash they didn’t really have much reason to oppose it.
And then there were 5x more slaves in the US in 1864 while the population was only ~30% higher than that of Britain in 1830 (only if we don’t count the colonies).
Not sure how excited would the inhabitants of New England and other free states would have been if they were forced to buy out all the slaves in the country (if that was even an option).
Slavery for the British was a side note at that point while it was a fundamental component of the US economy.
The idea that no compromise was possible sounds somewhat absurd since America did end the civil war with a compromise. "You can free the slaves, but then we oppress them for 100 or so years." Not that it was a good compromise or anything, but it does show that the civil war was fundamentally pointless.
So it’s hardly applicable to the US (or Britain)
> end the civil war with a compromise
I’m not sure it’s was a compromise per se.
Most people in the north didn’t really actively support country wide abolition before the war (neither did Lincoln) nor were they necessarily particularly concerned about the treatment of the African-American population.
Opposing slavery is a very low bar. Most people in the free states were still deeply racist and segregation was effectively (while not necessarily legally) still a thing there. It only became a major issue in the mid 1900s.
The answer was the same then as it is now: big business. Slave labor cash crops were central to the economy of the South. Great Britain was not dependent on it in the same way.
Even more so the economy of Wall Street.
For one, we’re literally making everyone slightly less intelligent. While it’s a very small factor, I sure as hell wouldn’t want that for my daughters.
For two, IQ is easy to measure. Through that, we know it’s affecting the brain during development. How else is it affecting it? We don’t know.
Weighed against potentially higher risk of cavities pretty much only during childhood and the math seems incredibly clear to me. I feel like the only reason we haven’t banned adding it to water supplies is because people have a knee jerk reaction to anything that sounds even vaguely anti-vax nowadays.
The fact that until 10 years ago the US allowed significantly higher levels should be a really big deal to people.
I’m on reverse osmosis well water so it doesn’t matter to me personally, for what it’s worth.
Almost all fluoride from the drinking water does not have any effect on tooth enamel, because it has contact with it only for a few seconds, except for an infinitesimal fraction that may exit again the body in saliva.
On the other hand, the harmful effects of fluoride in drinking water are certain and it cannot be predicted exactly how much water will be ingested by someone, i.e. which will be the harmful dose of ingested fluoride.
The only argument of those who support water fluoridation is that most people must be morons who cannot be taught to wash their teeth. I do not believe that this theory can be right.
it always surprises me how willing people are to just make something up and be confident in doing so. We've know for almost 75 years that water fluoridation reduces tooth decay[1] and yet here you are straight up denying that.
Do you just not care if you are correct? or do you know you aren't but are driven by the beliefs you already hold?
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/oral-health/data-research/facts-stats/fa...
The contact via toothpaste or mouth wash isn’t all that much longer, so why would they be effective if fluoridated water isn’t? People intentionally wash out toothpaste and mouthwash after this short contact.
I put in a spelling error in the above paragraph of 215 characters, you still understand it but what was your perception of me from this very small error?
Of course it comes down to whether the relationship actually exists. But picking a slightly higher risk of cavities when the other option is potential mental impairment (however mild) seems like a no-brainer..
I don't think it's such a no brainer if every health org is recommending fluoride, and some people think it's scary.
Also you are not supposed to eat toothpaste…
> don't think it's such a no brainer
Well obviously only if the relationship actually exists and there is enough evidence for it. How else could you interpret my comment?
> brainer if every health org is recommending fluoride
Is that true? e.g. throughout entire Europe for instance?
having to resort to childish attempts like this essentially invalidates anything "insightful" you might want to say. if you can't see that manually adding safety-unproven chemicals to water without people's consent is a weird and unethical thing to do, then that's fine, but don't embarrass yourself and everyone else like this
Nobody is doing that, so maybe don't embarrass yourself like that?
> without people's consent
Also not happening. Consent was established when it was voted on, and if people want to change their local policies they are always free to do so. People that object against majority are also free to drink alternative water from the free market instead of relying on socialist handouts
If you want to have an actual, good faith debate about the pros/cons of a specific additive that's wonderful. But you didn't, you reduced the entire thing to "chemicals bad because chemicals". But, more significantly, so too has the US's administration which Utah is following suit on. The US is full on "feels not reals" government mode.
when was it voted on and by who? tell me.
you're also aware that people pay for water, it's not free? quite an odd thing for an adult to not know
"good faith debate". from someone who started making mocking autism noises in the middle of a normal conversation? that's what I suggested was embarrassing, you simply didn't read my comment because you yourself have no interest in having a good faith discussion and you're just blindly throwing terms like that as a way of dismissing an opinion you disagree with.
"chemicals bad because chemicals" I never said anything of the sort, this is a strawman you invented to strengthen your struggling argument. there have quite literally been studies linking increased fluoride to toxicity. it's not "chemicals bad because chemicals" it's "there have been studies suggesting this chemical may be toxic so why are we putting it in drinking water without a public consultation in the last 70 years?"
>The US is full on "feels not reals" government mode.
okay and here we have your real motivation. 90% likely you quite obviously don't give a fuck about fluoridated water or human rights, you are pissed about the current executive branch and you're looking to take it out somewhere. this "debate" is over.
The general idea of the government medicating the people writ large isn't low stakes.
In the US there are a lot of people who are of the opinion the government should just let people be.
I have a feeling it's not about "letting people be". It's about "let me be and screw over those I don't like"
Anyone who thinks this is a straightforward issue is dumb, frankly.
How can the issue people are concerned with be government overreach if they don't care about the government overreaching into others backyards?
If you think all the people advocating for small government must be fools or hypocrites, you don't understand the issues an any depth.
I'm curious, what rights are "granted" by making it illegal for doctors to prescribe puberty blocks when they as a medical professional and a child's parents as their guardian agree they're the best medical course of action for a child?
Saying "it's about granting and taking away" like rights are some zero-sum game feels like it's ignoring the complexity of these issues more than what I'm saying.
So it's not an issue of trampled rights if it's just trans rights, yet you can't come up with a reason that trans rights need to be restricted to ensure freedom of others. And it's being disingenuous to call you out for saying trans rights don't matter when you say this...
You knew the example. You know why society restricts people below 18 from all kinds of things. You are the very definition of disingenuous.
I don't mind being called "the very definition of disingenuous" by you.
Here's some interesting data (2003 I believe, so pretty old) [1]: It reports that most of Europe, Canada, Australia, and South America experiences cavities at rates higher than the United States. However: Many of these countries have public health care; the US does not. Is the US under-reporting? (I didn't dig much deeper into the underlying data; may not be a relevant concern).
Three things I think are likely to be true: (1) Fluoridated toothpaste is widely available and cheap. (2) Cavity rates are significant even in countries with high rates of fluoridation. (3) Fluoridating the water supply carries with it a non-zero monetary cost. I tend to believe that these three realities, at the very least, justify the conversation as being one we should have. It could be the case that water fluoridation made a ton of sense in a world where people didn't have as much access to fluoridated toothpaste, but nowadays the typical person has hit the limit on what it can do for them, and ingesting more is, at best, doing nothing.
Here's another way I like to think about it: Put the science aside for a second (I know, hard, not ideal, but bear with me). You've got two people who are low income. Person A believes, for their own health and in the expression of their own personal liberties, they want access to fluoride; but the Government is not fluoridating their water. They can spend $5 a month to buy fluoridated toothpaste; possibly not even more expensive than the toothpaste they were already buying. Person B is living in the opposite world: They believe that they do not want to ingest fluoride, but the government is fluoridating their water. They would have to spend many dozens to hundreds of dollars a month buying water bottled somewhere more natural. From a personal liberty and economics perspective: Its pretty clear-cut.
[1] https://smile-365.com/what-countries-have-the-lowest-prevale...
Direct monetary cost is entirely insignificant, though. Potential risk of mental impairment (of course there is no conclusive evidence of that) seems like a much bigger issue.
If one out of a hundred people don't want fluoride, can't they can spend slightly more on bottled water? Why require the other 99 to be up-to-date on research to get the best personal medical outcome?
Flouride should be put in the toothpaste. Then people can make a choice on whether they want it, but most importantly, its in the only product that is actually used for brushing teeth
It's basically a waste product and water naturally has fluoride in it at the same levels, or more, that fluoridated water has, and the environment has been just fine in those places.
If it's harmful as you imply, lots of water would need defluoridation.
Sounds like it's not important to address fluorine reduction if a casual relationship can be established.
I do wonder how they compensated properly for fluoride being added in poorer areas. Will dig it out when I get chance.
Meanwhile growing up in Poland in the 90s as kids we had these fluoridation sessions in school, for which everyone had to bring their toothbrush and brush their teeth with some kind of sour tasting fluid that contained fluorine.
We had the same in Sweden up until the early 90s, and it's apparently doing sort of a revival in some schools.
And regardless of whether the water is fluoridated or not, there is no big debate elsewhere about it, nobody cares that much about it, because all the evidence is that in smaller amounts prob it is does not matter much either way, in the presence of people brushing their teeth. A lot of countries stopped it due to logistic purposes. In netherlands they tried fluoride in the water, a court said they should actually pass a law in order to be able to do it, and they did not even bother with that and dropped it. The fact that some countries may not use fluoride in the water is not due to some deeply-held conviction about how destructive fluoride is for the iq of the kids. In terms of risks of fluoride, fluorosis is what is mostly discussed anyway, and to a degree, unless it is too serious, this may just be an aesthetic issue.
From the perspective of one that watches this craziness from outside, the whole debate is non-sense, and whether some european countries use water fluoridation or not is not very important, it does not cause any heated debate in the EU. The debate in the US is not because the US considers some things that others do not consider. There is no actual truthseeking mentality from the current administration or anybody on this to actually find for sure if fluoride decreases iq, or if fluoride in the water is absolutely essential for dental health even if people are brushing their teeth.
But beyond Europe there’s still no global consensus.
I do agree that the US is an outlier with fluoride being nearly universal.
Some countries no longer add it (but their water still has naturally occurring fluoride that they don't remove).
> Maybe the US should look into how other countries have solved it?
I mean Utah is trying, sorry it took a while. I know Germany and Sweden don't fluoridate its water, I assume you mean Western Europe by the "world" (sorry if I am interpreting too much here, but that's usually what's popular to compare US to and bash US on how bad it is), so US is getting "with the program", finally I suppose. States having individual laws here is a benefit, one state doesn't have to wait for the Federal Government to act.
> This is one of these US-specific polarised debates I find really bizarre,
I don't think it's that polarizing? Unless 1) you're listening to US media more and 2) you're not getting many non-polarizing issues in the news, because those are well are just boring and don't sell ads.
This isn't a sensible way to think about it. Every contentious conversation I've ever had has gone this way:
Me: why do people want to ban fluoride
Them: [anti government paranoia]
Me: um...but how about tooth decay
Them: pineal gland calcification
Me: idk sounds pretty far-fetched
Them: THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK
Some place do it. Others partially, many not at all.
This is not obvious. Some water has high levels of fluoride, which can cause harm (fluoride added for public health reasons is not the highest level of fluoride you will find [in the UK]).
Fluoridation could be done by mixing of naturally high fluoride water sources into other water.
(To be fair, though, many [most?] Western countries do not fluoridate their water. The US is actually not doing the common thing here.)
It's honestly not clear if water fluoridation in the US is necessary or all that useful here anymore, as we started doing it when fluoride toothpaste wasn't really a thing. Now pretty much all(?) toothpaste in the US has fluoride in it. If someone can't afford toothpaste, then they probably can't afford regular dental care either, and fluoridated water isn't going to make much of an impact anyway.
https://www.uk-water-filters.co.uk/pages/areas-with-fluoride...
For context... some people think statins should be put in the water. Maybe they should. But were does mass medication of the people stop?
There's absolutely no need to resort to a slippery slope here. We have plenty of examples around the world for things that work without anyone invoking a boogeyman.
There are examples of the boogeyman existing in real life - just 80 years ago we had one of the worst. Right now we have some boogeymen although not Hitler level. Get a little historical perspective.
Calgary removed fluoride from its water supply. A decade later, it's adding it back https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed...
Toxic Treatment: Fluoride's Transformation from Industrial Waste to Public Health Miracle https://origins.osu.edu/article/toxic-treatment-fluorides-tr...
Portland has a divisive relationship with water fluoridation https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-oregon-water-fluor...
Fluoride Exposure: Neurodevelopment and Cognition https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
Effect of fluoridated water on intelligence in 10-12-year-old school children https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5285601/
A tale of two cities finds that community water fluoridation prevents caries https://adanews.ada.org/ada-news/2021/august/community-water...
Children exposed to higher fluoride levels have lower IQs, a government study finds https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/06/health/children-higher-fl...
DRAFT NTP Monograph on the State of the Science Concerning Fluoride Exposure and Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Health Effects: A Systematic Review https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/ntp/about_ntp/...
The finding’s of the NTP’s 6-year fluoride neurotoxicity evaluation https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/ntp/about_ntp/...
Fluoridation cessation and children's dental caries: A 7-year follow-up evaluation of Grade 2 schoolchildren in Calgary and Edmonton, Canada https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34309045/#:%7E:text=Results:....
Toxicity of fluoride: critical evaluation of evidence for human developmental neurotoxicity in epidemiological studies, animal experiments and in vitro analyses https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7261729/
Low-to-moderate fluoride exposure in relation to overweight and obesity among school-age children in China https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31509932/
What happens when you remove fluoride from tap water? https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324086
Buffalo poised to resume fluoridation of city’s water supply https://adanews.ada.org/ada-news/2024/january/buffalo-poised...
But having a healthy mouth is far from the end goal, imo. If your mouth is full of cavities you’re more likely to build up bacteria that cause downstream effects as serious as heart disease. Also if your mouth is routinely uncomfortable you may gravitate towards soft processed foods and away from healthy whole foods like fresh fruits and vegetables.
I know water is not the only way to get fluoride into people. But these politicians who are trying to take it out of the water are just saying basically “it’s fine, let’s do nothing”. They’re not going to fluoridate the salt. They’re not going to run public health campaigns stressing the importance of regular brushing. They’re just willing to let people’s teeth rot to score points.
It’s disgusting, and no matter how you feel about the water you should be able to see that these people are not on your side.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in...
I'd actually just like to see more money put into public dental assistance. And education.
I would want to see that in anti fluoride campaigns and laws as well, but have not see that happen in the laws and campaigns I have followed. Or in the HN comments I have responded to on the subject, most focus on banning and provide no follow, or no structured follow up like - free toothpaste, required educations, and follow up studies, reassess in X years.
Do you really think there are sizable native born populations that are not aware of tooth brushing?
There’s plenty of people that don’t bother with it, but I don’t see a PR campaign being particularly effective at changing that.
I think there are lots of adults who don’t realize that poor dental health can cause heart failure and worsen basically every chronic condition.
I think there are lots of goobers who don’t realize that there’s no reason that United and Elevance and the rest couldn’t be forced to cover dental care via regulation.
I get your point, but big picture there are a lot of impactful education campaigns that should be possible.
I don't know that you have the causality here correct.
I drink tap water now with fluoride so its not like I care strongly, but its a bit weird that many people buy only non-fluoridated water themselves and are confused when other people show a preference for non-fluoridated water in their own taps.
One of the biggest factors of what?
For example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6169031/pdf/10.1177...
Which finds that fluoridated water likely conservatively prevents about 30% of childhood dental caries.
The idea that the conspiracy theorists are winning the public policy debate enrages me. There's rock solid proof of the benefits of fluoridation extending decades, and there is little to no proof of any adverse side effects.
Oh well, good luck Utah. I'm glad I don't live there, but if I were a young dentist, I know where I'd set up my new practice.
Highly recommend visiting the link for details about each point and references (it is not that long), here is a summary, don't comment if you haven't visited the link:
1) Fluoride is the only chemical added to water for the purpose of medical treatment. 2) Fluoridation is unethical. 3) The dose cannot be controlled. 4) The fluoride goes to everyone regardless of age, health or vulnerability. 5) People now receive fluoride from many other sources besides water. 6) Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. 7) The level in mothers’ milk is very low. 9) No health agency in fluoridated countries is monitoring fluoride exposure or side effects. 10) There has never been a single randomized controlled trial to demonstrate fluoridation’s effectiveness or safety. 11) Benefit is topical not systemic. 12) Fluoridation is not necessary. 13) Fluoridation’s role in the decline of tooth decay is in serious doubt. 14) NIH-funded study on individual fluoride ingestion and tooth decay found no significant correlation. 15) Tooth decay is high in low-income communities that have been fluoridated for years. 16) Tooth decay does not go up when fluoridation is stopped. 17) Tooth decay was coming down before fluoridation started. 18) The studies that launched fluoridation were methodologically flawed. 19) Children are being over-exposed to fluoride. 20) The highest doses of fluoride are going to bottle-fed babies. 21) Dental fluorosis may be an indicator of wider systemic damage. 22) Fluoride may damage the brain. 23) Fluoride may lower IQ. 24) Fluoride may cause non-IQ neurotoxic effects. 25) Fluoride affects the pineal gland. 26) Fluoride affects thyroid function. 27) Fluoride causes arthritic symptoms. 28) Fluoride damages bone. 29) Fluoride may increase hip fractures in the elderly. 30) People with impaired kidney function are particularly vulnerable to bone damage. 31) Fluoride may cause bone cancer (osteosarcoma). 32) Proponents have failed to refute the Bassin-Osteosarcoma study. 33) Fluoride may cause reproductive problems. 34) Some individuals are highly sensitive to low levels of fluoride as shown by case studies and double blind studies. 35) Other subsets of population are more vulnerable to fluoride’s toxicity. 36) There is no margin of safety for several health effects. 37) Low-income families penalized by fluoridation. 38) Black and Hispanic children are more vulnerable to fluoride’s toxicity. 39) Minorities are not being warned about their vulnerabilities to fluoride. 40) Tooth decay reflects low-income not low-fluoride intake. 41) The chemicals used to fluoridate water are not pharmaceutical grade. 42) The silicon fluorides have not been tested comprehensively. 43) The silicon fluorides may increase lead uptake into children’s blood. 44) Fluoride may leach lead from pipes, brass fittings and soldered joints. 45) Key health studies have not been done. 46) Endorsements do not represent scientific evidence. 47) Review panels hand-picked to deliver a pro-fluoridation result. 48) Many scientists oppose fluoridation. 49) Proponents usually refuse to defend fluoridation in open debate. 50) Proponents use very dubious tactics to promote fluoridation.
I draw your attention to the first sentence.
Also this is interesting:
Fluoridation may be useful in the U.S. because unlike most European countries, the U.S. does not have school-based dental care, many children do not visit a dentist regularly, and for many U.S. children water fluoridation is the prime source of exposure to fluoride.
This debate is about evidence vs policy:
* Evidence: fluoride displaces iodine and other halogens, which disrupts thyroid function and possibly negatively impacts other organs and bones.
* Policy: wealth inequality in the US has created a situation where the poor struggle to such an extent that they don't have access to basic health services like fluoride treatments at the dentist every 6 months, while the rich have grown so greedy that they don't want to pay a fraction of a percent of their taxes for preventative care for children and the impoverished so they instead tolerate slightly more expensive fluoridated tap water at the expense of everyone's health.
This comment is about my subjective experience with a sample size of 1, meaning that it doesn't apply to you or the public:
* My father is a dentist and gave me fluoride treatments every 6 months while I was growing up in Idaho. I was raised mostly on well water which isn't fluoridated. I have never had a cavity, despite not going to the dentist for the decade of my 20s while he lived away from me. My thyroid function is not as high as I would like after a lifetime of acute stress from struggle, multiple insults to the body, drinking fluoridated water after the age of 18, and being exposed to radioactive iodine at 80 times the US drinking water standard for perhaps 1 year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (which potentially either gave me a lifetime dose or was insignificant).
This solution is as evidence-based and equitable as I can come up with:
* We should remove fluoride from drinking water and reimburse all dentists for free 6 month fluoride treatments of the general public, which represents some nominal fee of perhaps $15-$20 per person annually (probably less) which is not materially significant to the federal budget of roughly $15-20,000 per person annually.
This take is my personal subjective opinion followed by objective evidence supporting my claims:
* I don't think highly of Robert Kennedy Jr's health initiatives, because they don't ethically weigh evidence and policy, and we don't have enough epidemiological studies to predict outcomes. So they will certainly cause unintended consequences. That said, I believe there is merit to his concerns. So a way forward is not to be anti-vax for example, but to recognize that there are dozens of types of vaccines and to prioritize vaccines for illnesses like polio that have a high risk of negatively impacting quality of life. Health experts should continue advising elected officials on policy decisions. Public health is not a domain that can be left in the trust of individuals acting unilaterally. So removing fluoride from water without providing state or federal funding for fluoride treatments every 6 months will most likely negatively impact public health.
https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-p...
https://thyroidpharmacist.com/articles/fluoride-and-your-thy...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11003687/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30316182/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38029816/
https://theworld.org/stories/2016/08/02/fukushima-radiation-...
One time it was the covid vaccine, now it's the drinking water.
You just dumb, guys.
Both of these points are in the site guidelines.
This is so dumb, and based on psudoscience at best, and straight up falsities at worst.
In 10 years we're going to hear about how cavities are so much higher in Utah than anywhere else.
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/fluoride-childrens-health-gran...
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
Follow up studies have found the levels in the USA to be perfectly safe and in fact beneficial since poor people don't get dental care like they do in other countries.
HN Comments were very credulous before the election. Shows how flexible belief in science is.
because everybody drinks the same amount of water right?
ridiculous position to argue from.
Not sure if that first link was to the Harvard summary intentionally but heres the actual study: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1104912
*The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children. The NTP review was designed to evaluate total fluoride exposure from all sources and was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoridated drinking water alone. It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ.*
The EPA limit for fluoride is 4mg/L. There's an argument to be made that it should be lowered to 2mg/L. When fluoride is added to drinking water, the target is around 0.9mg/L--no one's coming close to the EPA limit, and that exists because groundwater sources can end up being naturally high in fluoride. (I'm not sure what the typical natural occurrence of fluoride is in Utah, but I strongly suspect that they're not making any moves to actually remove fluoride from existing systems.)
> The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
I don't know whether water fluoridation is worthwhile. But I do know that various European countries have discontinued it. <https://web.archive.org/web/20160303202219/http://www.appgaf...> Are they also working off of pseudoscience and falsities?
In reality what will happen is that rich kids will be just fine because they will get their fluoride treatments at the dentist every six months.
It's the poor kids who will suffer because they don't see the dentist regularly because it's expensive, so they won't get their treatments.
It is true that many studies were at higher doses(2x to 4x), but that should not mean that it is acceptable to intentionally raise fluoride levels to half of harmful levels, because we want to protect teeth.
If you don't want cavities decrease sucrose, brush and floss. Can I brush my teeth with use baking soda, use whatever? Arent they are OUR teeth? What if we find some additive might help some other health issue? Should we add that to everyone's drinking water?
At safe levels fluoridation is a public health measure akin to fortifying foods with vitamins (e.g., iodine in salt or folic acid in flour something we do all the time).
That's a very high standard of evidence.
Toxicity testing is often carried out on mice, up to the dosage required for any observable effect. From that safe levels for humans are derived, e.g. the NOAEL (No Observed Adverse Effect Level).
To say that a study done in humans, got observable effects at only twice the intended dose (who knows what the s.d. of the dose is, but anyway) and we conclude there's simply not enough evidence?
Many chemicals have been banned on the basis of far less evidence.
Consider the following: Many water sources have a ton of salts and such in them naturally. Fluoride being one of them. The reason why water fluoridation became a thing in the first place is because it was noticed that higher natural levels of fluoridation resulted in fewer caries.
Water treatment in order to make it safe to drink often involves processes that remove and filter out these minerals and chemicals. Which means said things need to be added back in, as part of the treatment process.
Also, fluoride helps with remineralisation when it is used pretty much regularly, not once per 6 months. Fluoride treatments once per 6 months are not gonna bring back the enamel lost.
I do not understand what is the big deal here. In many countries there are specific recommendations wrt to fluoride and kids brushing their teeth that seem to work fine. This seems to be a solved issue in many places in the world without fluoridating water.
As for “fluoride treatments”, those are applied to the teeth, not drank. They are not a substitute for regular brushing.
It's kind of amazing to say something like that then be so inconsistent on things that will have real outcomes that make life better for kids. They're all for cutting school support and social services.
It also has among the happiest citizens: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2024/09/09/utah-mental-health-h...
It has the highest economic mobility in the country: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2023/12/22/utah-top...
Despite being filled with guns, it’s got a homicide rate only a little higher than Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
And it’s ranked in the top 10 states for life expectancy: https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2022/08/24/utah-t...
Utah and Massachusetts are basically the steel-man versions of their respective ideologies. But Utah doesn’t have the benefit of Harvard and MIT, major Pharma companies, etc. It’s surrounded by desert and has no natural resources to speak of.
Then they redistribute to their poorest members in the form of free private education at all pre-college levels and highly subsidized college as well. And with food banks, free or subsidized medical services, and whole bunch of other things the government doesn't provide.
They've essentially traded one government for another, but theirs requires belief in their religion and only applies to their believers (who happen to concentrate in Utah).
Is that income before tax or after tax?
"After tax" seems like it should be obvious, but then wouldn't that require tax specialists to decide how to deal with tax exceptions (retirement taxation incentives, donations, etcetera).
If the 10% donation is tax deductible, doesn't that require some mathematics to work out the 10%?
Irrelevant aside: I think the efficient altruist 10% is "We're often asked how exactly to calculate income — should it be pre-tax or post-tax? Generally, we recommend choosing the option that makes most sense to you, though we think it makes sense to choose pre-tax if your donations are tax-deductible (for example, GiftAid counts towards your Pledge!) and post-tax if they're not.". https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge
I presume there are guidelines that get complicated? Like Halakha or Sharia?
I can't speak to how enforcement was in the past (I haven't researched it enough to say), but the way it currently stands is there is a yearly "tithing settlement". No tax documents are requested, all that our church has is the amount I donate. The bishop asks if I'm a full tithe payer, and accepts my answer.
Social pressure perhaps? But at least where I've been it's appeal to morality as taught in our canon.
Membership is not rescinded for not paying tithing, but a temple recommend requires being a full tithe payer (as reported by me).
EDIT: link to the official handbook: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-han...
The only tax form I can think of is a form they send me so I can deduct it from taxes (as it's legally a tax-deductible donation).
EDIT: Section 34.4, 34.5.2, and 34.5.6 are applicable.
34.4:
> Confidentiality of Tithing and Other Offerings
> The amount of tithing and other offerings paid by a donor is confidential. Only the bishop and those who are authorized to handle or view these contributions should have access to this information. Stake presidencies, bishoprics, and clerks should never inappropriately discuss a member’s tithing status. Nor should they discuss the total amount of tithing or other offerings received.
34.5.2:
> Receiving Tithing and Other Offerings
> The Lord has given bishops the sacred trust of receiving and accounting for the tithes and other offerings of the Saints (see Doctrine and Covenants 42:30–33; 119). Only the bishop and his counselors may receive tithes and other offerings. Under no circumstances should their wives, other members of their families, clerks, or other ward members receive these contributions. The only exception is when Aaronic Priesthood holders are assigned to collect fast offerings (see 34.3.2).
> Church leaders and members should not leave donations unattended.
34.5.6:
> Donation Statements
> Donor Statements of Contributions are available to all members at donations.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Leaders should encourage members to regularly review their donor statements. Where applicable, official tax statements are also available at donations.ChurchofJesusChrist.org, from the local unit, or from the area office.
Also, there's no prescriptive guidance on pre-tax vs. post-tax, or how to handle many edge cases, such as capital gains, tax deductions, etc. The church's stance is that it's between you and God to figure out how to apply the "pay 10%" guidance.
Old, but still observed: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1974/04/i-h...:
“...the simplest statement we know of is that statement of the Lord himself that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their interest annually, which is understood to mean income. No one is justified in making any other statement than this. We feel that every member of the Church should be entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord, and to make payment accordingly.”
At the beginning of The Church of Jesus Christ, saints were asked to consecrate all that they had to the bishop. Legally they signed away all rights to their property and the bishop leased it back to them.
They found that that wasn't sustainable (due to debts and disputes) and switched to 10% of interest (see Section 119 in D&C, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-test...). While tithing was paid in the past with animals, food, etc, that just doesn't scale beyond local communities.
Yes, our church does use funds for advocacy, but it's hard to ascribe pure malice to a church that spends $1 billion annually on humanitarian aid every year, and is expanding affordable education to tens of thousands of people in developing countries.
Not all of us agree with how much money is being held in reserve, but it's important to understand that we don't have a testimony in the church because of what we get from it, or even agree with all policies, but rather because of a personal witness of its truth. It is true that some stay in our church because of social pressure, and I'm not going to defend that practice. But, that's not what our core doctrine teaches.
I understand that it's easy to think that we are all a homogenous group that all thinks the same, but peek under the surface and you'll find many of us who find the core doctrine so compelling that we are willing to stick with the church and to enact change in constructive instead of destructive ways.
Where did your number come from? I've just read "Globally, the church boasted that it had spent US$40m on humanitarian aid in one year (2015)" from https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/full-page/behind-the-nz-m... (seems like a good article)
Bing says as of 2023, the church's net worth is estimated to be around $265 billion which would be income of $16 billion (assuming a conservative 6% annual ROI). I'm unsure how correct those numbers are since the article says (US$15.7b land and US$100b investment fund).
The Mormon church earns $7 billion a year from tithing. Even if humanistic aid were $1 billion - it is a relatively poor percentage.
Let's consider healthcare to be humanitarian aid (yeah, obviously not external). Governments spend 30% of taxes on healthcare, and people pay 30% in taxes so we might estimate that people are paying appromx 10% on humanitarian aid via their government. Although perhaps that is just a form of insurance you've paid in and you get paid out. I'm unsure of the statistics but my guess is that most people pay a lot in and get a little out due to skewed distribution of sickness costs. With health insurance the best deal is to never get sick and never claim (and your premiums help the poor bastards that do get sick - the best outcome a society could hope for). Note that health insurance in New Zealand is wildly different from the US model.
I've had a little experience watching how the Mormon church acts in Samoa which is definitely not a wealthy country. I would be interested to know how much of that humanitarian aid was paid for by countries that needed the humanitarian aid? The equivalent to paying in and getting paid out (with the church claiming doing good with the paying out, but not talking about what it keeps).
I'm a little cynical that there's some dissimulation by the LDS church - they are not well known for frank openness.
A lot of money also goes towards subsidizing education (All the BYUs, including the online classes that are targeted towards developing countries), building churches and temples, supporting local congregation budgets, and supporting church members who are financially insecure (I'm not sure if they counted that last part in the 2024 summary though).
> I've had a little experience watching how the Mormon church acts in Samoa which is definitely not a wealthy country.
Looks like they have a summary here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/serve/caring/annual-summ...
> I'm a little cynical that there's some dissimulation by the LDS church - they are not well known for frank openness.
Yeah, it would be nice if they were more transparent here. I understand the legal reasoning--essentially security by obscurity--but it's frustrating to only get peeks and glimpses. I don't blame you for some healthy cynicism.
[1] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/serve/caring/annual-summ...
It’s up to personal interpretation. Some do before tax, some do after. Some only pay tithing on their regular income (i.e. from a normal job) but not on “already tithed” income (e.g. birthday money from parents), while others do it differently.
The church’s stance is that they say you should pay 10% tithing on your income. They don’t define income. And all they do is ask “do you pay a full tithe?” And it’s up to you to decide if you do or not based on how you view what “income” means.
And in terms of aggregate outcomes, Utah’s results are impressive. The LDS apparently does a better job teaching kids to read than the government here in Maryland.
That's because you're not counting the money the church spends to replace government programs, which in Utah is significant.
Now that the internet has destroyed local community and trust in institutions, what will conservatism do?
You can get a lot done when you establish regressive control structures for enforcement. Generally speaking, most people usually don't want that trade-off.
Worth noting here that the church additionally spends north of $1 billion annually on humanitarian aid across the globe [1] (separate from the redistributions to the poor mentioned by OP). Aid is provided independent of religious affiliation.
[1] https://philanthropies.churchofjesuschrist.org/humanitarian-...
*: searches suggest the wealth of the church to be around $265 billion. So their members give 10% annually to the church and the church gives less than 0.5% of their total wealth to the poor (but mostly to other Mormons or prospective converts). If you're wondering why they keep this massive horde of wealth, it's because they think it'll be needed for the apocalypse. Yes, it's for the apocalypse.
You are incorrect saying that you have to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the actual name of the "Mormon church") to receive these benefits. In some cases there will be conditions, like if you want to attend one of the church universities you will need to promise to abstain from alcohol (one example), but becoming a baptized member of the church is not required
I would say it's very accurate. They are forced to share their wealth to get into the Kingdom of God. The only choice they have is to not go to heaven. I'd say that's being forced, just by a different power.
> but becoming a baptized member of the church is not required
You don't get the BYU discount unless you're baptized.
It is neither optional or excludable.
This is why the monopoly man choosing to share caviar with his family or paying dues to a yacht club does not make them a socialist. The monopoly man retains full agency over who they share with.
Even the non-member BYU tuition is subsidized and a much lower price than other comparable colleges. But really, BYU is not the best example of Mormon charity, it can only accommodate a limited number of students.
Even the poorest Americans can afford coconut oil and Fennel oil.
There's no reason to drink that shit (fluoride), there's no reason to brush with it either.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2013/05/portland_fluorid...
Portland is a bit odd when it comes to water; they drained an entire (uncovered, open to the elements) city reservoir because a guy peed in it. True story. I assume they have signs for the birds flying aloft to not defecate over the reservoir.
Edit: It appears many posts all over this thread are being brigaded with downvotes. Why? Is Big Fluoride in trouble? Grow up. You people are brain damaged (possibly from fluoride).
I get that this was a great public health benefit before fluoride in toothpaste became widely available but is this still the case? Couldn't it be argued that most of the benefit comes from brushing your teeth?
Tea has enormous amounts of flouride depending on where it is grown and they aren't banning that yet.
Put another way, for issues to rise to the level of public policy, they have to affect a meaningful number of people in a region. In the US, tea-induced fluorisis is extremely rare.
Also, dentists have no neuroscience background! So let's take recommendations by dentists to ingest a neurotoxin with deep deep skepticism, shall we?
Vitamin D is also quite toxic, would you celebrate banning that as well?
Not at the levels it is found in water in the USA. Those studies were done in countries with much higher levels of fluoride.
Anyway, lots of things in this world that are bad for people in high doses are beneficial in smaller doses. Water is a great example, as are salt and sugar.
With fluoride, relatively small amounts in the drinking water is known to cause lower IQ.
But somehow even smaller amounts are safer?
Do you just not see the problem here or are you purposely blinding yourself to the reality because of your political biases? Is it an unconscious thing for you?
You are simply not being rational. You are making excuses and excuses for holding a belief you have had and probably defended for years. And now you are too invested to left the belief go. Just let it go already.
> We know the biological mechanisms in the body that makes use of salt and sugar.
We also know it in fluoride: https://www.nidcr.nih.gov/health-info/fluoride/the-story-of-...
> But somehow even smaller amounts are safer
Yes, that's how nature works. Take a look at some typical prescription pharmaceutical doses sometime; many of them are awfully small. Like micrograms per kilogram.
The other thing to consider is that in life we balance risks and benefits with the aim of achieving a net positive. Most things that are good have some risks, and many things that are bad have some benefits. We know the benefit of water fluoridation, and the value to society is large. Meanwhile, we suspect there is a possible drawback of water fluoridation, though there is not a lot of data, and the risk is small at the amounts added to municipal water supplies. Nobody has been able to characterize the offsetting loss to any degree of certainty, so we cannot effectively recalculate the cost/benefit analysis.
To a degree, it becomes impossible for them on a subconscious level because of the social costs involved.
This is a mass psychology problem, not a scientific evidence problem.
It's too convenient to discount people who disagree with you as being "politically biased" and "blinded." A better explanation is that they observed the same input you do and concluded the benefit is still worth the risk.
And if it turns out that millions of Americans became stupid because of fluoride and not, say, bad parenting, phone addiction, and manipulative media, I won't be too proud to admit you were right.
For reference, adding lead to fuel was far, far worse.
I suspect it is hard to control for confounding correlations - specifically I would guess it is more likely that poorer areas are flouridated. HV electric power lines and nuclear stations have the issue that poorer people are more likely to live next to those, and poorer people have have worse health outcomes so it falsely appears that both of those cause the health problems.
The US has had water fluoridation for 65 years, affecting 346 million people. That's a pretty big god damn sample size and long amount of time in which to observe effects. If we still have no proof of significant negative health effects, it's probably not bad for you.
That said: you can always lower the amount of fluoride if it turns out the local area already gets a lot of fluoride from other sources. You don't need to ban it, you can just lower the levels.
So please don't defend this decision by Utah. They're being children.
Using a prospective Canadian birth cohort, we found that estimated maternal exposure to higher fluoride levels during pregnancy was associated with lower IQ scores in children. This association was supported by converging findings from 2 measures of fluoride exposure during pregnancy. A difference in MUFSG spanning the interquartile range for the entire sample (ie, 0.33 mg/L), which is roughly the difference in MUFSG concentration for pregnant women living in a fluoridated vs a nonfluoridated community, was associated with a 1.5-point IQ decrement among boys. An increment of 0.70 mg/L in MUFSG concentration was associated with a 3-point IQ decrement in boys; about half of the women living in a fluoridated community have a MUFSG equal to or greater than 0.70 mg/L. These results did not change appreciably after controlling for other key exposures such as lead, arsenic, and mercury.
To our knowledge, this study is the first to estimate fluoride exposure in a large birth cohort receiving optimally fluoridated water. These findings are consistent with that of a Mexican birth cohort study that reported a 6.3 decrement in IQ in preschool-aged children compared with a 4.5 decrement for boys in our study for every 1 mg/L of MUF.10 The findings of the current study are also concordant with ecologic studies that have shown an association between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower intellectual abilities in children.7,8,26 Collectively, these findings support that fluoride exposure during pregnancy may be associated with neurocognitive deficits.
2. A 1.5-3 IQ level difference is not noticeable in any practical way. Things like birth order have a more significant impact on IQ.
3. Comparing Canadian children to Mexican is pretty dramatic, like comparing rich kids to poor kids; you will always see a marked difference between the two, in intelligence, in health, in crime, in all sorts of things. Mexican communities often over-fluoridate their water (I know because I grew up in Mexico and my teeth are stained because of it). Again, this is no reason to ban it, just lower it.
This finding is a suggestion of a link, it's not empirical proof. The methods and findings have many questionable aspects. You can always find some paper that suggests something random like vegetables are bad for you or something. One paper does not a water-tight case make.
The problem is there will have been a lot of confounders.
E.g. despite huge sample sizes, isolating the cause of the obesity crisis is too hard because so many different things changed at once.
The answer to the obesity crisis wasn't to ban Pizza. We don't we ban sodas and junk food at schools, which we know would have a positive impact on health. But we do ban fluoride, without proof that it will help? With actually the only scientific proof being that it would be detrimental to remove?
If people's concern is really that it might slightly lower IQ, consider that 1) IQ has been steadily increasing since the 40's, and 2) you can get better IQ by investing in education, something that we do an embarrassing job of already and need to improve on.
The other concern touted is that it might cause cancer. As we well know by now, nearly everything causes cancer.
Banning fluoride is just a move by politicians to take advantage of ignorant scared people to drum up more votes/support. It's like every other action they take to vilify something scary or unknown and then claim victory over the evil thing they purged. This isn't new, either - this clearly partisan stance was being pointed out in the 1950's when it was first being considered for nationwide use.
"After more than 70 years of investigation, there are still questions about how effective water fluoridation is at preventing dental decay and whether the possible risks are worth the benefits. Although water fluoridation undoubtedly did improve the dental health of many children in the 1960s and 1970s, fluoride proponents were perhaps too hasty in declaring that community water fluoridation was the best (or only) solution for dental decay. A less fractious debate might have encouraged a more open discussion in which the possible harms could have been more fully discussed and other options, such as providing fluoridated toothpaste, more fully considered." - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4504307/
You got a cite for this? I keep hearing that the education interventions tried in the West have universally failed to raise IQ.