And dentists rejoiced at their newfound source of income! /s
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.
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.
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.
As for “fluoride treatments”, those are applied to the teeth, not drank. They are not a substitute for regular brushing.
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.
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?
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/fluoride-childrens-health-gran...
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
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/...
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.
because everybody drinks the same amount of water right?
ridiculous position to argue from.
HN Comments were very credulous before the election. Shows how flexible belief in science is.
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.*