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Comment by artvandelai | Hacker News Reader

Adding fluoride to water was revolutionary in the 1940s, but its benefits have significantly declined since fluoride toothpaste became common in the 1970s. While fluoridation made sense when products containing fluoride weren't widely available, it is much less effective and necessary now. Sure, some countries and communities may still see benefits from it, but widespread fluoridation doesn't seem necessary in many parts of the world.

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Not true. Every time I see a dentist here in Queensland (non-fluoridated water) he asks me where else I lived as my teeth are so much better than what he usually sees, and if drilling my teeth are much harder than most Queenslanders.

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.

You're refuting a statment based on studies and statistics by anecdotal evedince. Also, GP never denied that flouridation is still helpful for non-brushing residents.

Poster claimed fluoridation was unnessecary in many parts of the world. This is true of places with natural fluoridation. But not everyone has access to fluoridated toothpaste, or even toothpaste. To assume otherwise is assuming everyone is neurotypical in a developed country.

And you're assuming that every neurodivergent person can't tolerate brushing their teeth.

I also don't see what access to toothpaste has anything to do with neurodivergent conditions.

No, he’s assuming some neurodivergent people can’t tolerate brushing.

A dentist sees thousands of patients -a big sample size! Calling it anecdotal evidence is reductive.

This isn't an opinion or take given by a dentist, it was given by a patient.

It was a patient reporting their dentist's opinion.

The real question is, fluoridated water in the past or not, how is any non-brushing patient being told they're teeth are top tier?

Brushing is much less important for your teeth than your genetics and/or nutrition.

True. Part of the reason is aggressive saliva that just doesn't let some bacteria live and thus keeps the teeth healthy for longer. Dry mouth is literally damaging your teeth as well.

Anything to back that up? And even if it's true, the person would logically still not be to tier as the people with good nutrition and genetics who also brush would likely be better.

As a recent QLD convert thanks for this. I had been wondering why the water up here was so hard.

Hi. Check where you actually are located in Qld, because chances are you are fluoridated just fine. https://www.health.qld.gov.au/public-health/industry-environ...

> I don't use a toothbrush or toothpaste, and haven't ever really, as my ASD makes it unbearable.

99% of the world does brush their teeth, so I don't see how this is relevant to their health.

No, no they do not. Where do you make up these statistics?

25% of the world population do not have access to drinkable water[0], brushing their teeth is a luxury for them.

[0]: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/03/22/un-26-of-world-lacks-...

You need zero water to brush your teeth with toothpaste. Many dentists even say it’s preferable to not rinse your brush before and not rinse your mouth after.

So when you go to brush your teeth you don't wet the toothpaste and toothbrush from the tap? Is it the fear of tap water that centers around this? I am curious about this as it seems the answers carry some cultural significance.

No - toothpaste is in part an abrasive. If it's wetter, the abrasive is less effective at removing biofilm/plaque, and the chemical components are diluted in situ. Your mouth is plenty wet enough as-is.

That implies toothpaste isn't designed with this water dilution in mind, as that is common practice. If I don't wet it beforehand it's too thick and doesn't get distributed as easily.

They can also just move where water is, right?

When you do so, which I do too, is the amount of fluoride you potentially swallow more than that in fluoridated water?

do they live in Utah?

You see there's a difference between world and Utah/USA. In Utah nearly 100% of the population has access to drinking water.

Are you in FNQ? Around Brissie and the Goldie we're all flouridated.

I've heard similar rumours about army recruitment in the 80s though.

Black Tea has an astounding amount of fluoride. You dentist is stupid for only asking where you live and not what you eat and drink.

There's a huge difference between "no longer as necessary" and "let's ban it".

There is difference between banning and just deciding putting fluoride in public drinking water too. Who are they banning? Themselves?

Water treatment is usually done at the municipal or regional level. The state government is declaring that towns and cities may not do this. The alternative would be each and every municipal water authority deciding on its own.

The horror.

Yeah but anyone can buy fluoride toothpaste so not really banned.

Not really when it comes to government initiatives. They'd like the water plants to stop adding fluoride, so they make a policy that the plants should not add fluoride.

That wouldn’t require a ban. The state banned it because some towns wanted to add it to their water supply. It’s literally big government stopping the will of the people.

Of course it does. Their goal was to stop it from being added, including in said towns.

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.

Democracy and big government aren’t in opposition. Social Security for example is extremely popular.

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...

You can add fluoride in your own water if you want to. Nobody is preventing your own freedom to drink fluoride.

Nobody's preventing you from going and finding your own water source either. The government is too much of a nanny state for putting flouride in water for public health, but it's just fine for providing water to you in the first place?

In the USA it’s generally illegal to collect rain.

That’s definitely true for some places but how are you measuring that? By population or perhaps state and territory?

Where I live the city subsidizes rain collection barrels.

Where do you live where you can collect rain at a quantity that would allow you to forgo central water?

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.

My state provides rainwater collection guidance in the plumbing code. We also have wells. I use a well.

Which state is this? Some states such as Massachusetts and Maine, will allow you to have a well, but then you cannot have central water. Thus, the dichotomy is irrelevant since it's not like someone actually has a choose, since it's done on the municipal level.

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.

You're being actively misleading. Like on a scale of normal people to politicians to liars you're at least in the politicians range.

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.

> 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.

> Can you have private well water in Boston, Hartford or Portsmouth? The answer is no

Why do you think that is?

Well you wrote that in the US it’s generally illegal to collect rain water and I don’t think that is true.

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.

that's fair - I should've said that it's illegal to collect enough rain to not need municipal water.

> 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.

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)

We are talking about drinking, e.g potable. Your links explicitly say don’t collect to drink.

That's not true in general especially if you weight it with population in mind, such as the wet states of NJ, PA, MD etc. that have more population; though there are areas where the states have passed laws concerning water rights where it is true(CO, WY).

Defaults matter. Most people won't care or know about the change.

Yes that's where the freedom of citizens comes into play.

Nobody is preventing the citizens from digging their own well and ensuring their own water supply and having bad teeth.

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!

No, they're banning communities from making the decision for themselves. Government so small it fits right into your drinking tap!

That argument works both ways. You can also source your own water if you don't want municipal water.

Except that I am already paying for the water coming out from my tab, so I expect it to be free of extra chemicals since I pay for it.

You can also remove fluoride from your own water if you want to. Although I don't know if there are any filters that can distinguish between naturally occurring fluoride (ok) and fluoride added by the government (evil).

This requires a Reverse-Osmosis filter which is super expensive. So if you really want to give fluoride, I'd be happy for the government to hand out free sodium fluoride tabs for whoever wants it, in exchange to not force the water to have fluoride by default. See, we get the best of both worlds?

How much of your water treatment do you want to do yourself? I assume you don’t want the ‘government’ to send you completely untreated water. So what is the problem with fluoridation as compared to all the other uncontroversial ways in which your tap water has been treated? All kinds of stuff gets added to and removed from the water.

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.

The issue is that putting fluoride in the water isn't really "treating" the water. It's in essence acting a medication (see my paragraph below for a justification of this), to the benefit of people's teeth. As far as I know, every other chemical added / removed from the water is done for the purpose of the taste of the water, protecting the pipes which serve the water, or disinfecting the water. In this way, it's different from all the other chemicals, and there is also some limited opposition to other chemicals (e.g. debate on the use of UV / chlorine / ozone).

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-...]

Yes, why don't the poor just eat cake when they can't get bread?

Local governments are prohibited from adding fluoride to their drinking water, even if their community wants it.

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

It’s still necessary. It is crucial when kids teeth are forming, and brushing does not achieve the same effect.

I find the lack of science in this thread disturbing.

Kids really suck at brushing their teeth

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