4 ms·

I'm with you until the fluoride bit. Do you have any medical evidence to suggest there's any issue with fluoride? Also why Berkey? They're extraordinarily expe

I'm with you until the fluoride bit. Do you have any medical evidence to suggest there's any issue with fluoride? Also why Berkey? They're extraordinarily expensive relative to alternatives, primarily for aesthetic gain.

snapcaster 4y ago
I don't know why everyone just accepts uncritically the water fluoridation stuff. It seems like as a culture we're re-examining so many things we incorrectly thought was "safe" but water fluoridation seems to still be a "sacred cow". I'm guessing it's hangover from Birch Society people being against it, but seems weird to just assume it's fine (especially when looking into the somewhat shady origins of the program)
- KoftaBob 4y ago
  1. Is it actually "accepted uncritically", or has there just been no meaningful evidence that the risks of water fluoridation outweigh the benefits? If there has been quality research showing the risks outweigh the benefits, care to share? 2. What are the shady origins of the program?
- Spivak 4y ago
  What shady origins? It was done because because of the horrible state of dental health in the US. "To join the armed services, men had to have six opposing teeth in their upper and lower jaws; in 1941, almost 10% of recruits were rejected for this reason alone" Like it doesn't even matter if army recruits is a skewed sample, young men not having 6 pairs of teeth that touch is insane. "In the early 1950s, two public health researchers stated that on average young men between the ages of 20 and 35 years had already lost an average of 4.2 teeth and that 90% of them were in need of bridges or full or partial dentures." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504307/ The authoritative source of water fluoridation is https://www.york.ac.uk/media/crd/crdreport18.pdf https://www.york.ac.uk/media/crd/crdreport18.pdf which, broadly concludes that there isn't any strong evidence of harm.
  - antisthenes 4y ago
    > "In the early 1950s, two public health researchers stated that on average young men between the ages of 20 and 35 years had already lost an average of 4.2 teeth and that 90% of them were in need of bridges or full or partial dentures." Do wisdom teeth count? Because if they do, I am already missing 4 teeth, in addition to 4 more that were taken out to help make space for the rest of my teeth to prevent crowding. So missing 4.2 teeth on average doesn't actually sound as bad as you make it out.
- slenk 4y ago
  Flouridation has been studied and scuritnized pretty heavily since the 40s. No one is just assuming it's fine. It is. The positives of flouridation far outweigh any of the negative consequences that could occur. But I have never heard of anyone with a flouride problem in my life.
nerdponx 4y ago
Indeed, I'd sooner ask about chorine/chloramine or any number of dissolved contaminants from pipes and whatever environmental stuff doesn't get filtered out in the water supply. We probably shouldn't be adding fluoride to our water either (questionable medical benefit at best), but as far as things go that my body really doesn't want in it, fluoride is probably not the worst thing in my tap water: https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=MA3035000 https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=MA3035000
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Dove 4y ago
Oh gosh. I didn't mean to touch off a controversy about fluoride. As I said, I suspect, but I don't claim to know. But if you want to know why I suspect, here is my reasoning: I can subjectively tell good and bad water apart in double blind tests over a period of several hours, so I know that what's happening to me isn't just in my head. So -- I don't know whether it's fluoride or not, but it's definitely something. The reason to suspect fluoride specifically is that a working Berkey "black" filter still produces "bad" water for me -- the white filter stage seems to be necessary. Twice now, I've had a white filter go bad on me that I didn't realize had happened, felt like crap, tested the water, found tap levels of fluoride, replaced it, and felt much better. The white filters are advertised to get fluoride and arsenic, so that makes it a prime suspect. I don't know exactly what else they might get that the problem might be, but there are a lot of suspects the black filter would block, and it's none of them. So if the problem isn't fluoride, it's something that that fluoride is a good proxy for in this setting. As the problem I'm trying to fix is low key dehydration (as opposed to avoiding something medical like fluorosis), I don't expect there would be any medical research pointing to fluoride as a culprit. Neither will there be any saying it's safe for my purposes. I have found that while medicine as a field is excellent for healing injuries and saving lives, it's sort of terrible at optimizing health. What I do know is that I drink a lot more water than is typical -- about two gallons a day when I am not nursing, and much more when I am. I also know that the studies that proscribe fluoride levels in drinking water are ancient, optimized narrowly for dental health, and based on average intake. I know as well that the difference between an effective dose of fluoride and a dose considered potentially dangerous is about an order of magnitude -- right about the difference between my water intake and what is typical. (And as an aside, it blows my mind that we make formula for babies with water like this, dosed based on evidence like that. They don't even have teeth!) Hence, it's a prime suspect, but even if it turned out to not be that, I would still filter my water very aggressively because something real is definitely happening to me, and that definitely fixes it. My choice of Berkey is that I want a maximally aggressive solution. I'm not looking to save money. I'm looking to nuke whatever it is that is causing me problems, and am perfectly fine with paying a bit extra to nuke everything. I bought one actually originally concerned about PFCs; discovering the filtered water made me feel much better was an unanticipated happy accident.
- 4y ago
xupybd 4y ago
My wife grew up in Vietnam. No fluoride in her water (she grew up on bottle water). The dental work is expensive and regular.
- sys32768 4y ago
  We moved to Montana when my child was a teen, and the dentist immediately remarked that my child must have grown up somewhere else because of her teeth being in such good condition. Most local teens grew up on well water and their teeth suffered for it.
  - pkphilip 4y ago
    There are lots of people with excellent teeth in different parts of the world - and most of them are not using flouridated water. I think the diet does make a difference in dental health https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Countries-with-Endemic-Fluoride-in-Drinking-Water_fig1_338497467 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Countries-with-Endemic-F...
- oifjsidjf 4y ago
  Many ancient cultures had no flouride and had perfect teeth. It's the diet, flouride is a bandaid. Read Weston Price's Nutrition and physical degeneration.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    > and had perfect teeth. Some support for this, some rebuttal.[0] But yes, diet does seem to be acknowledged as very impactful. 0: https://archive.ph/RWAO9 https://archive.ph/RWAO9
- valarauko 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, why would growing up on bottled water lead to terrible dental outcomes? I grew up in India, where the water supply isn't fluoridated, and I didn't see dental health that was significantly worse than the US. We probably got most of our fluoride from ingesting bits of fluoridated toothpaste.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
What alternatives to Berkey do you suggest?
- etrautmann 4y ago
  I use a Pur and it’s generally fine.
- seanp2k2 4y ago
  APEC makes good under-sink and countertop (for e.g. apartments) reverse osmosis systems that will get you to 0ppm TDS.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
I don't know if technologies have changed much in order to change this calculus meaningfully since I last checked, but here's why I like berkey filters: 1. Although filters are expensive upfront, they last a very long time and are cost-effective as a result 2. The large containers keep clean water accessible and at hand for things like cooking, and not just drinking 3. The simple design makes it so, were something to go wrong, I could craft my own filters onto their plumbing once the filters are spent. A ceramic filter would be trivial to make, for example. 4. Their filters last a long time so I don't need to frequently buy disposable filters and generate more waste. The waste from their filters is also minimal and predominantly biodegradable. 5. The system is low tech. It'll clean rain water in a pinch with no electricity. I don't need anything special to keep it working. 6. If the filters slow down, I can clean them to get them working better again. This makes them very versatile for off grid use where the inputs into the system might not be as clean as city water. This would ruin a lot of filters on the market. 7. The aesthetic gains!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
willcipriano 4y ago
Berkey is kind of a scam: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/big-berkey-water-filter-system/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/big-berkey-water-... > But in our test on chloroform, the Black Berkey filters performed poorly, lowering it by just 13% in our test sample > New Millennium Concepts, however, claims—right on the box the filters come in—that the Black Berkey filter reduces chloroform by 99.8%, to “below lab detectable limits.” > However, he said that they stopped meeting the NSF removal standard after approximately 1,100 gallons of filtering—barely more than a third of the 3,000-gallon lifespan New Millennium claims for the Black Berkey filters.

snapcaster 4y ago

I don't know why everyone just accepts uncritically the water fluoridation stuff. It seems like as a culture we're re-examining so many things we incorrectly thought was "safe" but water fluoridation seems to still be a "sacred cow". I'm guessing it's hangover from Birch Society people being against it, but seems weird to just assume it's fine (especially when looking into the somewhat shady origins of the program)

KoftaBob 4y ago
1. Is it actually "accepted uncritically", or has there just been no meaningful evidence that the risks of water fluoridation outweigh the benefits? If there has been quality research showing the risks outweigh the benefits, care to share? 2. What are the shady origins of the program?
Spivak 4y ago
What shady origins? It was done because because of the horrible state of dental health in the US. "To join the armed services, men had to have six opposing teeth in their upper and lower jaws; in 1941, almost 10% of recruits were rejected for this reason alone" Like it doesn't even matter if army recruits is a skewed sample, young men not having 6 pairs of teeth that touch is insane. "In the early 1950s, two public health researchers stated that on average young men between the ages of 20 and 35 years had already lost an average of 4.2 teeth and that 90% of them were in need of bridges or full or partial dentures." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504307/ The authoritative source of water fluoridation is https://www.york.ac.uk/media/crd/crdreport18.pdf https://www.york.ac.uk/media/crd/crdreport18.pdf which, broadly concludes that there isn't any strong evidence of harm.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  > "In the early 1950s, two public health researchers stated that on average young men between the ages of 20 and 35 years had already lost an average of 4.2 teeth and that 90% of them were in need of bridges or full or partial dentures." Do wisdom teeth count? Because if they do, I am already missing 4 teeth, in addition to 4 more that were taken out to help make space for the rest of my teeth to prevent crowding. So missing 4.2 teeth on average doesn't actually sound as bad as you make it out.
slenk 4y ago
Flouridation has been studied and scuritnized pretty heavily since the 40s. No one is just assuming it's fine. It is. The positives of flouridation far outweigh any of the negative consequences that could occur. But I have never heard of anyone with a flouride problem in my life.

nerdponx 4y ago

Indeed, I'd sooner ask about chorine/chloramine or any number of dissolved contaminants from pipes and whatever environmental stuff doesn't get filtered out in the water supply. We probably shouldn't be adding fluoride to our water either (questionable medical benefit at best), but as far as things go that my body really doesn't want in it, fluoride is probably not the worst thing in my tap water: https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=MA3035000 https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=MA3035000

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Dove 4y ago

Oh gosh. I didn't mean to touch off a controversy about fluoride. As I said, I suspect, but I don't claim to know. But if you want to know why I suspect, here is my reasoning: I can subjectively tell good and bad water apart in double blind tests over a period of several hours, so I know that what's happening to me isn't just in my head. So -- I don't know whether it's fluoride or not, but it's definitely something. The reason to suspect fluoride specifically is that a working Berkey "black" filter still produces "bad" water for me -- the white filter stage seems to be necessary. Twice now, I've had a white filter go bad on me that I didn't realize had happened, felt like crap, tested the water, found tap levels of fluoride, replaced it, and felt much better. The white filters are advertised to get fluoride and arsenic, so that makes it a prime suspect. I don't know exactly what else they might get that the problem might be, but there are a lot of suspects the black filter would block, and it's none of them. So if the problem isn't fluoride, it's something that that fluoride is a good proxy for in this setting. As the problem I'm trying to fix is low key dehydration (as opposed to avoiding something medical like fluorosis), I don't expect there would be any medical research pointing to fluoride as a culprit. Neither will there be any saying it's safe for my purposes. I have found that while medicine as a field is excellent for healing injuries and saving lives, it's sort of terrible at optimizing health. What I do know is that I drink a lot more water than is typical -- about two gallons a day when I am not nursing, and much more when I am. I also know that the studies that proscribe fluoride levels in drinking water are ancient, optimized narrowly for dental health, and based on average intake. I know as well that the difference between an effective dose of fluoride and a dose considered potentially dangerous is about an order of magnitude -- right about the difference between my water intake and what is typical. (And as an aside, it blows my mind that we make formula for babies with water like this, dosed based on evidence like that. They don't even have teeth!) Hence, it's a prime suspect, but even if it turned out to not be that, I would still filter my water very aggressively because something real is definitely happening to me, and that definitely fixes it. My choice of Berkey is that I want a maximally aggressive solution. I'm not looking to save money. I'm looking to nuke whatever it is that is causing me problems, and am perfectly fine with paying a bit extra to nuke everything. I bought one actually originally concerned about PFCs; discovering the filtered water made me feel much better was an unanticipated happy accident.

4y ago

xupybd 4y ago

My wife grew up in Vietnam. No fluoride in her water (she grew up on bottle water). The dental work is expensive and regular.

sys32768 4y ago
We moved to Montana when my child was a teen, and the dentist immediately remarked that my child must have grown up somewhere else because of her teeth being in such good condition. Most local teens grew up on well water and their teeth suffered for it.
- pkphilip 4y ago
  There are lots of people with excellent teeth in different parts of the world - and most of them are not using flouridated water. I think the diet does make a difference in dental health https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Countries-with-Endemic-Fluoride-in-Drinking-Water_fig1_338497467 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Countries-with-Endemic-F...
oifjsidjf 4y ago
Many ancient cultures had no flouride and had perfect teeth. It's the diet, flouride is a bandaid. Read Weston Price's Nutrition and physical degeneration.
- runnerup 4y ago
  > and had perfect teeth. Some support for this, some rebuttal.[0] But yes, diet does seem to be acknowledged as very impactful. 0: https://archive.ph/RWAO9 https://archive.ph/RWAO9
valarauko 4y ago
Out of curiosity, why would growing up on bottled water lead to terrible dental outcomes? I grew up in India, where the water supply isn't fluoridated, and I didn't see dental health that was significantly worse than the US. We probably got most of our fluoride from ingesting bits of fluoridated toothpaste.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

What alternatives to Berkey do you suggest?

etrautmann 4y ago
I use a Pur and it’s generally fine.
seanp2k2 4y ago
APEC makes good under-sink and countertop (for e.g. apartments) reverse osmosis systems that will get you to 0ppm TDS.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

I don't know if technologies have changed much in order to change this calculus meaningfully since I last checked, but here's why I like berkey filters: 1. Although filters are expensive upfront, they last a very long time and are cost-effective as a result 2. The large containers keep clean water accessible and at hand for things like cooking, and not just drinking 3. The simple design makes it so, were something to go wrong, I could craft my own filters onto their plumbing once the filters are spent. A ceramic filter would be trivial to make, for example. 4. Their filters last a long time so I don't need to frequently buy disposable filters and generate more waste. The waste from their filters is also minimal and predominantly biodegradable. 5. The system is low tech. It'll clean rain water in a pinch with no electricity. I don't need anything special to keep it working. 6. If the filters slow down, I can clean them to get them working better again. This makes them very versatile for off grid use where the inputs into the system might not be as clean as city water. This would ruin a lot of filters on the market. 7. The aesthetic gains!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

willcipriano 4y ago

Berkey is kind of a scam: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/big-berkey-water-filter-system/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/big-berkey-water-... > But in our test on chloroform, the Black Berkey filters performed poorly, lowering it by just 13% in our test sample > New Millennium Concepts, however, claims—right on the box the filters come in—that the Black Berkey filter reduces chloroform by 99.8%, to “below lab detectable limits.” > However, he said that they stopped meeting the NSF removal standard after approximately 1,100 gallons of filtering—barely more than a third of the 3,000-gallon lifespan New Millennium claims for the Black Berkey filters.