9 ms·

Ironically there seems to be no shortage of fluoride conspiracy theories or “waters turning the frogs gay” but actual chemicals and toxins … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Rebelgecko 3y ago
I think it's just 2 sides of the same coin. Fluoride is an actual chemical, and the Alex Jones "turning the frogs gay" comment was about a study that linked the presence of atrazine (a pesticide legal in the US but banned in the EU) in a water supply with the demasculinization of frogs (FWIW there's been replication issues when other people ran the same experiment).
- orangepurple 3y ago
  https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/transsexual-frogs https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/transsexual-fr...
- autoexec 3y ago
  Tyrone_Hayes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes) and his research is a wild rabbit hole to get lost in. You can view his talks on youtube. The guy turned down a lot of cash to get the word out about atrazine. We could use a lot more scientists like him.
purpleblue 3y ago
The chemical is atrazine and it tests it did turn frogs from male to female. We can quibble over whether or not dosage matters but I think it should also be uncontroversial that using a chemical that disrupts hormones like that should not be used on food that we consume.
- causationisthex 3y ago
  Is there a website that shows the chemicals and their allowed/disallowed uses by country? Would love to see the differences.
- Clent 3y ago
  I cannot imagine we'd have many chemicals left if we banned any that caused a hormone change in non-human biology. It is silly to be worried about things because the talking heads on the radio and tv told you to be afraid or worse because read it on the internet.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    The company that makes atrazine (an aromatase promoter) knows that it causes increases in cancer in humans. That's why they (under other names) also sell cancer drugs that work by being aromatase inhibitors. They'll sell the poison and then sell you the "cure". If you don't trust talking heads on TV or radio, what about scientists on youtube? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0IXMTFY9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0IXMTFY9Q
chollida1 3y ago
Flouride doesn't need conspiracy theories to be considered dangerous. That debate is definitely going on and has no consensus as evidenced by the fact that some cities are still removing flouride from their water and some are adding it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6195894/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6195894/
- Conscat 3y ago
  There is no evidence that fluoride is remotely dangerous in reasonable quantities, only in ridiculous quantities that are impossible to reach under normal circumstances.
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    Young children chug toothpaste
    - thfuran 3y ago
      What does that have to do with water treatment?
      - orangepurple 3y ago
        Only flouride ingestion
  - chollida1 3y ago
    > There is no evidence that fluoride is remotely dangerous in reasonable quantities, only in ridiculous quantities that are impossible to reach under normal circumstances. This is the internet and you could be a Phd whose researched flouride your entire life but the internet, and some very respectable sources at that, just straight up disagree with you. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34597567/#:~:text=Excess%20amounts%20of%20fluoride%20ions,related%20problems%2C%20and%20chronicle%20issues https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34597567/#:~:text=Excess%20a.... https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluoridated-drinking-water/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluor... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8
kelipso 3y ago
Fluoride lowering IQ is not a conspiracy theory, it's a proven fact. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8
- ekleraki 3y ago
  From the ąrticle [1] references [2]: > fluoride intake levels (0.93 [0.43] vs 0.30 [0.26] mg of fluoride per day; P = .001). > Children had mean (SD) Full Scale IQ scores of 107.16 (13.26), range 52-143, with girls showing significantly higher mean (SD) scores than boys: 109.56 (11.96) vs 104.61 (14.09); P = .001. The average IQ of people in the UK is 99.12 and in Canada 99.52 [3]. Let us suppose that the hypothesis is true; it is expected then that in a country with higher average consumption of fluoride, we would, consistently, see lower average IQ. > Above-average consumption of tea, as recorded in Great Britain, could result in fluoride intakes as high as 8.9 mg per day [4]; We observe that the average consumption of Fluoride is about an order of magnitude larger in the UK, yet, IQs are almost identical. Which hints that if such a relationship exists, it is not as pronounced (5 IQ points) as the article claims. Maybe somehow women in the UK consume 20x less Fluoride when they are pregnant (what's the prob of this?), maybe people in the UK are just built different and their superior genes compensate and without the Fluoride they'd be at 104-105ish. Given history and similarity between societies, this looks unlikely. So until a causal mechanism is found, I am inclined to disagree over the "proven fact" statement. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 [2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2748634 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... [3] https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country/#united-kingdom https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country... [4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.2740340514 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.2740340...
  - justrealist 3y ago
    > it is expected then that in a country with higher average consumption of fluoride There are an unbelievable number of confounders here. Rich countries add fluoride to their water!
pengaru 3y ago
The turning frogs gay is about endocrine disruptors [0]. I'm not aware of fluoride being on that list though. Clearly fluoride has health risks if my local water municipality had to get federal assistance building out a fluoride removal plant to treat its ground water supplies, but as always the dose makes the poison... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor

Rebelgecko 3y ago

I think it's just 2 sides of the same coin. Fluoride is an actual chemical, and the Alex Jones "turning the frogs gay" comment was about a study that linked the presence of atrazine (a pesticide legal in the US but banned in the EU) in a water supply with the demasculinization of frogs (FWIW there's been replication issues when other people ran the same experiment).

orangepurple 3y ago
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/transsexual-frogs https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/transsexual-fr...
autoexec 3y ago
Tyrone_Hayes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes) and his research is a wild rabbit hole to get lost in. You can view his talks on youtube. The guy turned down a lot of cash to get the word out about atrazine. We could use a lot more scientists like him.

purpleblue 3y ago

The chemical is atrazine and it tests it did turn frogs from male to female. We can quibble over whether or not dosage matters but I think it should also be uncontroversial that using a chemical that disrupts hormones like that should not be used on food that we consume.

causationisthex 3y ago
Is there a website that shows the chemicals and their allowed/disallowed uses by country? Would love to see the differences.
Clent 3y ago
I cannot imagine we'd have many chemicals left if we banned any that caused a hormone change in non-human biology. It is silly to be worried about things because the talking heads on the radio and tv told you to be afraid or worse because read it on the internet.
- autoexec 3y ago
  The company that makes atrazine (an aromatase promoter) knows that it causes increases in cancer in humans. That's why they (under other names) also sell cancer drugs that work by being aromatase inhibitors. They'll sell the poison and then sell you the "cure". If you don't trust talking heads on TV or radio, what about scientists on youtube? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0IXMTFY9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0IXMTFY9Q

chollida1 3y ago

Flouride doesn't need conspiracy theories to be considered dangerous. That debate is definitely going on and has no consensus as evidenced by the fact that some cities are still removing flouride from their water and some are adding it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6195894/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6195894/

Conscat 3y ago
There is no evidence that fluoride is remotely dangerous in reasonable quantities, only in ridiculous quantities that are impossible to reach under normal circumstances.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  Young children chug toothpaste
  - thfuran 3y ago
    What does that have to do with water treatment?
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      Only flouride ingestion
- chollida1 3y ago
  > There is no evidence that fluoride is remotely dangerous in reasonable quantities, only in ridiculous quantities that are impossible to reach under normal circumstances. This is the internet and you could be a Phd whose researched flouride your entire life but the internet, and some very respectable sources at that, just straight up disagree with you. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34597567/#:~:text=Excess%20amounts%20of%20fluoride%20ions,related%20problems%2C%20and%20chronicle%20issues https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34597567/#:~:text=Excess%20a.... https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluoridated-drinking-water/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluor... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8

kelipso 3y ago

Fluoride lowering IQ is not a conspiracy theory, it's a proven fact. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8

ekleraki 3y ago
From the ąrticle [1] references [2]: > fluoride intake levels (0.93 [0.43] vs 0.30 [0.26] mg of fluoride per day; P = .001). > Children had mean (SD) Full Scale IQ scores of 107.16 (13.26), range 52-143, with girls showing significantly higher mean (SD) scores than boys: 109.56 (11.96) vs 104.61 (14.09); P = .001. The average IQ of people in the UK is 99.12 and in Canada 99.52 [3]. Let us suppose that the hypothesis is true; it is expected then that in a country with higher average consumption of fluoride, we would, consistently, see lower average IQ. > Above-average consumption of tea, as recorded in Great Britain, could result in fluoride intakes as high as 8.9 mg per day [4]; We observe that the average consumption of Fluoride is about an order of magnitude larger in the UK, yet, IQs are almost identical. Which hints that if such a relationship exists, it is not as pronounced (5 IQ points) as the article claims. Maybe somehow women in the UK consume 20x less Fluoride when they are pregnant (what's the prob of this?), maybe people in the UK are just built different and their superior genes compensate and without the Fluoride they'd be at 104-105ish. Given history and similarity between societies, this looks unlikely. So until a causal mechanism is found, I am inclined to disagree over the "proven fact" statement. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8 [2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2748634 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... [3] https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country/#united-kingdom https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country... [4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.2740340514 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.2740340...
- justrealist 3y ago
  > it is expected then that in a country with higher average consumption of fluoride There are an unbelievable number of confounders here. Rich countries add fluoride to their water!

pengaru 3y ago

The turning frogs gay is about endocrine disruptors [0]. I'm not aware of fluoride being on that list though. Clearly fluoride has health risks if my local water municipality had to get federal assistance building out a fluoride removal plant to treat its ground water supplies, but as always the dose makes the poison... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor