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Fluoride in our drinking water may not be as useful as it used to be
- lawls 2y agoThis better not result in another push by the Pacific Northwest about removing fluoride from drinking water. Don't rest on your laurels people, complacency leads down the path of rotting from within. It's not as useful because it's working, the things we are doing are working, keep them up. Fight tooth decay.
- smokeydoe 2y agoHow about brush your teeth with fluoride and spit it out instead?
- jweir 2y agoFluoride in the water impacts the development of teeth. Portland, where I live, is the last major city to not have fluoride in the water. So kids have to take tablets if they want the impact. But this is far less effective. Ask a dentist here. Locals have more tooth decay.
- givemeethekeys 2y agoOther American cities without fluoride in their water include Tucson, Wichita, Fresno, Albuquerque and San Jose. I wonder how their teeth are doing.
- jweir 2y agoCheck again.
- jweir 2y agoSan Jose’s added it. Albuquerque added it. Fresno removed it after having it. Tucson and Wichita does not - but Tucson’s level is about 50% of the recommended level. By comparison Portland’s is 3%. Probably why dentists see high level of tooth decay here.
- givemeethekeys 2y agoLooks like San Jose got it in the late 2010s (2017/2019 timeframe). There are lots of people on HN from that area - hopefully someone can comment on the general state of children / people's teeth prior to then.
- candiddevmike 2y agoSince we're doing anecdotes, my kids grew up on well water and have never had cavities or tooth problems. They (most of the time) brush their teeth daily, eat sugary crap, and get fluoride treatments applied yearly from the dentist (they "paint" a gel on the kids teeth, I believe this is standard in the US for all children regardless of water fluoridation).
- btreecat 2y agoWhat are the measured natural flouride levels of the well water you referenced and how did they compare to the municipal water supply? What about genetic predisposition to cavities?
- woodruffw 2y agoI’ll note that this anecdote can cut both ways: well water is just as likely to have more fluoride than fluoridated municipal water, since fluoride is naturally occurring, soluble, and commonly found in rock formations that also hold water.
- ars 2y agoDietary fluoride has a minimal impact, you need fluoride on the surface of the tooth. A fluoride rinse is much more effective that tablets or in the water.
- jweir 2y agoNot for tooth development - ie permanent teeth in children.
- kelipso 2y agoTablets that the kids ingest?? After so much evidence of the neurotoxic effects of ingested fluoride, it's worse than criminal if these dentists are giving fluoride for kids to eat.
- evanelias 2y ago> Portland, where I live, is the last major city to not have fluoride in the water. Kind of depends how you track things I'd think. New Jersey, the state with the highest population density in the US, largely doesn't put fluoride in the water outside of a few municipalities. There's no fluoride in the water in almost the entirety of Hudson, Essex, and Bergen counties, which are located near NYC and include the cities of Newark and Jersey City. Combined population of those three counties is over 2.5 million people.
- anextio 2y agoComments like this are the clearest sign that this topic has become so politicized that rational judgement is out the window. If fluoride in the water is opposed by *those people*, or is supported by *those people*, then even if new clear evidence comes out one way or another, it will be undermined by not wanting to hand the other side a ‘W’.
- jfengel 2y agoIn an era where conspiracy theories are rampant, yeah, I'm kind of averse to letting conspiracy theorists win anything. I'm not going to put myself in danger to avoid it. But when the evidence is marginal, social factors are something I'll take into account. Even if there is indeed a problem with fluoridated water, it only shows up in a small effect that requires a large sample to see. The conspiracy theorists were guessing, even if they guessed right. And they ignored the data that had been gathered. Science changes its mind, but conspiracy theorists never do. They accumulate, and it looks to me as if we're about to drown in them.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoWe literally just got a ruling against the EPA on fluoridation as being dangerously risky levels. As even The Guardian admits, it’s possible there actually is something to the claims of danger. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation-water-epa-risk-assessement https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation... Of course, the EPA would never live it down if the anti-fluoridation people actually had something to their claims. However, I’m not the EPA. If they were wrong, screw them.
- axpy906 2y ago[flagged]
- peterlada 2y agoTell us more about your qualifications
- axpy906 2y agoImpact of fluoride on neurological development in children (2012) https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-childrens-health-grandjean-choi/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-children... Fluoride exposure and cognitive neurodevelopment: Systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis (2022) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935123000312 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...
- Ferret7446 2y agoThere is though. It's a great way to offload fluoride waste. In fact, the reason we discovered the dental effects of fluoride was because a dentist noticed the yellowed and hardened teeth of patients in the area where the water was contaminated from local industrial waste.
- herdcall 2y agoIn fact, Flouride may be actually harmful in children. According to a peer-reviewed finding, "aggregate fluoride exposure from all sources in an amount equivalent to 1.5 mg/L in drinking water is consistently associated with lower IQ in children." See https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2024/10/04/fluoride-in-drinking-water-may-be-dangerous-to-childrens-health https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2024/10/04/fluorid....
- gjsman-1000 2y agoAttention everyone: This is not just some kooky conspiracy theory anymore. We have federal rulings against the EPA on this matter. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation-water-epa-risk-assessement https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation...
- int0x29 2y agoThe US court system is not a good arbiter of scientific accuracy. I'd trust the EPA a lot more here.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago[flagged]
- paulnpace 2y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2y agoThat is a minuscule disaster versus the overall impact of those mines and other similar industry activities on the environment. All that contamination used to just get dumped in the water supply. It’s only big because we don’t really consider Cleveland’s burning river or LA’s smog blanket to have been “disasters”. (As the link notes: "The event drew attention to toxic drainage from many similar abandoned mines throughout the country.") > Prior to the spill, the Upper Animas water basin had already become devoid of fish, because of the adverse environmental impacts of regional mines such as Gold King, when contaminants entered the water system. > In the 1990s, sections of the Animas had been nominated by the EPA as a Superfund site for clean-up of pollutants from the Gold King Mine and other mining operations along the river. Lack of community support prevented its listing… Locals had feared that classifying this as a Superfund site would reduce tourism in the area, which was the largest remaining source of income for the region since the closure of the metal mines.
- kijin 2y agoOf course it depends on whether the target demographic has adequate access to fluoride by other means, such as toothpaste. A similar case might be iodine in table salt. A lot of salt available in America is iodized on purpose. We don't do that where I live, where the usual diet is already rich in iodine. There is no single right answer, only a cost-benefit analysis for each location.
- NotGMan 2y agoOr people could just not eat carbs and there would be no need for this debate at all.
- tastyfreeze 2y agoCarbs are the base of civilizations. With the exception of herders or raiders every large population of humans was/is sustained by plant starches.
- dotancohen 2y agoThat actually does not refute GP, rather, it changes the conversation to "do we want to preserve civilization". The cynic would note that many have demonstrated in the past year that they are willing to sacrifice civilization.
- neuroelectron 2y ago[flagged]
- shrubble 2y agoBoth tea leaves and California rice have fluoride also; absorbed by the plants as they grow. Foreign sources of rice have to pass tests for fluoride while California rice is exempt, from my understanding.
- kelipso 2y agoPeople drink a cup or two of tea a day while they drink more than 2 liters of water a day. It's a magnitude difference. Plus, drinking tea or eating California rice are completely optional. While you have to go through a filtering process to get ride of fluoride.
- wheels 2y agoI assure you that the kids that are struggling with severe dental problems are not drinking two liters of tap water per day. Maybe we should fluoridate Coca Cola.
- kelipso 2y ago[flagged]
- Ferret7446 2y agoThere are definitely people who drink a lot of tea or eat a lot of rice in California.
- kelipso 2y agoSure, if only there were studies measuring their IQ. Plus, the strongest effects of fluoride are on kids and kids might drink 0 to half a cup of tea a day.
- infogulch 2y agoAs I understand it, the EPA is required to reanalyze the current florudation recommendations. > 121. Plaintiffs have proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that water fluoridation at the level of 0.7 mg/L – the prescribed optimal level of fluoridation in the United States – presents an “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other non-risk factors, including an unreasonable risk to a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation under the conditions of use.” 15 U.S.C. § 2620(b)(4)(B)(ii). Full ruling: https://fluoridealert.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Court-Ruling.pdf https://fluoridealert.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Court-R... The law mentioned: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2620 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2620
- woodruffw 2y agoThe core of this article is uncontroversial: water fluoridation is effective, but less effective than it was half a century ago because fluoridated toothpaste is now nearly universal. With that said, the author commits the two cardinal sins of public health journalism: they allow dangerous levels of a substance to be conflated with recognized safe levels, and they confuse value for a sub-sample of the population (those who can/do use fluoride toothpaste and go to the dentist regularly) with value for the entire population. The latter in particular is why water fluoridation in areas with low natural fluoride levels is sound public health policy: it helps the population as a whole, even when not all segments can or will obtain appropriate dental care.
- ekianjo 2y ago> with recognized safe levels, Funny because many countries choose to NOT add fluoride to their water sources. Despite all the "safety" data available.
- woodruffw 2y agoEvery comment thread about fluoridation on HN goes like this. Most countries that don’t fluoridate their water don’t do so either because they fluoridate something else (table salt) or because their natural groundwater contains sufficient fluoride, or because dietary trends in those areas already provide dietary fluoride. Western Europe and Latin America are examples of (1), Central Europe is an example of (2), and much of Asia is (2) or (3). And this is the point: if you have naturally occurring fluoride at safe levels, you shouldn’t add it. If you have it at unsafe levels (which much of the world does!), you should defluoridate your water. But the body of evidence is overwhelming that 0.7mg/L for fluoridation is not a significant public health risk, especially in contrast with its tangible benefits.
- fragmede 2y agoWhat does the body of evidence show is safe for your third eye? Because that's who you're having to disprove safe flouride levels to.
- 2y ago
- ars 2y agoThis isn't really something new - it's been known for a long time that fluoride needs to be on the surface of the teeth to work. In jested fluoride doesn't do anywhere near as much. So fluoride toothpaste, or even better fluoride rinse's are much more effective.
- dukeofdoom 2y ago[flagged]