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In fact, Flouride may be actually harmful in children. According to a peer-reviewed finding, "aggregate fluoride exposure from all sources in an amount equivale

In 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 ago
Attention 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 ago
  The 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 ago
      That 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.
      - paulnpace 2y ago
        Yeah, it was really bad already so good on EPA for making it a lot worse. ("miniscule" is not applicable to this disaster and casual readers may see it as emotion-based hyperbole.)
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        Miniscule is absolutely the correct term for this. An already demolished ecosystem was briefly worse, in trying to clean up the built-up pollution from a closed mine. Compare it against the health damage the coal industry has done to billions of people over centuries and it looks pretty damned small. Trying to ding the EPA for "industry left a giant toxic mess and cleaning it up was tough" is just odd.
        paulnpace 2y ago
        That is the worst attempt at an argument - just throw everything from all of history to "win" your argument. We are talking about isolated events. You need to do something besides troll HN. It isn't beneficial to anyone.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        Fine, let's talk isolated events. Your supposed "one of the largest" isn't on the list at all at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_disaster. Your link says things like "no evidence to that date of human injury or wildlife die-off", "the remaining contaminants will be diluted to a point where there will be no danger to users", "By August 11, pollutant levels at Durango returned to pre-incident levels", etc. It was a short-lived discharge of polluted waters into an area already devastated by the closed mine operations, the sort of discharge that pre-EPA went straight into the rivers as a matter of course. It's one of many mining and industry-related disasters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disasters#Mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disaster...), appears to be not particularly notable amongst them, and it seems was singled out primarily by you for the "it was an EPA contractor that broke the plug" clickbait aspect.
  - monero-xmr 2y ago
    It’s very simple - when it suits your argument, Trust the Science and go with the government position. When it doesn’t, say they courts and the regulators are captured and crooked.
    - gjsman-1000 2y ago
      The NSA can’t regulate itself - it needs court oversight. Courts are allowed to decide what matters to national security and what doesn’t, despite not being agents. The Police can’t regulate themselves - they need court oversight. Courts are allowed to define what is acceptable policing and what is not, despite not being police. The EPA can regulate itself and understands science. Courts aren’t allowed to weigh in because they aren’t scientists. The EPA is a morally upright actor, all other government agencies aren’t. A perfectly rational position. (I say that with extreme sarcasm - it’s malarkey.)
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        The EPA was already significantly more subject to judicial review than the NSA, even prior to Chevron deference falling. The cops are theoretically subject to it, but in practice... nah, mostly not. They receive at least Chevron-levels of deference for things like "I feared for my life!" or "he was coming right at me!" or "I thought it was a gun!" or "based on my experience and training the suspect was acting suspiciously" sort of expert claims.
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  The conspiracy theory component isn't that there is some downside to fluoride in water, it's that the government did it for nefarious purposes.
jcranmer 2y ago
Nobody fluoridates the water to 1.5 mg/L. If you're fluoridating the water, your target is 0.7 mg/L. The people with 1.5 mg/L fluoride (or higher--the EPA limit is 2.0mg/L) are because the groundwater is percolating through rock that is high in fluorides, and people don't want to spend the money on defluoridating the water down to acceptable standards. Defluoridation is of course much harder than fluoridation because fluorides are highly soluble.
- neuroelectron 2y ago
  Yes, because people only drink a certain amount of tap water so you know they're getting the recommended dosage of fluoride.
  - btreecat 2y ago
    Fairly bad faith argument on your part. The limits are set such that if you _only_ drank tap water you won't consume more than the safe limit. If you then reduce how much tap water you consume because you get hydration from other sources, your well under the limit. Not accounting for someone eating tubes of fluorinated toothpaste, which is out of specified usage.
    - newZWhoDis 2y ago
      Absolute nonsense. The coffee, soda, beer, or kombucha you drink was made with fluoridated water. Your salad was grown with fluoridated fruit was washed in fluoridated water. Fluoride permeates modern supply chains because it’s literally in the water which is an input to countless things. Fluoride proponents have utterly failed to control dosage and harmed public health in doing so.
      - btreecat 2y ago
        > Absolute nonsense. > Hardly but let's have fun! > The coffee, soda, beer, or kombucha you drink was made with fluoridated water. Your salad was grown with fluoridated fruit was washed in fluoridated water. > How much flouride? And from what sources? Typically farms need wells because of how much water infrastructure they need can't generally be supported by municipal water. There are exceptions particularly in dense areas with vertical farms or urban farms but this doesn't align with your claim, that effectively everything we consume has some detectable level of flouride. I bet you've already read this though https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessional/#:~:text=Only%20trace%20amounts%20of%20fluoride,g%20%5B1%2C6%5D https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessiona.... The only thing studied that contained more flouride than municipal water but still 3x less than the safe limit, is tea. And that was measured with distilled water to eliminate the water source as a variable. Most tea isn't grown in the USA. So your claims fall flat on their face here, but I'm not done. > Fluoride permeates modern supply chains because it’s literally in the water which is an input to countless things. > How much? Making such a claim is fine if we want hand waved values. But when you want to be an Internet advocate for a specific policy, show up with receipts or don't show up at all. See previous link for current source of information on food supply. > Fluoride proponents have utterly failed to control dosage and harmed public health in doing so. Based on what evidence? You have utterly failed to show you have a solid grasp on the scientific method, public policy, and critical thinking.
jandrewrogers 2y ago
The underlying study makes a much weaker claim than the people who are using it to campaign against fluoridation. A big issue in this discourse is that for the strong claims to be true, it would essentially require existing science around fluoride toxicity and the related mechanisms of action to be materially incorrect, contrary to all historical evidence. Fluoride poisoning is a thing that happens and has straightforward interventions. Are we supposed to pretend this science doesn't exist? I actually worked in fluoride chemistry, it is difficult to square this circle. In addition to the "plausible mechanism of action" question, there is the inconvenient observation that exposure to fluoride from natural dietary sources is far higher today than from municipal water. Why the obsession with municipal water augmentation in historically low-fluoride environs? Most people eat far more fluoride than what their water exposes them to. I find this particular social contagion deeply weird. You see the same persistent misrepresentation on social media as climate science, but in the case of climate science the effects on people is obviously consequential so the motivated reasoning is more understandable. The fluoride thing is trying to invent an issue around a topic that is inconsequential by all evidence and science. Who benefits by encouraging people to tilt at this windmill?
- newtonsmethod 2y ago
  Do you have a reference for the claim that exposure to fluoride from natural dietary sources is far higher than what occurs from fluoridated water? An EPA review on fluoride exposure that I found (https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-03/documents/fluoride-exposure-relative-report.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-03/documents/fl...) puts most estimates of the "natural" dietary fluoride intake at 0.9mg per day. This is in contrast to the estimated 0.7 * 2 = 1.4mg of fluoride a person will ingest from consuming fluoridated water (with a fair number of water systems fluoridated at levels greater than 0.7mg/L). Another study I found from the EFSA estimates fluoride intake from non-supplemented food at 0.120mg per day for adults compared to 0.500mg per day from water fluoridated at (1.0mg/L) (https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2005.192 https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa...). Admittedly, in countries where salt is fluoridated, this will constitute the majority of fluoride ingested (especially given most of them don't fluoridate their water :P). But I don't think anti-fluoride advocates would support this either. I also don't understand what you mean by the "strong claim" and "weak claim" of the NTP monograph. You seem to have doubts that the claims of the NTP monograph are true, based off of the known mechanisms of fluoride toxicity? My best guess for why the rational anti-fluoride advocates are so stirred up over water fluoridation is that it is a policy proposed without currently a rigorous scientific backing. Per the recent Cochrane review, there is evidence that fluoridation mildly benefits children's teeth, and a lack of high-quality evidence that fluoridation presently benefits adults teeth. There also isn't good evidence that fluoride consumption isn't harmful at present levels (fluorosis is known to occur, and studies evaluated by the NTP point to neurodevelopmental harms, albeit with the conclusion for higher concentrations of fluoride); nor is there strong evidence that systemic fluoride ingestion has any benefits. They might therefore be angry at a somewhat political policy of forced medication that isn't well backed.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

Attention 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 ago
The 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 ago
    That 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.
    - paulnpace 2y ago
      Yeah, it was really bad already so good on EPA for making it a lot worse. ("miniscule" is not applicable to this disaster and casual readers may see it as emotion-based hyperbole.)
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        Miniscule is absolutely the correct term for this. An already demolished ecosystem was briefly worse, in trying to clean up the built-up pollution from a closed mine. Compare it against the health damage the coal industry has done to billions of people over centuries and it looks pretty damned small. Trying to ding the EPA for "industry left a giant toxic mess and cleaning it up was tough" is just odd.
        paulnpace 2y ago
        That is the worst attempt at an argument - just throw everything from all of history to "win" your argument. We are talking about isolated events. You need to do something besides troll HN. It isn't beneficial to anyone.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        Fine, let's talk isolated events. Your supposed "one of the largest" isn't on the list at all at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_disaster. Your link says things like "no evidence to that date of human injury or wildlife die-off", "the remaining contaminants will be diluted to a point where there will be no danger to users", "By August 11, pollutant levels at Durango returned to pre-incident levels", etc. It was a short-lived discharge of polluted waters into an area already devastated by the closed mine operations, the sort of discharge that pre-EPA went straight into the rivers as a matter of course. It's one of many mining and industry-related disasters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disasters#Mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disaster...), appears to be not particularly notable amongst them, and it seems was singled out primarily by you for the "it was an EPA contractor that broke the plug" clickbait aspect.
- monero-xmr 2y ago
  It’s very simple - when it suits your argument, Trust the Science and go with the government position. When it doesn’t, say they courts and the regulators are captured and crooked.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    The NSA can’t regulate itself - it needs court oversight. Courts are allowed to decide what matters to national security and what doesn’t, despite not being agents. The Police can’t regulate themselves - they need court oversight. Courts are allowed to define what is acceptable policing and what is not, despite not being police. The EPA can regulate itself and understands science. Courts aren’t allowed to weigh in because they aren’t scientists. The EPA is a morally upright actor, all other government agencies aren’t. A perfectly rational position. (I say that with extreme sarcasm - it’s malarkey.)
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      The EPA was already significantly more subject to judicial review than the NSA, even prior to Chevron deference falling. The cops are theoretically subject to it, but in practice... nah, mostly not. They receive at least Chevron-levels of deference for things like "I feared for my life!" or "he was coming right at me!" or "I thought it was a gun!" or "based on my experience and training the suspect was acting suspiciously" sort of expert claims.
unethical_ban 2y ago
The conspiracy theory component isn't that there is some downside to fluoride in water, it's that the government did it for nefarious purposes.

jcranmer 2y ago

Nobody fluoridates the water to 1.5 mg/L. If you're fluoridating the water, your target is 0.7 mg/L. The people with 1.5 mg/L fluoride (or higher--the EPA limit is 2.0mg/L) are because the groundwater is percolating through rock that is high in fluorides, and people don't want to spend the money on defluoridating the water down to acceptable standards. Defluoridation is of course much harder than fluoridation because fluorides are highly soluble.

neuroelectron 2y ago
Yes, because people only drink a certain amount of tap water so you know they're getting the recommended dosage of fluoride.
- btreecat 2y ago
  Fairly bad faith argument on your part. The limits are set such that if you _only_ drank tap water you won't consume more than the safe limit. If you then reduce how much tap water you consume because you get hydration from other sources, your well under the limit. Not accounting for someone eating tubes of fluorinated toothpaste, which is out of specified usage.
  - newZWhoDis 2y ago
    Absolute nonsense. The coffee, soda, beer, or kombucha you drink was made with fluoridated water. Your salad was grown with fluoridated fruit was washed in fluoridated water. Fluoride permeates modern supply chains because it’s literally in the water which is an input to countless things. Fluoride proponents have utterly failed to control dosage and harmed public health in doing so.
    - btreecat 2y ago
      > Absolute nonsense. > Hardly but let's have fun! > The coffee, soda, beer, or kombucha you drink was made with fluoridated water. Your salad was grown with fluoridated fruit was washed in fluoridated water. > How much flouride? And from what sources? Typically farms need wells because of how much water infrastructure they need can't generally be supported by municipal water. There are exceptions particularly in dense areas with vertical farms or urban farms but this doesn't align with your claim, that effectively everything we consume has some detectable level of flouride. I bet you've already read this though https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessional/#:~:text=Only%20trace%20amounts%20of%20fluoride,g%20%5B1%2C6%5D https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessiona.... The only thing studied that contained more flouride than municipal water but still 3x less than the safe limit, is tea. And that was measured with distilled water to eliminate the water source as a variable. Most tea isn't grown in the USA. So your claims fall flat on their face here, but I'm not done. > Fluoride permeates modern supply chains because it’s literally in the water which is an input to countless things. > How much? Making such a claim is fine if we want hand waved values. But when you want to be an Internet advocate for a specific policy, show up with receipts or don't show up at all. See previous link for current source of information on food supply. > Fluoride proponents have utterly failed to control dosage and harmed public health in doing so. Based on what evidence? You have utterly failed to show you have a solid grasp on the scientific method, public policy, and critical thinking.

jandrewrogers 2y ago

The underlying study makes a much weaker claim than the people who are using it to campaign against fluoridation. A big issue in this discourse is that for the strong claims to be true, it would essentially require existing science around fluoride toxicity and the related mechanisms of action to be materially incorrect, contrary to all historical evidence. Fluoride poisoning is a thing that happens and has straightforward interventions. Are we supposed to pretend this science doesn't exist? I actually worked in fluoride chemistry, it is difficult to square this circle. In addition to the "plausible mechanism of action" question, there is the inconvenient observation that exposure to fluoride from natural dietary sources is far higher today than from municipal water. Why the obsession with municipal water augmentation in historically low-fluoride environs? Most people eat far more fluoride than what their water exposes them to. I find this particular social contagion deeply weird. You see the same persistent misrepresentation on social media as climate science, but in the case of climate science the effects on people is obviously consequential so the motivated reasoning is more understandable. The fluoride thing is trying to invent an issue around a topic that is inconsequential by all evidence and science. Who benefits by encouraging people to tilt at this windmill?

newtonsmethod 2y ago
Do you have a reference for the claim that exposure to fluoride from natural dietary sources is far higher than what occurs from fluoridated water? An EPA review on fluoride exposure that I found (https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-03/documents/fluoride-exposure-relative-report.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-03/documents/fl...) puts most estimates of the "natural" dietary fluoride intake at 0.9mg per day. This is in contrast to the estimated 0.7 * 2 = 1.4mg of fluoride a person will ingest from consuming fluoridated water (with a fair number of water systems fluoridated at levels greater than 0.7mg/L). Another study I found from the EFSA estimates fluoride intake from non-supplemented food at 0.120mg per day for adults compared to 0.500mg per day from water fluoridated at (1.0mg/L) (https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2005.192 https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa...). Admittedly, in countries where salt is fluoridated, this will constitute the majority of fluoride ingested (especially given most of them don't fluoridate their water :P). But I don't think anti-fluoride advocates would support this either. I also don't understand what you mean by the "strong claim" and "weak claim" of the NTP monograph. You seem to have doubts that the claims of the NTP monograph are true, based off of the known mechanisms of fluoride toxicity? My best guess for why the rational anti-fluoride advocates are so stirred up over water fluoridation is that it is a policy proposed without currently a rigorous scientific backing. Per the recent Cochrane review, there is evidence that fluoridation mildly benefits children's teeth, and a lack of high-quality evidence that fluoridation presently benefits adults teeth. There also isn't good evidence that fluoride consumption isn't harmful at present levels (fluorosis is known to occur, and studies evaluated by the NTP point to neurodevelopmental harms, albeit with the conclusion for higher concentrations of fluoride); nor is there strong evidence that systemic fluoride ingestion has any benefits. They might therefore be angry at a somewhat political policy of forced medication that isn't well backed.