513
As bans spread, fluoride in drinking water divides communities across the US
(kffhealthnews.org)
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
513 points (98.7% liked)
News
23301 readers
3453 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
God i wish my community fluoridated its water. Just had a kid, and anything to help prevent cavities is amazing, and low levels of floride is such an easy, risk free and cheap solution.
Buy fluoridated water for your kid, don't dose the population with drugs in their water.
None of that conspiracy stuff matters, it doesn't matter if fluoride is 100% safe. Don't put drugs in tap water.
but what if the water is naturally too high in fluoride. should we not use "drugs" to remove the flouride to bring it back to safe levels?
Should we remove the "calcium drug" that is in groundwater too? and trace iron? those are drugs the same way fluoride is, should we be removing them?
What about the chlorine we add to water to make sure water remains safe. thats a "drug", isnt it? should we only ship raw water, and just accept some people will die?
Or should we put on our bigboy pants, and deal with reality?
If a natural body of water that is to be used as a water supply has high levels of a dangerous substance, yes, it should be removed. I'd say this is common sense, you don't drink dirty water just because it's "natural". Also, it's not necessary to use other drugs to remove fluoride. Either way, I'm saying adding drugs to municipal water supplies is not a good idea, I'm not making any claims about natural bodies of water.
Again, I'm saying adding a drug to municipal water supplies is problematic, not making claims about appropriateness of groundwater.
These are very different questions. If you suddenly removed chlorine from tap water around the U.S., massive numbers, perhaps tens of millions of people would likely die within days. If you suddenly removed the fluoride, rates of tooth decay would increase over the following years.
Chlorine added to water is not a drug meant to affect the the body of the consumer, it's to prevent spread of water borne disease.
Ideally, no I don't want chlorine added either -- the need for chlorinated water is another one of the many problems we create for ourselves when we live at a grotesque overpopulation.
The reality is that we add a known neurotoxin to our tap water and drug our population to reduce tooth decay. Disprove this statement. Is fluoride not a known neurotoxin?
Its just an odd double standard you have, some chemicals are OK to be added, others are not. My thought process is very simple "fluoride is extremely safe, and everyone deserves the opportunity to live without cavities, lets level that playing field, the same as we do by chlorinating our water"
Fluoride is NOT a neurotoxin in the amounts the found in tap water. Everything is toxic in high enough quantities, and if you think we should ban something because in concentrate it is toxic, then we need to ban water too. If you think fluoride is a neurotoxin in the levels mandated by the FDA, please prove that.
You misundersand. No chemeicals added to water are OK, but chlorine is tolerable considering it saves millions of lives. Everything has a cost to benefit ratio. Adding chlorine to tap water has a huge benefit, fluoride does not.
How can you know the dose a person gets from a drug added to tap water? The fact is that dosing by tap water is one of the worst drug distribution methods possible.
This is silly and does not relate to my argument.
WTF? No, you shouldn't want it added randomly to the water. I grew up with well water and my teeth are fine, don't buy into the bullshit.
This has the same kind of vibe as the old people who speak fondly about the good old days back when not even kids had to wear seat belts or be in car seats.
"And I survived!"
I grew up with well water as a child and my baby teeth were wrecked. Adult teeth had fluoride and are fine (for the most part)
So there's an anecdotal experience that counters yours
Meanwhile, I grew up with fluoride added to the water and only had one maybe two minor cavities by the time I was 25, then moved to a place that has such shitty city water everyone heavily filters it, so even if fluoride is added, the filtering removes most of it, and I have had so many dental problems since, not a single one without at least one filling, and several crowns... So there, my anecdote cancels yours.
Use a fluoridated mouthwash before you brush, and switch to a hydroxapatite toothbrush for 3 months, might be a good experiment
N=1 case study from a radically biased individual or multiple rigorous studies by people who understand public health. I just don't know what to believe!
you grew up on well water, which is often high in fluoride.
You likely benefited from high fluoride, and just didnt realize it.
Oh, great - a "I didn't have that and look at me. I'm fine. You shouldn't have it either." person.
It's a meaningful statement though. Natural drinking water doesn't have flouride added to it, it's inclusion is frankly bizarre, and the idea that human beings think it's good to be added is so Bizzarro World to me.
It's present, but the levels vary and may not be sufficient in a given area to help prevent cavities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride
What the hell is "natural drinking water?" That's not a thing.
If you mean water from a spring or creek, that's "spring water." If by "natural" you mean untreated, unfiltered, untested, it might be okay but can also kill you depending on bacteria levels, parasites, or other pollutants or contaminates.
Don't drink random water out of the ground.
The claim something is "natural" whatever that means does not make it good or safe. Fluoride in the drinking water tho, has proven to be effective and safe.