after all, if you prefer the current air, you can wear a breathing mask attached to a tank with your air of choice.
it's crazy to me that people can see what harm the government can do in 2025 and still think the government knows best.
The thing that's so wild about being anti fluoride is it's been going on for so long, it's possible your grandparents have never drank unfluoridated water at least in their adult lives, and at such scale that even if everything was a coordinated lie there would be very clear numbers showing problems.
that's not how science works though. people in the western hemisphere are becoming more unhealthy, and there is definitely not a consensus that fluoridated water is good. there are plenty of papers showing both conclusions.
at the end of the day though, there's actually no benefit to fluoride ingestion. no paper has shown this. what they do show though, is that when you add it to the water people have better tooth health, because the fluoride touches your teeth. however brushing your teeth is even more effective.
so can I assume that if there was research that breathing some chemically infused mist is good for you, you'd support the government in creating towers to spray this mist across the country? after all in this premise the research says it's good.
That being said it’s a false equalavincy. You can’t avoid the air you can avoid the public water supply.
You can't though in practice. If you live in urban area for example. It's functionally equivalent. If you say well, I could say gas mask with tank. If you say bottled water, I could say respirator, etc.
This is government action we are discussing right now. The government can't know best when it puts fluoride in the water but it can know best when it bans municipalities from doing so?
I don't agree with the ban. people should be about to vote on this.
I do not see how this matters at all. The government regulates it, how it gets to your house makes little difference. Also, I don’t pay “the government” for my water/electric/etc, I pay companies which makes your argument even more confusing, it all comes down to regulations.
Water additives are proven to improve the health of the populace. There are corner cases, and we can debate appropriate levels, but an outright ban of all additives is regressive.
There seems to be a lot of regressive attitudes going around these days. See: Measles outbreak.
as far as measles go, people have the right to not get vaccinated if they choose - it's dumb, though and others have the right to not let them participate in things since they're not vaccinated, too. it's not really analogous to the fluoride thing at all anyway.
People can choose not to drink flouridated tap water if they want - building a well isn't that expensive, although you will probably need a treatment system because of the naturally occurring stuff (minerals, hydrogen sulphide, possibly excess flouride and other stuff).
"Freedom isn't free", as they like to say. You may have to invest in your "freedom" to drink the water you want to drink. You will have to pay the price of your kids not getting vaccinated - they may not be able to go to public schools.
There are much bigger hills worth dying on (see: Flint, MI). Leave the wildly successful public health programs alone.
that's hilarious because brushing your teeth is more effective, and cheaper than adding fluoride to water. I'm sure people in Manhattan will really get on building those wells.
at the end of the day there's not a single paper that actually says ingesting fluoride is water. they all correlate incidental fluoride contact on the teeth, due to it being in the water.
fact is, brushing your teeth is more effective and has no downsides. ingesting fluoride is bad and is discouraged literally not only by all dentists, but this fact is present on all toothpaste in the usa.
(ironically, I bet you don't swallow the water after you brush your teeth. deep down you know it's bad for ya).
This is a dead horse. You're in the wrong. Please do not engage with me any more.
there are plenty of papers showing that *ingestion* may be bad for you and results in lower IQ. feel free to research.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/research/assessments/noncancer/com...
> More bad faith talking points
Do you talk to people like this in person? If not, why not? (If so, how's that working out for you?)
Pure water is not particularly healthy to drink, and may be bad for your plumbing.
literally every toothpaste in the united states explicitly says to spit, not swallow. there's a reason for that.
Not everyone has impeccable brushing habits and reducing cavities is a net benefit to public health like sanitation departments. I would be more interested to see a source as to why you think there's no benefit to fluorinated water when there are studies that are a quick search away for fluorinated water.
what is the connection between reducing cavities and sanitation departments? cavities are not communicable.
Also, the paper you linked is my point. there's no actual benefit of ingestion. the effect is purely incidental. it's more effective to apply fluoride to the teeth. nowhere does it actually explain that drinking it is what is beneficial. the difference in the incidence of caries is because by fluoridating the water it obviously will touch teeth, which has well known positive effects.
the main conclusion of the paper is what everyone should hopefully know already - brush your teeth regularly with fluoride toothpaste.
out of curiosity, would you be OK with vitamins being added to the water? most people are deficient in many.
Provided there's reasonable scientific evidence that this is fine and effective and not expensive, I don't see why not. I don't think I've ever seen it proposed.
Here in the UK, there's areas with and without fluoridisation - the reason being that naturally the water in different areas has different fluoride concentrations with some areas having no need for adding fluoride as it's already there. The benefits were very easy to determine as (presumably) cavities were more common in those areas with low fluoride content, so it's less about experimentation and more about ensuring that more people can gain the same benefit.
in the water system quantities and peer reviewed studies dosages, the psychological impacts are more real than iodine absorption.
flouride is not added today for teeth health (distributing mouth wash would do a better job) but it helps keep the water good for drinking, together with stuff like chlorine, which change by region.
... the real reason here is: it's as divisive and harder to reach an informed conclusion either way, just like abortion. oh American politics.
In NZ we appear to be moving in the opposite direction where central govt is now going to mandate the addition of fluoride where it was previously a local decision.
If you want to steel man the argument you should point out that the maximum allowed fluoride levels in US are quite a bit higher than in, for example the EU (on the order of 3 times higher), and that some recent studies have indicated some potential health risks for young children who consume a lot of water around the very top end of what the US allows.
Of course the correct response to this is to overhaul the recommendations and lower the maximum allowed levels, not to issue state wide bans.
Yes. It's weird, it seems to be given a special level of paranoia. And it's a longstanding one, the paranoid general in Dr Strangelove was obsessed with fluoridation.
Lots of substances have arguments over safe legal levels, with varying levels of scientific evidence. This seems to have a crusade, and I wonder who started it.
topical fluoride application on the teeth is better than drinking fluoridated water.
we're in a post truth era where literal fact is downvoted lol.
There are legitimately bad things happening.
Your complaints about those things become diluted when you complain about things like this (or looking for environmental causes of autism, or shutting down demonstrably wasteful programs).
Sometimes the liberal side of these discussions can be so conservative.
peterpost2•4h ago
IAmBroom•4h ago
vault•4h ago
Loughla•4h ago
While I agree that it's a shit show right now in the US, this article maybe isn't the leading edge of that.
dagw•3h ago
Varies a lot from country to country, but over all it is done to a much lower degree than in the US.
However the big difference is that there isn't a ban on it. There are scientific guidelines published by the EU and then it is up to each country/state to decide if they want to add it or not based on local considerations.
stop50•3h ago