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It is a scenario playing out nationwide. From Oregon to Pennsylvania, hundreds of communities have in recent years either stopped adding fluoride to their water supplies or voted to prevent its addition. Supporters of such bans argue that people should be given the freedom of choice. The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing the mineral makes it no longer necessary to add to public water supplies, they say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while store-bought products reduce tooth decay, the greatest protection comes when they are used in combination with water fluoridation.
The outcome of an ongoing federal case in California could force the Environmental Protection Agency to create a rule regulating or banning the use of fluoride in drinking water nationwide. In the meantime, the trend is raising alarm bells for public health researchers who worry that, much like vaccines, fluoride may have become a victim of its own success.
The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom drinking water may be the only source of preventive dental care.
“If you have to go out and get care on your own, it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Myron Allukian Jr., a dentist and past president of the American Public Health Association. Millions of people have lived with fluoridated water for years, “and we’ve had no major health problems,” he said. “It’s much easier to prevent a disease than to treat it.”
According to the anti-fluoride group Fluoride Action Network, since 2010, over 240 communities around the world have removed fluoride from their drinking water or decided not to add it.
You can’t trust this stuff. I only drink water straight from the creek and- excuse me, my diarrhea is acting up.
What a bad faith argument.
Most people who want to avoid fluoride in their drinking water use reverse osmosis.
Then I guess there’s a solution and we don’t need to remove it for everyone else.
Why should people have to resort to using reverse osmosis to avoid fluoride in their drinking water?
Also, good job pivoting instead of admitting you were arguing in bad faith.
I expect you to keep doing that.
For the same reason people should “have to” resort to anything else they don’t want that everyone else is fine with. You don’t get to choose for society as a whole.
If you don’t want to eat inspected meat, fine. Go raise or hunt your own.
For the same reason people should “have to” resort to anything else they don’t want that everyone else is fine with.
Like lead in gasoline? The thing is, everyone else is not “fine” with this. Why do you think there’s an article about it?
I am SO tired of being at the mercy of idiots.
Americans won the battle to bring back measles
Now they’re fighting to bring back tooth decay
Guys doubling fisting 64oz Big Gulps won that war ages ago
Just another pest boil of the lack of scientific education in the US. Anti-Vaxx, Anti-Flouride, Anti-Science in general. Do you guys want to go back to the age of pilgrim fathers, or what?
I mean, most western countries don’t add fluoride to their water supply, as ingesting significant amounts of fluoride is bad for you. America is an outlier there, as far as I’m aware.
There’s usually small amounts occurring naturally in water. However, we shouldn’t be adding in more, as it’s cytotoxic and were not supposed to injest it.
Western countries do add fluoride, but it’s done regionally depending on natural fluoride content of local water (or, specifically, lack of it).
This is what happens when you have an scientifically illiterate population.
It’s the old Alex Jones “turning the frogs gay” line. Just enough science to hurt yourself with.
This sounds like that Simpsons episode where the school board votes down the “free recharging of fire extinguishers”. They aren’t even saying that their might be problems with floride, they just want choice for the option of choices sake. What is next, freedom to push your children into traffic?
they just want choice for the option of choices sake.
This is a common talking point for people who can’t otherwise justify their position. It’s the “because I said so” of arguing. You see it a lot with far right talking points, where they’ll frame it as freedom of choice, when it’s really just an excuse to pander to conspiracy theorists, the extremely religious, racists, homophobes, etc…
“The civil war wasn’t about slavery; it was about states’ rights.”
“If I want to refuse service to a gay couple, that should be my choice.”
“If I want to refuse service to a mixed race couple, that should be my choice.”
For some reason, they never came around on the Pro-Choice movement, though
If I want to prevent your abortion, that should be my choice. “My” being the operative word, they’re incredibly selfish. (Oh, and should the situation arise, “My abortion is the only justified abortion.”)
“My abortion is the only justified abortion.”
Practically a one-to-one correlation between pro-life politicians and pregnant sex workers forced to get abortions.
We need to stop letting the village idiots make policy.
We need to stop letting the conservatives make policy.
FTFY
That would require a large community effort to resist occupation.
Funnily enough, the idiots do have a grain a truth here, that grain just happens to be an example of the internet’s favorite, Dunning-Kruger.
Excess flouride does have profound negative effects on intelligence. Several hundreds times the levels you get positive effects for tooth health from, and thus well beyond the scope of flouridation programs. There are also other notable side effects from flouride toxicity, so it’d be quite noticable.
There are even several regions of America and China where they need deflouridation treatments for ground water, but the conspiracy types never seem to mention those.
They also don’t seem to note that flouride toxicity, like lead toxicity, leads to both decreased intelligence and increased aggression.
How making the working class angry and dumb makes them easier for the owner class to control and profit from never seems to come up.
How making the working class angry and dumb makes them easier for the owner class to control and profit from never seems to come up.
Ask the folks at the Jan 6th riot. Trump played them all like fiddles.
Sure, but I don’t think anyone is accusing Trump of being behind a flouridation conspiracy. It demonstrates rather that angry morons are rather easy to point at the government, which is why the government probably doesn’t want a bunch of angry morons to rule.
I don’t think anyone is accusing Trump of being behind a flouridation conspiracy.
Sure. I’m simply noting that whipping people up into a frenzy or panic is an age old technique for controlling large populations.
It demonstrates rather that angry morons are rather easy to point at the government
Or at this or that ethnic group or religious sect or ideological cohort, sure. You don’t even have to be particularly conservative for this technique to work. Liberals fall for the Immigrant Caravan Invasion and Crime Wave panic stories and Pending Federal Bankruptcy and Communist Invasion stories as easily as any moderate Republican.
the government probably doesn’t want a bunch of angry morons to rule
They do, if they want to export that violence overseas or inflict it on minority groups and women, as a means of social control.
And it isn’t as though state officials are even all that rational. Certainly, Joe Biden’s had no problem perpetuating a genocide overseas, despite his policy whipping up a bonfire of opposition at home and in neighboring regions. Neither do Vladimir Putin or MBS or Narendra Modi seem shy about stoking the fires of bigotry in their own countries, as a means of mobilizing large groups of people into parades of support for their rule.
Angry morons are a great source of cheap activist labor, whether you’re storming the capital on Jan 6th or rallying Hindu nationalists to tear down a 600-year-old mosque in Delhi.
The UK used the same argument to stop the addition of iodine to salt. “People already consume enough dietary iodine”. You know what happened? Thyroid diseases are on the rise in the UK again, slowly creeping back to early XX century levels.
I think iodine is underappreciated. But also I think fewer and fewer people use the salt shaker because they eat so much processed food (which has salt that is not iodized). Then you’re down to milk and seafood. Milk gets it because they use iodine to sanitize the udders. So if you don’t drink milk and who eats seafood on most days. Solution to anyone reading: multivitamin.
We live in the time of the most readily available and advanced information yet continually make the dumbest fucking decisions.
“Cavities…yeah….goddamn hadn’t had one of those in awhile, we should bring those back.”
you know they put fluoride in toothpaste right? if you’re not getting enough from that your water isn’t going to make up the difference.
No, people shouldn’t have the right to choose if fluoride is added to their water. People are stupid. You vote to remove something that will greatly help children that can’t vote. The government’s job, sometimes, is to stop stupid people from hurting others and their selves. That’s the reason you can’t drink raw milk or use lead gas.
The raw milk thing is actually part of the reason the FDA was formed!
That’s the reason you can’t drink raw milk or use lead gas.
You can get raw milk if your state allows it. The federal government bans it, but only has regulatory authority over interstate commerce, so it can’t be moved across state boundaries, but you can get it if it’s made in-state.
I mean, I think that you’re mostly aiming to expose yourself to listeria, but if that’s what someone wants…
My guess is that dairy farmers have an interest in promoting it in that if they can sell it, it gives them a market without much competition.
can we compromise on drinking raw milk with flouride added?
Of course you can drink raw milk if you want to!
Ban the fluoride and give universal dental care like Canada is planning.
A pipe dream. The dummies will likely just ban the fluoride with no other plan or solution.
Or, ya know, keep the fluoride in the water and also give universal dental care. Removing the fluoride from the water is the more expensive solution.
