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Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

bbc.com

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Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#291

Post by tastyfreeze »

jimt1234 wrote: post #215
ews wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US rarely looks into how other countries solve problems. (i.e. Universal Healthcare, High Speed Trains and so), this is the sad part of "American Exceptionalism"

When I was a kid the schools taught us the metric system, telling us it was the world standard, and would become the standard is the US by the time I was an adult. That was over 40 years ago. And that pretty much sums it all up.

The US legally switched to metric when England did. It is taught in all schools and used for international trade. But, just like in England there is a mix of imperial and metric units used domestically. If you dont travel internationally, like many Americans, there is little need to use metric. Another generation and there won't be many people left in the US that didn't at least learn metric.

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#292

Post by declan_roberts »

neRok wrote: post #186
freehorse wrote: post #123

This is one of these US-specific polarised debates I find really bizarre, around some kind of issue that the rest of the world has by large solved but without any acknowledgement of this fact. Maybe the US should look into how other countries have solved it? It is completely bizarre witnessing both sides getting so polarised around a basically non-issue.

Banning its addition is a step beyond — but in Queensland, Australia for example, the state government no longer mandates its inclusion, and thus the local councils are able to set their own policy. > While more than 90 per cent of Australians have access to fluoridated water, that figure is significantly lagging in the sunshine state, where local councils have ultimate authority over whether it is adopted. > A decad…

So how does their dental conditions and IQs compare? Sounds like a nice little AB test.

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#293

Post by redczar »

rayiner wrote: post #202
ews wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US rarely looks into how other countries solve problems. (i.e. Universal Healthcare, High Speed Trains and so), this is the sad part of "American Exceptionalism"

Those are two odd examples. The Affordable Care Act is similar to the Netherlands health insurance system: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2011/lessons-abroad-du... (“These similarities are not entirely coincidental. American public officials, health industry leaders, and scholars made frequent visits to the Netherlands in the run-up to the debate over U.S. health care reform, borrowing ideas and, on occasion,…

The U.S. has a pitiful amount of high speed rail. It serves no point to mention that this pitiful amount of high speed rail is based off of TGV.

The comparison to the Dutch healthcare system is not apt. While the Heritage foundation may used ideas from the Dutch system our system is quite a bit more Byzantine and inefficient. We spend twice as much per capita on healthcare and have worse outcomes and fewer people covered. Our citizens have far more per capita medical debt than the Dutch.

We didn’t really implement the Dutch system and we didn’t really learn from the French how to build and maintain high speed rail. Saying we learned healthcare from the Dutch because we have doctors like they do makes as much sense as your argument.

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#294

Post by [deleted] »

yboris wrote: post #201
nozzlegear wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A less cynical framing is that the US is a much different culture from European countries, and is massively larger in scale. Depending on the problem, some of their solutions simply can't or don't apply.

I got a Master's Degree in Education and spent 2 years in Educational Psychology Ph.D. program and absolutely 0 time was spent looking at how other countries do education. It's baffling how despite numerous other countries outperforming the US in educational outcomes we do not even look at other approaches!

[deleted]

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#295

Post by ryao »

jedberg wrote: post #35
stop50 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they sell toothpaste with flourid in Utah?

Generally kids don't use toothpaste with fluoride because of the risk of swollowing it. Yes, we know it's bad in high doses, which is why kids toothpaste often doesn't have it. You have to wait until they are old enough to spit when brushing. In reality what will happen is that rich kids will be just fine because they will get their fluoride treatments at the dentist every six months. It's the poor kids who will suff…

There is a such thing as baby teeth. Presumably most children learn to brush properly while they still have them. If they do something wrong, they get a second chance when their adult teeth replace them. Why does this even need to be explained?

As for “fluoride treatments”, those are applied to the teeth, not drank. They are not a substitute for regular brushing.

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#296

Post by bigmadshoe »

lunarboy wrote: post #212

According to these "it lowers kids IQ" people, is the average IQ of Hawaiian kids higher than other states?

There are latent variables there. You can't just compare the IQ of two areas and only isolate a single variable out of thousands.

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#297

Post by wetpaws »

jdminhbg wrote: post #234
freehorse wrote: post #123

This is one of these US-specific polarised debates I find really bizarre, around some kind of issue that the rest of the world has by large solved but without any acknowledgement of this fact. Maybe the US should look into how other countries have solved it? It is completely bizarre witnessing both sides getting so polarised around a basically non-issue.

What I love about this comment is that one person thought "of course every other country just does the right thing when the US doesn't" and posted it, and then a bunch of other people thought "of course every other country just does the right thing when the US doesn't" and upvoted it, and not a single one of them thought to check what the "right thing" is. Meanwhile, back here on Earth-1, there's no right thing, and…

[dead]

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#298

Post by mmsc »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #131
crazygringo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? There's literally tons of evidence. Do you think fluoride doesn't actually reduce cavities?

[flagged]

If your water was sourced """naturally""" from a spring with a high fluoride levels, I wonder if you'd call that an additive.

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#299

Post by navigate8310 »

windexh8er wrote: post #257
jiggawatts wrote: post #44

I initially dismissed it as the same category of stupid as anti-vax beliefs, but it turns out that there are a decent amount of good studies showing a link between fluoride in water and (slightly) lower IQ when pregnant mothers ingest the fluoride. Note that there is no significant effect after birth. The idea is to remove fluoride from water and advise pregnant women to use fluoride-free toothpaste. Everyone else ca…

> The idea is to remove fluoride from water and advise pregnant women to use fluoride-free toothpaste. What most people don't understand here are the levels of fluoride being ingested. You can very easily remove all fluoride from your water with a relatively cheap RO system. But the recommendation to use "fluoride-free toothpaste" is just plain misinformation. The reason is that you don't eat toothpaste. And even whe…

My anecdotal experience says that using fluride-free biomine toothpaste makes my tooth highly sensitive than using a good ol' Colgate. Now, I use it only twice or thrice per month randomly.

Re: Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water

#300

Post by MajimasEyepatch »

timewizard wrote: post #218
gazook89 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> via toothpaste. I wonder how many people really brush their teeth on a regular basis. > either campaign to change it or vote with your feet. I imagine that campaigning to change it requires notifying people there is a problem, and getting it into the news and spreading that news.

> I wonder how many people really brush their teeth on a regular basis. Whatever the number is it's not appropriate for the state to medically intervene on their behalf.

Why not?
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