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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

#601

Post by impossiblefork »

imacomputertoo wrote: post #569
impossiblefork wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you will brush your teeth anyway, and then you apply fluoride topically. It works. Here in Sweden we decided against fluoride for this reason and the fact that it is in fact toxic. It isn't sensible to use systemic exposure when we can use topical exposure and can improve mouth health by education, so that people do what they're supposed to. The fluoride approach achieves a basic level of health, but you can do s…

Fluoride is not "in fact toxic". A substance becomes toxic in high amounts. Vitamin D becomes toxic in high amounts. The level of fluoride in drinking water is well below the toxic level.

I really don't agree with that Paracelsian view. Some substances are Paracelsian, other are like lead, and I'd place fluorides in-between these two, a neither fully Paracelsian or non-Paracelsian poison.

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

#602

Post by concordDance »

throwaway519 wrote: post #497
concordDance wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK government is really big on doing things for our own good, but they don't seem to do much water flouridation. Which I think is some evidence that it's not a clearcut health benefit.

Exactly the opposite. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-and-care-b... > We believe that water fluoridation is the single most effective public health measure there is for reducing oral health inequalities and tooth decay rates, especially amongst children. We welcome these proposals and believe they represent an opportunity to take a big step forward in not only improving this generation’s oral health…

Do they do much floridation though?

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

#603

Post by wil421 »

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…

How much natural fluoride does Europe have in their water?

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

#604

Post by starspangled »

mptest wrote: post #591
starspangled wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "without cost-gating"? Public healthcare systems in other countries have procedures they don't cover, and significant wait periods (i.e., shortages) to see doctors and specialists and have procedures done. Because of the cost. I'm not saying they aren't better than America's, but the idea you can just let people have it and not worry about costs isn't true. Health is like around quarter of entire…

>what do you mean by that I mean, raise taxes on businesses (wanna guess how many walmart employees are on government aid, i.e how much we tax payers are directly subsidizing their exorbitant profits while they pay their employees below a living wage?)Tax the rich, (3 individuals hoard more wealth than 50% of the country combined) + Cut some large percentage of insurance jobs, military spending, and use that money to…

This is a fairly unhinged reply to my quite specific question and comment. Pretty rude saying things like this

> Drastic, brazen or glib misunderstanding of history and politics

while pretending you weren't just spouting on about measels htat you had no idea about.

Healthcare is extremely expensive and taxing more won't magically make costs irrelevant or the cost of healthcare having to be weighed against other important and worthwhile government expenditure like welfare. That's just the reality of it no matter how much you're going to prattle on.

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

#605

Post by ReptileMan »

Fluorinating all of the water just to deliver some milligrams to the teeth is incredibly inefficient. Especially when less and less of the stuff people people drink comes out of the tap.

We have toothpastes and fluorinated mouthwash that both get the job done.

Probably there are some people that are unable to afford those and unaware how to use them, but probably are tiny percentage of the state population, especially with the cult of teeth care that the US has.

I also see the fortified flours as example (or iodine in salt) - but the US is different now than in the 30s. The US diet is more varied. Very few people get 80% of their calories from a single starchy staple so developing a severe deficiency of something requires some serious effort from the persons affected.

So who is this policy of fluorination for - the people that are too poor to afford toothpaste, but still have access to municipality treated water and don't drink copious amounts of soda or bottled drinks.

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

#606

Post by nemo44x »

amazingamazing wrote: post #598

Preventing cavities is far more effective with topical application of fluoride on the teeth, rather than ingestion. I personally don’t buy the passive health benefit. Even if it’s true, there’s no proof that fluoridated water is superior to topical application. Not to mention that if we’re going to just roll over and accept stuff in the water for public health reasons, what really should be added are more vitamins, n…

For children developing their “adult teeth” fluoride ingestion strengthens those teeth before they pop out. Topical has no effect obviously since they haven’t surfaced yet.

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

#607

Post by mkoubaa »

j_maffe wrote: post #515
Perenti wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Every time I see a dentist here in Queensland (non-fluoridated water) he asks me where else I lived as my teeth are so much better than what he usually sees, and if drilling my teeth are much harder than most Queenslanders. My early years were spent in Melbourne, where fluoridation was introduced around 1970. That's the only time I lived with fluoridated water, for about 3 years. yet dentists can see the ef…

You're refuting a statment based on studies and statistics by anecdotal evedince. Also, GP never denied that flouridation is still helpful for non-brushing residents.

A dentist sees thousands of patients -a big sample size! Calling it anecdotal evidence is reductive.

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

#608

Post by unsupp0rted »

hayst4ck wrote: post #347

Putting fluoride in water promotes freedom. That sounds crazy, but let me justify it. If you are poor you can't go anywhere or buy anything. You're not free if you're poor. If you are sick, you may be confined to a hospital bed or not feel good enough to do anything. If you are sick you're not free. Putting fluoride in water reduces dental costs and incidence of cavities and therefore tooth infections, particularly a…

> The contrasting view is that putting fluoride in water is literally medicating people without their affirmative consent.

Is that the contrasting view, or the contrasting view that is preferred, because it is more easily demolished?

The stronger contrasting view isn't that the government is medicating people without their affirmative consent. It's that it's poisoning people, and no amount of consent by laymen to be poisoned would be acceptable.

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

#609

Post by meetingthrower »

theGnuMe wrote: post #593
roywashere wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat related, as a teen in the 90s I worked at McDonald’s in The Netherlands. Because of the diet in the US, the bread used for hamburgers contained extra calcium to be more ‘healthy’, because many people did not get enough calcium intake. In The Netherlands, where people drink much more dairy products, especially back in the 90s, people would get plenty of calcium so there was no need to put extra in the bread.…

You have to drink 32 ounces of milk per day to get enough daily calcium.

They drink A LOT of milk! I went to a business meeting in the Netherlands and the cafeteria had buttermilk machine on tap like an elementary school in the US. They set the meeting table with pitchers of milk and buttermilk. And breakfast / lunch always has cheese.

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

#610

Post by unsupp0rted »

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…

> I initially dismissed it as the same category of stupid as anti-vax beliefs

Dismissing things out of hand like this is a category of stupid in itself.

Look at the current research, listen to people who devoted their careers to studying this, make up your own mind. If you're on HN, then you're qualified enough to at least figure out who the genuine experts are and read what they recommend.

Putting any science-based debate into a "category" to dismiss is turning yourself into one of the stupid people.

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