Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water • Hacker News Board

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

#871

Post by Xelynega » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:29 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #350

jdminhbg wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Once you start trying to cross-reference a public health campaign with something related to peoples' diets, it becomes difficult to make super broad and conclusive statements. Here's some interesting data (2003 I believe, so pretty old) [1]: It reports that most of Europe, Canada, Australia, and South America experiences cavities at rates higher than the United States. However: Many of these countries have public hea…

Using your "person a" "person b" story, what about "persons c-z" that also want fluoride because they trust doctors?

If one out of a hundred people don't want fluoride, can't they can spend slightly more on bottled water? Why require the other 99 to be up-to-date on research to get the best personal medical outcome?

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

#872

Post by zackmorris » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:29 PM UTC

Middle-aged human LLM here.

This debate is about evidence vs policy:

* Evidence: fluoride displaces iodine and other halogens, which disrupts thyroid function and possibly negatively impacts other organs and bones.

* Policy: wealth inequality in the US has created a situation where the poor struggle to such an extent that they don't have access to basic health services like fluoride treatments at the dentist every 6 months, while the rich have grown so greedy that they don't want to pay a fraction of a percent of their taxes for preventative care for children and the impoverished so they instead tolerate slightly more expensive fluoridated tap water at the expense of everyone's health.

This comment is about my subjective experience with a sample size of 1, meaning that it doesn't apply to you or the public:

* My father is a dentist and gave me fluoride treatments every 6 months while I was growing up in Idaho. I was raised mostly on well water which isn't fluoridated. I have never had a cavity, despite not going to the dentist for the decade of my 20s while he lived away from me. My thyroid function is not as high as I would like after a lifetime of acute stress from struggle, multiple insults to the body, drinking fluoridated water after the age of 18, and being exposed to radioactive iodine at 80 times the US drinking water standard for perhaps 1 year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (which potentially either gave me a lifetime dose or was insignificant).

This solution is as evidence-based and equitable as I can come up with:

* We should remove fluoride from drinking water and reimburse all dentists for free 6 month fluoride treatments of the general public, which represents some nominal fee of perhaps $15-$20 per person annually (probably less) which is not materially significant to the federal budget of roughly $15-20,000 per person annually.

This take is my personal subjective opinion followed by objective evidence supporting my claims:

* I don't think highly of Robert Kennedy Jr's health initiatives, because they don't ethically weigh evidence and policy, and we don't have enough epidemiological studies to predict outcomes. So they will certainly cause unintended consequences. That said, I believe there is merit to his concerns. So a way forward is not to be anti-vax for example, but to recognize that there are dozens of types of vaccines and to prioritize vaccines for illnesses like polio that have a high risk of negatively impacting quality of life. Health experts should continue advising elected officials on policy decisions. Public health is not a domain that can be left in the trust of individuals acting unilaterally. So removing fluoride from water without providing state or federal funding for fluoride treatments every 6 months will most likely negatively impact public health.

https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-p...

https://thyroidpharmacist.com/articles/fluoride-and-your-thy...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11003687/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30316182/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38029816/

https://theworld.org/stories/2016/08/02/fukushima-radiation-...

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

#873

Post by rcpt » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #355

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…

Perhaps, vitamins, micro doses of aspirin, and other low level medical treatments should also be added to water, for the benefit of the silent poor and sick.

Same question but for giardia. Natural water from the river doesn't pass through filters that Science built.

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

#874

Post by wtcactus » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

marhee wrote: post #858

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…

According to that logic, why not distribute fluoride water freely for those who want it? That would serve boths camps, not?

There's no such thing as "free" when something is "given" by a public entity. It always costs the people that actually work and are forcibly taxed, something.

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

#875

Post by dang » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

TehCorwiz wrote: post #868

I love the cognitive dissonance in people who say both: "Don't medicate me without permission.", "Masks are oppression.", and "We have to stop those people from dressing and calling themselves what they want."

Please don't be snarky in HN comments, and please don't take threads on generic flamewar tangents. Those are two of the worst things for the curious conversation we're trying to have here.

Both of these points are in the site guidelines.

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

#876

Post by danielmarkbruce » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

maleldil wrote: post #859

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think slightly more broadly about the issue. For context... some people think statins should be put in the water. Maybe they should. But were does mass medication of the people stop?

It stops when we run out of easy things that can be done to improve the lives of people. It's not that hard.

And when you get a tyrant at the top? Every capability you give the government needs to be viewed through the lens of "what happens when we get a really really bad leader?". If you haven't been paying attention, the majority of countries have had at least one really really bad leader over the past few hundred years. Many have one right now.

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

#877

Post by oaktrout » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #779

lee_ars wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, it completely ignores any debate over effectiveness or side effects. It could well be that fluoride in water is great for teeth but bad for brains. Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains. > Im not clear the validity of those claims Thoroughly scientifically debunked. Repeatedly, over decades. > That seems the core issue- without bias from st…

> Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains. What's amazing is these anti-science wackos are rejecting the largest-scale experiment of all time, with the best evidence that anyone is ever going to have on the subject. We have both temporal and spatial boundary conditions with and without community water fluoridation, where a large population has it and a…

Before calling them "anti science wackos", why not review the evidence or cite some of your own. Ironic that the "wackos" seem to be the only ones providing any evidence for their claims.

There is high quality evidence that fluoride at levels contained in some US water supplies is associated with lower childhood intelligence. For lower levels, the conclusion is "we don't know", not that there is no harm.

https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...

There is also high quality evidence that in the age of fluorinated toothpaste, fluorinated water "may slightly" improve dental health.

“The evidence suggests that water fluoridation may slightly reduce tooth decay in children,” says co-author Dr Lucy O’Malley, Senior Lecturer in Health Services Research at the University of Manchester. “Given that the benefit has reduced over time, before introducing a new fluoridation scheme, careful thought needs to be given to costs, acceptability, feasibility and ongoing monitoring."

https://www.cochrane.org/news/water-fluoridation-less-effect...

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

#878

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

TehCorwiz wrote: post #868

I love the cognitive dissonance in people who say both: "Don't medicate me without permission.", "Masks are oppression.", and "We have to stop those people from dressing and calling themselves what they want."

[deleted]

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

#879

Post by nobodyandproud » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

twothamendment wrote: post #110

mjevans wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly when traveling, I don't enjoy the taste of tap water. Filtered or (factory filtered then) bottled... and I'm not alone in that viewpoint.

When traveling by vehicle (pickup truck for me) I've thrown in a 5 gallon cooler of water from home. It was so nice to want to drink water because it was my own good well water that tastes like I'm used to. When I had to fly to NY for work I felt like I couldn't get water anywhere that was worth drinking.

I question this as a bad take or a data-point of one, because NYC water is the best of Upstate water.

I’ve travelled and lived across the country during my high school and college years; and I’ve travelled my extensively within Upstate very (Adirondacks, Catskills, and Finger Lakes) and the taste of local water is the first thing I notice.

Bad building pipes aside, I have not tasted any water that exceeds NYC’s tap water in taste.

I’m not the only person who’s expressed this, and guests from other regions have also admitted the same consistently over the years.

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

#880

Post by dahart » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #691

lee_ars wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, it completely ignores any debate over effectiveness or side effects. It could well be that fluoride in water is great for teeth but bad for brains. Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains. > Im not clear the validity of those claims Thoroughly scientifically debunked. Repeatedly, over decades. > That seems the core issue- without bias from st…

> fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains. We can never be sure who funded the studies and whether or not the results can be trusted. Studies have shown that studies cannot be trusted. I err on the side of caution. You're welcome to put it in your own drinking water if you trust the studies. > What needs to stop happening is people ignoring objective reality just beca…

How does one live or even function with no trust? You’re going to do your own experiments on everything in your life? Do you purchase any food, take any medicines, travel in any vehicles, or use any technology? You’re relying on products that are the outcome of studies if you do. Sure people are fallible and sometimes have agendas or are wrong, but approaching objectivity is not impossible, it just takes a little work. Science is the best thing we’ve got, it has brought humanity further and faster than anything else ever. There’s nothing else to even compare it to. If we throw our hands up and insist on trusting no one, dismantle public health and public education and public trust, then yeah we could go back to the dark ages. If instead we trust that science works over time, and we are diligent about electing leaders who stop stoking fears and using pseudoscience and intentionally eroding trust in science and education, then we might have the chance to be able to trust each other and make forward progress.