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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

#941

Post by yalogin »

shireboy wrote: post #645
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…

This take has a few problems: Poor people in the US are capable of using fluoride toothpaste and flossing. At least at homeless shelters at outreach things I’ve been to, toothpaste and toothbrushes are freely available. Your argument hinges on them being incapable on the whole and needing a Benevolent But Superior Intelligence to provide an alternative for them. Second, it completely ignores any debate over effective…

See this is the problem today. Just because some one doesn’t know doesn’t make it non existent. We have decades of studies and evidence that fluoride is good and has no side effects, but the detractors ignore all of it and keep nullifying all that knowledge. Now they are successful too. In a society where everyone wants the whole boat to rise up, we need a certain amount of honesty and integrity and sadly these arguments don’t have it

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

#942

Post by UltraSane »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #163
UltraSane wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not real debate, just some people who don't understand how chemistry works.

I'd really like to hear your take

fluoridated water drastically reduces dental cavities and has no evidence of being dangerous.

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

#943

Post by broken-kebab »

SapporoChris wrote: post #937
raincole wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most ridiculous part is that we have an alternative way to apply fluoride without intaking it. It's called toothpaste. But for some reason people act like Utah is banning vaccine.

Using toothpaste with fluoride can be effective when used regularly as part of dental hygiene. What percentage of the population is going to do this? I've encountered grade school children who have never owned a toothbrush.

Can you answer your own question?

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

#944

Post by mortos »

ein0p wrote: post #149
ourmandave wrote: post #125

Does filtering your water with a whole house filter take the fluoride out? Because I live in a small township that delivers well water to you tap. It tastes horrible, shortens the life of pipes and appliances, and smells like sulfur. Every year they mail a flyer that explains how the lead levels are dangerously above the national standard and you should run the tap before you drink from it. Like, sorry there's nothin…

If it's reverse osmosis based, yes. If it's some other kind of filter, likely no, and you should buy a TDS meter and use it, because in all likelihood it's not really filtering anything. I did exactly this. It turned out that my carbon based filter had more TDS than completely unfiltered water from a tap in the garden. RO water, even re-mineralized, had 1/15th the TDS IIRC.

TDS is just Total Dissolved Solids. What solids though you don't know and you could be adding carbon while removing others which is likely the case.

Also those dinky little TDS meters don't even measure TDS. They measure electrical conductivity and with a little math they use the EC as a proxy for TDS. It's typically only calibrated to one specific ion, others will be off by some factor. Also keep in mind TDS is expressed in PPM as CaCO3.

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

#945

Post by almog »

somenameforme wrote: post #920
agentultra wrote: post #709

That’s going to go poorly. A Canadian city removed fluoride from water in 2011 and reversed that decision 10 years later. There’s hard data on the effects and they’re not good [0]. [0] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed...

The study [1] that's based on seems pretty typical, and is precisely what drives skepticism towards these policies. The differences for permanent teeth were not significant. The paper claimed this may be because "7-year-olds have not had the time to accumulate enough permanent dentition caries experience for differences to have become apparent." The differences in temporary teeth had a deft (decay, extracted, filled…

In the 2nd study that shows correlation between fluoride and lower IQ in children, the water had twice as much fluoride as the recommended amount in the US (1.5 mg/L vs 0.7 mg/L).

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

#946

Post by maleldil »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #876
maleldil wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

If you're always looking at things through that lens, the government can never do anything at all, and you'll be left with "complete freedom" to just die from easily preventable issues.

There's absolutely no need to resort to a slippery slope here. We have plenty of examples around the world for things that work without anyone invoking a boogeyman.

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

#947

Post by cherry_tree »

bko wrote: post #893
agentultra wrote: post #709

That’s going to go poorly. A Canadian city removed fluoride from water in 2011 and reversed that decision 10 years later. There’s hard data on the effects and they’re not good [0]. [0] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed...

I don't think it's about hard data and optimization of health, but rather bodily autonomy. I'm sure there are plenty of chemicals that could be forcibly put in the drinking supply that, based on current scient, would be beneficial for the public. But I would still be skeptical. Sell me these substances in my food or toothpaste, but don't put it in my drinking water by default. It's also worth noting about 3% of weste…

Is one due the right to potable water at a tap at their home? Or is purified water a service offered by the government as one source of many available to the us population?

Are you not allowed to pay for bottled water instead of paying your local utility for drinking water?

The bodily autonomy argument seems bad to me because you are buying water from the government when you could buy water from any other source instead.

Is the argument that the government water is too convenient and so it should be unfiltered? Who is to say that filtering out poop is not infringing on my right to consume unfiltered water?

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

#948

Post by ein0p »

mortos wrote: post #944
ein0p wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's reverse osmosis based, yes. If it's some other kind of filter, likely no, and you should buy a TDS meter and use it, because in all likelihood it's not really filtering anything. I did exactly this. It turned out that my carbon based filter had more TDS than completely unfiltered water from a tap in the garden. RO water, even re-mineralized, had 1/15th the TDS IIRC.

TDS is just Total Dissolved Solids. What solids though you don't know and you could be adding carbon while removing others which is likely the case. Also those dinky little TDS meters don't even measure TDS. They measure electrical conductivity and with a little math they use the EC as a proxy for TDS. It's typically only calibrated to one specific ion, others will be off by some factor. Also keep in mind TDS is expr…

Yes, but be that as it may, at least it shows whether _any_ filtering is occurring at all. Which in the case of even a somewhat spent carbon filter is not a thing. RO does the job so well, you have to remineralize afterwards or the water doesn't taste like anything. You could literally pee into a jar and get fresh water on the other end. That's sort of what happens on sailing vessels that are equipped with water makers - they simply run sea water through RO.

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

#949

Post by Ylpertnodi »

fzeroracer wrote: post #885

Strangely, I never see the people demanding we ban fluoride also demand we ban cars, considering the amount of particulates and rubber wheels we inhale as a result of policy, road design and car design. And I can almost guarantee you that's resulting in an actual meaningful drop in IQ and health outcomes as opposed to fluoridating water. But I guess freedom to pollute matters more than bodily autonomy in terms of men…

>I never see the people demanding we ban fluoride also demand we ban cars,

Perhaps you could take a dive into the youtubes, and find "crash detectives" (Welsh-based, so you may have to put captions on), but none of those professionals check for mouthwash.

Haha, some [police forces] do.

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

#950

Post by acidmath »

Pretty much everyone I personally know, this in part to coming from a family of relative affluence in highly liberal areas, has religiously filtered their water to keep additives (such as fluoride) from going into their bodies. This same crowd has savvy towards dental hygiene, they're all into oil pulling, and brushing with Fennel oil and all that. Eliminating yeast (which is fungus, not bacteria) from the mouth prevents the biofilm that creates the necessary conditions for dental cavities.

Even the poorest Americans can afford coconut oil and Fennel oil.

There's no reason to drink that shit (fluoride), there's no reason to brush with it either.

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