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

#971

Post by concordDance » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:35 AM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #940

concordDance wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has had water fluoridation for 65 years, affecting 346 million people. That's a pretty big god damn sample size and long amount of time in which to observe effects. If we still have no proof of significant negative health effects, it's probably not bad for you. The problem is there will have been a lot of confounders. E.g. despite huge sample sizes, isolating the cause of the obesity crisis is too hard becau…

Sure, it's not easy to find a smoking gun. That doesn't mean we go all in on whatever we think might be the issue (if there even is an issue). The answer to the obesity crisis wasn't to ban Pizza. We don't we ban sodas and junk food at schools, which we know would have a positive impact on health. But we do ban fluoride, without proof that it will help? With actually the only scientific proof being that it would be d…

> you can get better IQ by investing in education, something that we do an embarrassing job of already and need to improve on.

You got a cite for this? I keep hearing that the education interventions tried in the West have universally failed to raise IQ.

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

#972

Post by almog » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 8:42 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #969

almog wrote: post #945

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The only reason for lack of concrete statements on the 0.7 level was a lack of data, owing largely to US political culture (1.5 is the World Health Organization 'safe' limit). Not long ago fluoride stuff was considered a 'conspiracy theory' which greatly deters meaningful scientific research on the topic. This is in part because of social reasons (most people don't want to be perceived as 'fringe') and in part becaus…

There are natural experiments where the correlation between IQ and lower amounts of fluoride can be studied. For example in Israel, until 2014, the fluoride level was 0.8-1.0 mg/L depending on the region but starting in 2014 water is no longer fluoridated (naturally occurring fluoride level is in the 0.1-0.3 mg/L range for the vast majority of the population) so the data should be there, it's just a matter of collecting it. Some countries can provide data for the opposite natural experiment (adding fluoride in recent years).

To me, using the 1.5 mg/L doesn't tell anything about lower levels but it does make me interested in seeing such study whereas before I'd have just dismissed it.

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

#973

Post by edanm » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 10:33 AM UTC

unsupp0rted wrote: post #610

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…

This is bad advice that no one could possibly follow.

> Look at the current research, listen to people who devoted their careers to studying this, make up your own mind.

Do you honestly do this with every single belief you have? Even every single controversial belief? Have you looked, yourself, into whether the world is flat? Whether the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true? Whether crop circles were created by aliens? These are all absurd conspiracy theories, but I assume most people don't know the "up to date" research on any of them, or what people who have "devote their careers" to research them say.

And those are incredibly common and well known to be false theories.

You have to take some things on faith to at least some degree - though to be clear, by "on faith" I mean "on faith of people you trust", which should really start with professional scientists etc. Also, it's totally fine to just say "I have no actual idea" about most things, and just go with what your current understanding of the status-quo position is.

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

#974

Post by cma » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 11:33 AM UTC

iterance wrote: post #800

cma wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flouride incorporates into the tooth structure in developing teeth before they emerge, I'm not sure how effective that is but it is different than the more topical protection. Tea has enormous amounts of flouride depending on where it is grown and they aren't banning that yet.

For what it's worth, very few locations and processing styles result in significant doses of fluoride in tea. Within the United States, these types of tea are not typically consumed. For example, Tibetan brick tea is consistently high in fluoride, to the extent that fluorosis is actually somewhat common in certain regions. But it's a bit tricky to even buy a brick (meant for consumption) within the US. Bagged tea, mo…

I'm not comparing it to tea that causes fluoridosis. Just normal tea sold in the US can have significantly more fluoride than is put into water supplies. I don't think it's a significant danger, like the amounts in the water supply aren't either.

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

#975

Post by unsupp0rted » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 11:49 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #973

unsupp0rted wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is bad advice that no one could possibly follow. > Look at the current research, listen to people who devoted their careers to studying this, make up your own mind. Do you honestly do this with every single belief you have? Even every single controversial belief? Have you looked, yourself, into whether the world is flat? Whether the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true? Whether crop circles were created by aliens?…

> Even every single controversial belief?

Yes.

> Have you looked, yourself, into whether the world is flat? Whether the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true? Whether crop circles were created by aliens?

Yes.

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

#976

Post by logicchains » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 12:10 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #586

imacomputertoo wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fluoride exposure beyond a small amount has a statistically significant effect on childhood IQ: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

I can't believe so many people would downvote a peer-reviewed paper just because it doesn't sit well with their politics, it really shows how cult-like science discourse in the US has become.

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

#977

Post by JeremyNT » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 1:14 PM UTC

AndrewSwift wrote: post #404

abxyz wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misattributing: the U.S. has a perfect white teeth culture that doesn't exist elsewhere. Many people outside of the U.S. have healthier but uglier teeth. Fluoride isn't the reason for good/bad teeth inside/outside of the U.S, it's cultural. Many places outside of the U.S. do put fluoride in their water (nationally or regionally) and have "bad" teeth (e.g: England).

What does a white-tooth culture look like specifically? People brush their teeth in France, they have modern dentristy etc.

Others note the bleaching, which is relatively low cost, but the (purely cosmetic) straightening is probably the more interesting example.

People in the US pay a lot of money to have very straight teeth. You can see this clearly with American celebrities and actors (versus European counterparts), but the culture of cosmetically modifying teeth is very strong all across "middle class" and up America as well.

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

#978

Post by ekianjo » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

beowulfey wrote: post #540

ekianjo wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can add fluoride in your own water if you want to. Nobody is preventing your own freedom to drink fluoride.

That argument works both ways. You can also source your own water if you don't want municipal water.

Except that I am already paying for the water coming out from my tab, so I expect it to be free of extra chemicals since I pay for it.

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

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Post by ekianjo » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #554

ekianjo wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can add fluoride in your own water if you want to. Nobody is preventing your own freedom to drink fluoride.

You can also remove fluoride from your own water if you want to. Although I don't know if there are any filters that can distinguish between naturally occurring fluoride (ok) and fluoride added by the government (evil).

This requires a Reverse-Osmosis filter which is super expensive. So if you really want to give fluoride, I'd be happy for the government to hand out free sodium fluoride tabs for whoever wants it, in exchange to not force the water to have fluoride by default. See, we get the best of both worlds?

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

#980

Post by mjevans » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

gblargg wrote: post #398

mjevans wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happier if that broken-but-correct-2x-a-day guy banned HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) instead. It is my personal hypothesis that it is the cause of 'sugar cancer' (general cases of bad sugars / imbalances of sugars in the body), including Diabetes.

You can avoid HFCS without any cost. Avoiding fluoridated city water is costly.

Have you ever tried to purchase things in a US supermarket that lack HFCS? Chances are good you're looking at raw meats and vegetables and the like for a high effort meal made out of relatively high cost components.