Medical freedom vs. public health: Should fluoride be in our drinking water?
Medical freedom vs. public health: Should fluoride be in our drinking water?
Misinformation campaigns increasingly target the cavity-fighting mineral, prompting communities to reverse mandates. Dentists are enraged. Parents are caught in the middle.
Misinformation campaigns increasingly target the cavity-fighting mineral, prompting communities to reverse mandates. Dentists are enraged. Parents are caught in the middle.
The culture wars have a new target: your teeth.
Communities across the U.S. are ending public water fluoridation programs, often spurred by groups that insist that people should decide whether they want the mineral — long proven to fight cavities — added to their water supplies.
The push to flush it from water systems seems to be increasingly fueled by pandemic-related mistrust of government oversteps and misleading claims, experts say, that fluoride is harmful.
“The anti-fluoridation movement gained steam with Covid,” said Dr. Meg Lochary, a pediatric dentist in Union County, North Carolina. “We’ve seen an increase of people who either don’t want fluoride or are skeptical about it.”
There should be no question about the dental benefits of fluoride, Lochary and other experts say. Major public health groups, including the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, support the use of fluoridated water. All cite studies that show it reduces tooth decay by 25%.
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The thing that seriously hurts those anti-fluoridation nuts is that fluoride can naturally be in water supplies and there are water supplies with higher PPM fluoride amounts than municipalities that add them in the U.S., but there don't appear to be any increased health issues.
Not that such people generally care.
As I said to a friend years ago: show me one case of fluoride poisoning....just one and I'll believe you that it's dangerous.
He couldn't. End of discussion.
Children can theoretically get fluorosis in their teeth if they chug mouthwash, but it’s a pretty uncommon thing to do.
But... but... freedom!
Found this through a quick internet search if you’re interested.
Internets sleuthing points to you!
A massive accidental overdose (150x) in a water system, leading to acute illness and one death, for those interested.
Potential Role of Fluoride in the Etiopathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease
Aluminium and fluoride in drinking water in relation to later dementia risk
Higher levels of aluminium and fluoride were related to dementia risk in a population of men and women who consumed relatively low drinking-water levels of both.
It’s not fluoride poisoning. You’re asking for something you’re assuming is the issue before understanding the problem. I think that fluoridation was useful when it was needed as oral health would have suffered and not having it wouldn’t have been better. Now the science is shifting and instead of assuming you know, just read something or watch a doctor talk. Maybe your friend isn’t the one to be fighting for water fluoridation. And maybe, just maybe, you are both not knowledgeable in the subject. I’m not either! That’s why I listen to doctors who present the science clearly and correctly (and without a monetary interest!).
NutritionFacts.org - Why I Changed My Mind on Water Fluoridation
You just might be the dumbest motherfucker on Lemmy.
We evolved to get our nutrients from natural sources, some of those sources water … and we are filtering a lot of it out arbitrarily then being afraid to put it back.
There was an argument made a while back that filtering the lithium out of our water is messing with folks too.
So we took the lead out of the air and that made people less crazy, but we also took the lithium out of the water and that made people more crazy.
Hooray us.
To be fair we were putting the lead into the air in the first place.
Good luck getting the powers that be to start lithidating water.
That's actually how we discovered that fluoride in public drinking water is good for your teeth. Colorado Springs had natural fluoride in their drinking water and their rate of cavities was way lower than the national average, so some dentists searched around to figure out the cause.