this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 273 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (9 children)

Toxicologist here. I think that take is dishonest or dumb.

Taking a lethal dose is almost never the concern with any substance in our drinking water.

Hormones, heavy metals, persistent organic chemicals, ammonia are all in our drinking water. But for all of them we can't drink enough water to die from a high dose.

Some of them still have a large effect on our bodies.

It's about the longterm effects. Which we need longterm studies to learn about. That makes them harder to study.

Still doesn't mean flouride does anything bad longerm. But the argument is bad.

[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Yeah, by this argument lead in the water isn't a concern.

[–] [email protected] 110 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You just made me mad by helping me realize that the Trump bros are going to break water by removing fluoride long before they fix water by removing lead.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

They like the lead, though!

(Probably. I mean, they did in Flint, MI...)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

Removing fluoride won’t break the water. However, it may break our teeth.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah but lead bioaccumulates where as fluoride/ine doesn't

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Yup, same with PFAS and forever chemicals. Maybe I'm ignorant because I'm not a doctor, but I don't know if this line of thinking holds water - pun not intended.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

lead poisoning becomes evident pretty early though doesn't it? (With respect to kids)

I would think that the ratio of persistent exposure to unsafe level has got to be easily higher in cases like Flint than any fluoride-in-the-water usage. Just speculation on my part.

What measures are taken to avoid screwing up the dosage, anyone know? Maybe predilute so that an oops requires multiple buckets instead of vials?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's so funny I was just having a similar conversation about neurotoxic venomous animals in another thread. Lethality is an obviously concerning threshold, but there are substances out there that can easily destroy your quality of life and livelihood that never reach the concern of being lethal.

I think for mostly rational people concerned about fluoride in their water is that it was a public health decision made with little to no actual science proving it's safety or efficacy when it was first decided that they were going to add it to the public water supply. The proposed benefits of it weren't even supported by scientific evidence, it was just supposed that exposure to sodium fluoride could potentially reduce tooth decay for some.

Personally, I've suffered from the cosmetic damage of dental fluorosis, and I'm not necessarily thrilled about fluoride. But I have way more issues with public mandates founded on pseudoscience than I am with sodium fluoride. Especially now that we can see evidence that for some people fluoride can be especially beneficial.

So what was wrong with giving people the option of using fluoride toothpaste or mouthwashes... Why did it have to go into the public water supply?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Mate, your entire second paragraph is completely false. Like, you need to just read this: https://www.nidcr.nih.gov/health-info/fluoride/the-story-of-fluoridation

It's considered by the CDC as one of the greatest Public Health Achievements of the last Century. There have been dozens, if not hundreds of studies about fluoride affects in the water supply.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah that proves my point entirely.

In 1945 they fluoridated the first public water supply.

In 1979 the first published research began to appear to show how fluoride might be able to remineralize dental enamel.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

In 1945, Grand Rapids became the first city in the world to fluoridate its drinking water.The Grand Rapids water fluoridation study was originally sponsored by the U.S. Surgeon General, but was taken over by the NIDR shortly after the Institute's inception in 1948. During the 15-year project, researchers monitored the rate of tooth decay among Grand Rapids' almost 30,000 schoolchildren. After just 11 years, Dean- who was now director of the NIDR-announced an amazing finding. The caries rate among Grand Rapids children born after fluoride was added to the water supply dropped more than 60 percent. This finding, considering the thousands of participants in the study, amounted to a giant scientific breakthrough that promised to revolutionize dental care, making tooth decay for the first time in history a preventable disease for most people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, I guess that somehow totes proves his point. Super easy to see the world wrong when they have the reading comprehension of a 6th grader.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

So the person above may think they're so clever, or whoever fed them that factoid may think that. Notice the claim is remineralization. Maybe that's true, it may be that a study first showed that in 1975 and that's not contradicted by your link but that is a non sequitur. It's not what we're talking about, it's not a good faith argument.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

In our area, the only water supply WITH Fluoride serves an area with a median HOUSEHOLD income of less than $40k with more than 25% living below the poverty line. For communities like these the fluoride is critical because there will be a lot of children that don't have access to fluoride supplements, or regular care from a pediatric (or regular) dentist.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

never the concern

It is when you're responding to people who think 5G is turning the frogs gay and activating hidden vaccine microchips.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

We probably have enough A/B data now to make some inferences yeah? Compare countries with fluoridated water to countries without.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

You can get even more granular than that. CDC maintains a list of water systems and whether or not they add fluoride. CDC My Water System. To give you an idea of how granular that is, there are 78 different water systems in my county alone. For most of my life I assumed we had fluoridated water but apparently only 1/78 of our water systems are. I only checked when we had kids and I needed to know whether or not I needed to give them Fluoride Drops.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

yes and some of that data is already in other comments here

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, it seems to me like he got the right idea and wanted to convince people by making an extreme statement..

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

That might well be the case. I'm not sure if it is helpful to use those half truths which are simpler to convince certain people. Or if it weakens the point because it is in the end not really correct.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

This. How can we be completely certain that something isn't damaging over the long term. I'm not anti fluoride, but healthy debate and scepticism is a good thing, especially when we're all forced to consume a substance with the only alternative being dehydration and death. People need to be free to make their own choices.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also, isn't it recommended to not give infants fluorided water, hence why you can buy it in virtually every grocery store?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Pretty much anything you can think of is recommended by someone, because different people have conflicting views. The key is to choose whose recommendations are based on the best reasoning & evidence aligning with your goals.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Fluoride does have long term effects though once you consider fluoride exposure through all sources like diet, which is mostly due to fluoride from water ending up in farmland. Tradesmen alone regularly exceed the upper limits due to high water consumption in hotter seasons

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

To which? These are all pulled from research, just need to know which so I don't waste my time pulling up something you're not questioning

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

WHO guidelines for 1.5mg/L fluoride

https://web.archive.org/web/20110707103002/http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/2011/dwq_guidelines/en/#%3A%7E%3Atext=This+fourth+edition+of+the+World+Health+Organization%E2%80%99s%2Cfor+water+safety+in+support+of+public+health.

Upper limit of 10mg/day (considered to be high by some bodies)

https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au/nutrient-reference-values/nutrients/fluoride-updated-2017

Basic bath: only considering water intake, consuming 6-7 liters in a day (regular occurance working in Australia) puts you over the upper limit without considering major sources like diet, tea and dental products and treatments.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356603384_Bioaccumulation_of_Fluoride_in_Plants_and_Its_Microbially_Assisted_Remediation_A_Review_of_Biological_Processes_and_Technological_Performance

Plants are vulnerable to fluoride accumulation in soil, and their growth and development can be negatively affected, even with low fluoride content in the soil.