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Feds Say It's Time To Cut Back On Fluoride In Drinking Water
An anonymous reader writes: Federal health officials Monday changed the recommended amount of fluoride in drinking water for the first time since 1962, cutting by almost half the maximum amount of fluoride that should be added to drinking supplies. The Department of Health and Human Services recommended 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water instead of the long-standing range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams. The change is recommended because now Americans have access to more sources of fluoride, such as toothpaste and mouth rinses, than they did when fluoridation was first introduced in the United States,' Dr. Boris Lushniak, the deputy surgeon general, told reporters during a conference call.
No they didn't. Some individual countries may have discontinued it, but it's still common in Europe as a whole.
Conspiratards are already typing off their fingers.
Perhaps the only conspiracy here is ignorance.
There are already quite a few areas in the US that removed fluoride from the water supply. Many are likely not even aware if their local county does or not.
.. about dental health, they limit the amount of Corn Syrup, and HFCS that exists throughout the US food supply!
Sugar is still sugar! It doesn't have to be white and bleached, for it to decay your teeth!
The original theory was that by putting fluoride into drinking water, it'll get into developing teeth, which are chemically altered to be harder. Then they figured out that that doesn't happen; it just reacts directly with teeth in the mouth. But we have fluoride toothpaste that does just as well and doesn't get swallowed quite as much. Then there's the issue of toxicity, which apparently is essentially nil except for people with thyroid problems, where the fluorine can displace iodine.
The conspiracy theorists actually play on the thyroid thing. The idea is that fluoride induces hypothyroidism, which slows people down and makes them more docile, and a docile populace is what governments want, because they rock the boat less. But I think this is a case of opportunism, kinda like how creationists will accept scientific theories whenever they appear to support their delusions. The theory that it was a communist plot predates any hypotheses about thyroid effects. I don't think there's any evidence that fluoride will *induce* thyroid problems.
Britain has better dental health than the USA. But keep peddling that century old myth if it makes you feel better.
[Citation required]
Don't conflate "some European countries" with "the whole of Europe including the UK", for example.
Google: Neurotoxicity of Sodium Flouride in Rats, by Phyllis Mullenix, then look what happened to her after publishing her findings. I'll let you theorize all you like, I stick to the facts - and the fact is that she is not alone.
Fluoride in water always sounds good to people who want "better smiles" but it's 99% a waste of the money spent:
1. The version of fluoride they put in the water (Hexafluorosilicic acid) is not shown to help with dental decay issues. Sodium Fluoride is the chemical the ADA studies and recommends for toothpaste and dental products.
2. Hexafluorosilicic acid is a product manufactured from industrial waste in the aluminum industry and is considered a toxic substance. If industry hadn't conned municipalities in to putting it in the water supply as a "fluoride source" it would cost them a good chunk of change to dispose of the stuff. (Look up ALCOA and fluoride).
3. Consumption of unfiltered tap water, I'd say, is just about zero. I know no-one that drinks any substantive quantity of tap water that the fluoride content in it would ever have any clinical effect. Almost any filter designed to remove impurities will remove the fluoride from tap water.
4. Even if people were drinking only tap water, over 95% of the water used in an average municipality is very consumed by any living thing. It washes cars, waters lawns, bathes people, flushes toilets, cools industrial equipment, etc.
5. When I had this discussion with my town a few years ago asking them to provide numbers they told my it cost $63,000 a year in product and personnel to run the fluoridation system for 29.5 million gallons of potable water. That sounds like very little, .2 cents ($.002) per thousand gallons or an average of about $.30 per family per month. Sure when you make the numbers small it doesn't look like much, but think about what $63,000 a year gets if directed an other programs in a town. Another teacher or two? Extended library hours on the weekends? A new after school program?
6. No-one, I mean I searched hard, has studied the rate of change in a community pre and post fluoridation of tap water since an initial study of Grand Rapids and Muskegon in 1945. A study that was ended prematurely but touted as a success anyway despite its very unscientific lack of compensating for outside factors not related to the study itself and the "control" changing programs during the study.
7. The Grand Rapids "study" was based upon Sodium Fluoride, which again is not what we put in the water today. So even if the result was positive the hexafluorosilicic acid used today has never been studied for prevention of tooth decay in municipal water supplies and is a very different chemical compound just like Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide are very different chemicals. Search for
8. There is no version of any type of fluoride that is indicated by the FDA for the prevention of tooth decay. The municipal water companies are adding an non-FDA approved and unregulated drug to our water supply. The other substance added to water supplies (chlorine to be simple) is approved by the FDA for water and food sanitation.
As you can see, there is simply no supporting truth to the argument that fluoride in municipal water prevents tooth decay. It does cost a significant amount of money, and almost no-one drinks the fluoridated water anyway.
Do your own research. You will come to the same conclusion: municipal water fluoridation is based on lies, it's a waste of money, it doesn't work and it may actually cause harm to public health.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Tell that to the people of Norway,New Zealand,Japan,Belgium,United Kingdom, Kuwait, Sweden, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Netherlands, Austria, United Arab Emirates, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg, France, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece, Spain, South Korea, Iceland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Israel, all of whom have had government run health care for at least 20 years, some going back as far as 1938.
And most of those countries have higher-rated health care systems than the US and eleven of those countries have greater levels of economic freedom and social mobility than the US.
So you might want to take your tired tropes to the back yard and put them out of their misery.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The UK citizen pays a third per person for health care in comparison to a US citizen, there is 100% coverage of the population, and the health outcomes are better.
Care to explain what's going wrong exactly?
That is such a naive post, I don't know where to begin. I guess I'll bypass the "government doesn't do anything well" BS (firefighters, US Mail, EMS services, public water/sewer systems, uncountable other examples prove you wrong)... But, apparently, every industrialized country other than the USA either has free healthcare or a hybrid system like Australia with a combination of free care plus private.
Let's move on to this mythical health "market" you mention. Markets require competition to work. Most areas only have one or two hospitals within the geographic region which can provide most health care services. That's not a free market... it's a monopoly or oligopoly. Monopolies and Oligopolies require government oversight because they tend to abuse their power. Granted, the Dentistry market is far more competitive than say, thoracic surgery.
Still, Insurance isn't a market either. It's also an oligopoly situation where you have to have one of the major carriers to have health providers ACCEPT the coverage you have -- and picking an insurance carrier may give you perks with one hospital or other health care provider, but none with another, so this also limits your market choices. Health care providers are not required to accept your insurance.
So, let's talk about pricing - you won't find it listed most places. It's complex... it's deceitful - intentionally. If you have no insurance, you have one price. If you have insurance, it's another price. Then, when billed, you pay a different amount and the insurance company pays the rest -- but not actually. You see, the insurance company negotiates the prices. Say you have a bill for $100K. You pay $5K, the insurance company pays $45K, and the rest just goes unpaid, yet considered to be paid in full. Another individual who has no insurance gets the bill for the full amount - OR if the physician knows in advance you have no insurance will sometimes negotiate a different price - sometimes much lower than what they'd have gotten from the insurance company.
Doctors HATE the insurance companies. They have to hire lots of staff for medical coding to report correctly to insurance companies, fight with them over the billing, and often get paid late -if at all. Doctors also have high malpractice insurance bills and high medical school loan bills. Many other countries don't have these issues -- they even send their doctors to medical school for next to nothing - imagine that! It drives the cost of being a doctor down, increases supply of doctors and drives the costs of medical care down along with it.
The USA medical system is a mess. I'm not a doctor myself, but I have many family and friends in the medical field. They would LOVE a single payer system to simplify everything. They could have less staff because there's no need to deal with multiple insurance companies, less confusion on pricing, and more customers as everyone is covered. Government health insurance doesn't have to be government run healthcare - just insurance. Why have thousands of companies complicating everything when one agency could give you insurance right out of your paycheck with your taxes (just like a company benefit would), and you're insured everywhere for everything except cosmetic surgeries beyond dental. But, I digress.
I'm not sure what dental plans you're concerned about. Most don't cover things like crowns and Hollywood veneers. Most cover regular checkups and fillings - maybe braces for kids if you pay extra. That's not a huge burden on the USA economy... not with 15 Trillion in debt - mostly spent on the military.
Thing is, they can afford it whereas the US cannot.
That's just incorrect. The British NHS, for example, costs 6.5% of GDP. In the US, we spend over 17% of GDP on health. It's astounding how little value we get for all that extra cost. Then you think of all the layers of bureaucracy in all the insurance providers and some of it makes sense.
False. http://www.ilikemyteeth.org/fl...
That's horseshit. Remember, the US, the largest economy in the world has been spending a significantly larger percentage of their GDP on health care than the other countries prior to 2012 (last statistics I could find) and getting poorer outcomes.
You are welcome on my lawn.