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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.
Europe banned Fluoride in drinking water since at least the 1980's.
Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.
Dental health is a service provided by people who spend money to outfit dental clinics. Same as medical professionals. As such, the market dictates the availability and costs. Instead of the government, which is the way it should be. It's amazing to me the number of people who think the government, who can't seem to run anything well, should be running healthcare and dental care. Just so a small minority of the population can afford something. Rather than provide services that only that small portion of the population can use if they choose to.
Insurance is 'crappy' because the most expensive treatments are cosmetic and most insurance won't cover more than 50%. Same as health regular insurance, it doesn't cover many cosmetic treatments. Because, if it did, insurance rates would go up to cover the increased costs. Providing orthodontic coverage for anyone other than those with serious misalignment places a large monetary burden on everyone else, just so they can look pretty. Why should I have pay for someone to have a pretty smile?? Letting me decide what insurance I want is the best way to provide efficient coverage without further driving up demand and costs.
You see that in the medical field. Breast augmentations are covered as the result of cancer treatments, not simply because someone got old. Cataract surgery isn't covered until it affects ones ability to drive, not because someone just wants to see better.
Many companies provide dental insurance as an inexpensive benefit. It's inexpensive because most people CHOOSE to not use it.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
There was a study posted on Slashdot about this myth a few years ago. They concluded that Americans care more about their teeth because good dental care is expensive and so is a status symbol. Having few teeth is one of the stereotypes of poor/stupid people in the US. Middle class and aspiring middle class people in the US spend money on their teeth (cosmetically, at least) because if they don't then they look poor. For people in the UK, anyone can afford good dental care (for a while, it was easier for very poor people to because a lot of dentists weren't taking new NHS customers except under duress and people on certain forms of income support had guaranteed treatment), so going to the dentist is just seen as a chore and often slipped down priorities.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Dental health is a service provided by people who spend money to outfit dental clinics. Same as medical professionals. As such, the market dictates the availability and costs.
Fire fighting service is [etc, etc].
It's amazing to me the number of people who think the government, who can't seem to run anything well,
That's a very American viewpoint. In other countries, government functions well. In others, it does well with some things, and badly at others.
Why should I have pay for someone to have a pretty smile??
Because they'll pay for you to have something you'd argue isn't essential, like fire protection, food safety, fertility treatments, counselling, etc.
Cataract surgery isn't covered until it affects ones ability to drive, not because someone just wants to see better.
My grandma is booked for cataract surgery in May. She's still OK to drive, the medical benefit is currently justified for her mental health (she's lost confidence with worsening sight). It's free on the NHS.
I believe back in the 90's activists in some U.S. cities got their cities to stop adding fluoride to the supplies. Bad mineral exchanges immediately started to occur in the piping because of the accumulated minerals in the pipes which included a fluoride component started reacting with the water that no longer contained fluoride causing the water to become contaminated by minerals other than just fluoride. The water not only tasted bad, it was determined that it was not safe to drink.
It takes decades for the minerals in the piping to accumulate and it will take decades to slowly taper fluoride away if we want to avoid unintended consequences. I know the mineral content of water varies widely across supply sources so some cities may have no related problems and some could have severe problems.
Fallacy fallacy, appeal to fallacy.
I suppose this means I win.
The anti-fluoride people are cranks and we're under no obligation to entertain them. Like creationists, merely arguing with them gives them more credibility than they had before.
Thing is, they can afford it whereas the US cannot. This is largely due to the demographics of these nations, the fact that their defense budgets are largely carried by NATO/Treaty/aid/etc (read: the US is paying for and/or providing a very significant percentage of it, even if indirectly), immigration laws are uber-strict (which cuts down on the flood of low/no-income users of the system), and because each has a relatively low population that is densely packed when compared to the US (which means you don't need so many clinics, doctors, specialties, etc). In spite of this, many of the nations you list are already under moderate to severe economic crisis in spite of that...
Meanwhile, if the US were to adopt such a system, or if the US DoD stopped providing direct/indirect military defense for these nations in order to afford such a system, a whole lot of economies would collapse within 10-15 years, maximum - the economies of both sides would be radically hamstrung under either condition.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
On the topic of medicine in the US not being a free market, the AMA (for medical doctors) and the ADA (for dentists) are essentially guilds. Very much good has come from their existence, such as standardization of medical education and enforcement of minimal qualifications, but the economics surrounding medicine are also directed almost exclusively by the guild. Supply of practitioners is deliberately limited to keep pay high (this is managed much better by the AMA than the ADA, who prefers a boom-bust cycle that results in dental schools closing and reopening).
Spectacularly wrong.
When you type "fluoride" into Wikipedia, the second auto-suggest is this "Fluoride_toxicity" page.
Then there is this paragraph on an otherwise pro-fluoridation page: "In India an estimated 60 million people have been poisoned by well water contaminated by excessive fluoride... The effects are particularly evident in the bone deformations of children."
At another pro-fluoridation page, we learn that the natural fluoride levels causing all those poisoned East Indians is 3 to 6 mg/l. Just 6 times the original US national standard forced on two-thirds of the population for the past sixty years.
The normal rule of toxicology is a safety factor of 100. About 100 cups of coffee will kill us, for example. One baby aspirin is 1/200 of the lethal (ld50) dose for an infant. Same as one 200 mg Ibuprofen. But a day's maximum ibuprofen dose is 6% of lethal. One cigarette is 1/80th of lethal. The average US salt consumption of 3.5 g/day is 2% of lethal...and common sense tells us we eat too much salt, on average.
Fluoride's ld50 is 50 mg/Kg. 8 glasses of water is about 2000 grams. Fluoridate at 1 mg/l, we get 2 mg of fluoride just from the water. That is 4% of lethal. And does not include at least 15 other sources of fluoride in our diet.
Stats in the last two paragraphs drawing from "Toxic: How Science Measures Harm"
tldr? Fluoride is more toxic than lead and almost as toxic as arsenic - common knowledge
Saying that something more toxic than lead has "essentially nil" toxicity is my idea of wrong.
I come here for the love
1. The version of fluoride they put in the water
Who is they? In my country we use different types of flouride depending on location.
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).
Lies. It's only becomes an issue in gas form, which is going to be hard when saturated 1 ppm in water.
3. Consumption of unfiltered tap water, I'd say, is just about zero. I know no-one that drinks
Good thing that science uses techniques other than your personal experience. This research found at least 25% of bottled water contained tap water. How does that fit into your experience now?
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.
And?
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
You didn't mention how many people in your town. If $63000 save 60 people's teeth from rotting then I'd say it's a net gain. Average cost for fluoridation is $1 per person per year. Trivial when you consider the cost of dental care.
6. No-one, I mean I searched hard, has studied the rate of change in a community pre and post fluoridation of tap water
Ask and you shall receive: http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/e...
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
So use another study instead, or better, conduct your own.
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.
$1 per person is not significant. You probably spent more on your membership fees to the Tinfoil Hat Convention.