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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.

27 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. It's finally time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's finally time we embraced "The Big Book of British Smiles" on this side of the pond!

    1. Re:It's finally time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Britain has better dental health than the USA. But keep peddling that century old myth if it makes you feel better.

    2. Re:It's finally time by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Britain has better dental health than the USA. But keep peddling that century old myth if it makes you feel better.

      My wife is American and finds this particularly funny. When she came to the UK she had a lot of treatment that she could not have afforded in the USA, and our daughter has orthodontic treatment without charge - and some of her relatives who have had teeth removed because they could not afford treatment still make jokes about British teeth

    3. Re:It's finally time by king+neckbeard · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The reason that Americans say Brits have bad teeth is because of whiteness and straightness, neither of which has much to do with number of cavities. There, the mystery is solved. Also, there's the distinct possibility that Brits today care more about their dental health because it was so shitty, either in aesthetics or health, for so long.

      --
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    4. Re:It's finally time by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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
    5. Re:It's finally time by xaxa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:It's finally time by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      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.
    7. Re:It's finally time by rs79 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ayn Rand used meth, not pot.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    8. Re:It's finally time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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?

    9. Re:It's finally time by Ramze · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    10. Re:It's finally time by Totenglocke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      and our daughter has orthodontic treatment without charge

      I have to be "that guy". You were charged - and quite a bit for it, they just didn't hand you a bill after you received the service. When you factor in all taxes (VAT, fuel tax, TV tax, income tax, NHS tax, etc) even the lowest tax bracket in the UK is paying roughly 50% of their income in taxes.

      --
      "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
    11. Re:It's finally time by Totenglocke · · Score: 3

      That's a load of crap. Dental insurance (even without an employer plan) is incredibly cheap and covers a thorough cleaning every six months. If you skip the cleanings (which you won't be charged extra for, just the usual monthly insurance payment) then yes, you'll need to get expensive procedures done - but that's your own damn fault for skipping preventative maintenance that wouldn't cost you anything extra.

      --
      "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
    12. Re:It's finally time by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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?
    13. Re:It's finally time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    14. Re:It's finally time by NatasRevol · · Score: 3, Funny

      That explains the teeth...

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    15. Re:It's finally time by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Thing is, they can afford it whereas the US cannot.

      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.
  2. Bodyly fluids by Flavianoep · · Score: 3, Funny

    Too little, too late , I've already started the attack on the Commies.
    ---Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper

    --
    Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
  3. Re:Its about time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    No they didn't. Some individual countries may have discontinued it, but it's still common in Europe as a whole.

  4. Re:This is going to be fun by geekmux · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Jenny McCarthy Says It Turned Her Kid by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, he got that from her.

  6. Re:Its about time by ledow · · Score: 3, Informative

    [Citation required]

    Don't conflate "some European countries" with "the whole of Europe including the UK", for example.

  7. Re:Its about time by BonThomme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Out of a population of about three-fourths of a billion, under 14 million people in Europe receive artificially-fluoridated water."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoridation_by_country

    You might ask yourself why you've embraced a myth.

  8. Re:This is going to be fun by TWX · · Score: 4, Funny

    Conspiratards are already typing off their fingers.

    At least they're not going on about attacking the communists over their precious bodily fluids...

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  9. Just get rid of it by gerardrj · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:Just get rid of it by dwillden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny, medical experts disagree with you. So please post your training so we can compare it with that of the deputy Surgeon General.

      --
      I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
    2. Re:Just get rid of it by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  10. Re: This is going to be fun by Chalnoth · · Score: 3, Informative