The people who need to hear this sadly would not believe that too much water can kill you even if you showed them someone die from it, I fear. I’d also be shocked if they read “water poisoning” and didn’t think of poisoned water.
I didn’t know this was a thing when I was younger, but not young enough to not be classified as a moron.
Drank about 7-8 litres of water in 3 hours without going to the bathroom as a contest against a work colleague. Suffice to say I started feeling a little off on the way home, even after going to the bathroom. Years later I finally learned you can drown yourself from drinking too much and the symptoms were eerily close to what I experienced that night.
Oh don’t get me wrong! I also only learned about water toxicity when I was very much an adult.
But the difference between us and the type of person I’m talking about, is that we (I’m presuming on your part) don’t think fluoride in water is a bad thing.
The kind of person who hears “the government adds CHEMICAL_NAME to water” and assumes that’s a bad thing is the kind of person who will not believe drinking too much water can kill you, even (or especially) if they are told by an expert.
Back when I was in college, people didn’t like fluoride because it calcifies the pinneal gland. I assume that rhetoric has only been further exaggerated over the years
Another point that conspiracy bros will bring up is that fluoride is a toxic byproduct of aluminum manufacture and dumping it into the water supply is a cheap way for Alcoa to dispose of it benevolently.
Honestly it really is sad, we have so many more uses for it
Every atom of fluoride going into our water is another atom that can’t go into chlorine trifluoride production. Putting it into the water is a huge sacrifice we make for the health of society.
Real men make chlorine pentafluoride anyway. We have no use for pathetic hypergolic oxidisers with only three fluorine atoms.
Weird. The only argument I heard, and successfully made it to policy in my area is that it costs tax money and takes away choice. All thus smart stuff is for those damn yankees.
The majority of fluoride that is released into our water supply is a by-product of fertilizer production.
Even better!
It does do this. However so does ageing, low sunlight exposure, low altitude, ethnicity, sex, nutrition, neuro-divergence, cell phone use, EM fields… you get the idea.
Does fluoride-enhanced water actually do this, though? Or just pure fluoride? Yes, pure fluoride has an effect, but I always thought the miniscule amount in our water is not enough to actually make a difference to the natural calcification of our pineal gland, anyways.
From what I have read studies do not show it, however it is believed it does happen because, when the data in those studies is extrapolated for 60+ years, it shows that it should contribute to it, at least
So, yeah, seems too, but it really isn’t a factor worth worrying about
Does it though? Did they really do XCT on enough brains in areas with different F in their water to show this over time? And correct for the fact that it calcifies with age anyway? And probably does so variably across individuals and populations (2023 meta-analysis says old white men are the most likely to have calcified pineal glands).
Don’t forget the gravitational pull of Betelgeuse. In a very, very small way, that also effects calcification of the pineal gland.
(Don’t give them ideas…)
This is a conspiracy by fluoridians.
Drink your water, or get the FOOF.
Thats what the fluoridiots say.
thanks Ron DeSantooth
fluorida man strikes again
Shawty had them blackened-out teeth (teeth)
Tooths with the fur (with the fur)
The whole clinic was looking at her
She hit the fluor (she hit the fluor)
Next thing you know
Shawty’s teeth got glow, glow, glow, glow, glow, glow, glowArtist: Fluo Rida
Song: GlowEdit: formatting
Them crooked molars and the braces with the gaps (With the gaps)
She turned around and showed her grill all full of plaque (yikes!)
She hit the floss (She hit the floss), next thing you know
Shawty’s blood flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow
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 longterm studies to learn about. That makes them harder to study.
Still doesn’t mit flouride does anything bad longerm. But the argument is bad.
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
Citation needed
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
Ideally both.
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.
WHO guidelines for 1.5mg/L fluoride
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.
Also, isn’t it recommended to not give infants fluorided water, hence why you can buy it in virtually every grocery store?
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.
We probably have enough A/B data now to make some inferences yeah? Compare countries with fluoridated water to countries without.
yes and some of that data is already in other comments here
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.
never the concern
It is when you’re responding to people who think 5G is turning the frogs gay and activating hidden vaccine microchips.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, it seems to me like he got the right idea and wanted to convince people by making an extreme statement…
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.
Also “because I’m an expert and I say so” is a good way to convince someone to let you poison them.
Yeah, by this argument lead in the water isn’t a concern.
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?
Yeah but lead bioaccumulates where as fluoride/ine doesn’t
Are you sure fluoride doesn’t? It does accumulate in the soil, building up in crops. Considering fluoride exposure from all sources, many people are above upper safe limits, even from tea drinking alone
I don’t think fluoride should be added to water as it just pollutes the environment, where 99.99% of water isn’t coming in contact with teeth
It doesn’t. This is high-school chemistry.
Fluoride only “accumulates” up to the peak concentration of the environment (no further) on places where it is removed from contact with that environment.
You can only accumulate fluoride in the soil if you keep adding it and there is almost no rain to wash it away.
Like how crops are irrigated with town water, and in many areas with lowering rainfall? Accumulates in fruit, vegetables, leaves too
Yes, irrigation with the minimum possible amount of water is known to destroy land for millennia at this point. But sodium will be a problem way before you notice any change in fluoride.
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.
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.
They like the lead, though!
(Probably. I mean, they did in Flint, MI…)
Removing fluoride won’t break the water. However, it may break our teeth.
The fluoride added to water gets it up to 0.7mg/liter.
That ends up to be 2 or 3 drops in a 55 gallon drums worth of water. Not much.
Fluoride is a natural substance and is found in many areas drinking water already. Many areas in much higher concentrations than 0.7mg/liter, so realistically people all over the world have drank fluoridated water for thousands of years.
You have to well over double the 0.7 before any health issues may appear and the first to appear is at about triple the concentration in kids under 8 years old who drink it for years getting spots on their teeth. The spots are only superficial.
Going into concentrations even higher than that CAN cause health issues when drank for longer periods of time. All of those cases being from naturally occurring fluoride, which actually effects somewhere north of 20% of the world’s population.
Which makes the argument that fluoride in our water keeps us passive as being extra stupid, since water sourced around Columbia (the country) is far higher than .07mg/liter and Columbia seems to be caught in violence and turmoil and instability quite a bit over the decades.
Just because a concentration is low doesn’t mean it’s safe. Water with 0.7 mg/L of Po-210 is lethal.
You can put an amount of it in a 55 gallon drum that is not visible
It’s a natural substance
Fluoride is in fact safe at the amounts that the FDA regulates but saying it’s a small concentration or that it’s natural are not the reasons it’s safe. It’s the hundreds of peer reviewed research articles that show that it’s safe
Small note: the country name is spelled “Colombia,” and spelling it correctly means you don’t need to specify which one!
Fair enough!
Its presence in groundwater is how we discovered it’s good for teeth.
In fact, there used to be so much in some areas,it actually stained the teeth. In Colorado Springs a dentist noticed that the children were developing brown stains on their teeth. In researching it, it was discovered that the “Colorado Brown Stain” was caused by excessive fluoride in the drinking water. But it also lead to the discovery that regions with natural fluoride present but in lower levels than Colorado Springs didn’t have stained teeth, but did have lower levels of tooth decay.
Yep. In fact, 21% of the world’s natural drinking water used falls within the recommended range for fluoride, while over another 20% is higher and in some countries actually does cause some non-superficial side effects and problems. Those don’t pop up until in concentrations at least 3 times higher than recommended.
the people that need to hear this will never believe you.
deleted by creator
Without Fluoride all the humour in the world dies.
Welcome to Science Memes, where the science isn’t memes and the memes aren’t about science.
The meme is now this is not US policy.
Its like stating the world is not flat… when in fact NASA’s official stance is that the world is, indeed, flat.
It’s not about toxicity, it’s about mind control! Fluoride makes you passive. But you know this since you’re a tool of the government pushing poison.
Just bleach your teeth like normal people! You know, with the bleach under the kitchen sink.
(Don’t actually do this)
And that’s why you should only drink grain alcohol and pure, natural reason water. To preserve the essence of your precious bodily fluids.
</s>
Like the ol’ General said / s
We can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.
Yikes 😬
Its from Dr. Strangeglove
This is the correct response from any line from Dr. Strangelove taken out of context.
In context, it takes some 15 to 30 minutes for you to understand that you are supposed to laugh.
I mean, trump got reelected. I hope it’s the flouride.
Eating seeds as a pastime activity
I am still concerned about fluoride, but for different reasons. The federal government says there is too much natural fluoride in our water so we must import water to dilute it. The federal government doesn’t trust us with police officers, or politicians, but surely the public water company isn’t corrupt or incompetent…surely.
But hey, our teeth are really white and no ones died from flouride, far more likely to die from sudden lead.
Having worked for a municipal water system, no, they are not incompetent when engineers are at the helm. Corruption I saw was related to giving small incidental work to friends, some weird politics sometimes, but that was about it.
More importantly: everyone understood our job wasn’t to make money, we were foundational to our city’s livelihood & health, that of our neighbors, our mother’s and brothers. Quality was job 1, and I really do mean that. Could we have moved faster and for less money? Maybe. But I’m glad we picked doing the job right over doing it fast.
Toxicologist, toxicity, minuscule, fluoridated – your big doctor words are just trying to trick us!
The question is: does it make sense to buy toothpaste with fluoride then or can I buy one without? Just because my kids don’t like the peppermint ones and other flavours are most of the times without fluoride
Non-fluoridated toothpaste is mainly for kids who are too young to be able to consistently spit it all out. The concentration of fluoride in toothpaste is high enough that you shouldn’t be swallowing it, because doing that on the regular is harmful to your teeth. Gray discoloration is one of the first symptoms.
If your kids are capable of doing “rinse and spit,” then they should be using fluoridated toothpaste.
And even then, there’s a significant safety margin worked into the advice that you shouldn’t swallow toothpaste. You’d need to eat several tubes of prescription strength toothpaste to get sick from fluoride.
Still rinse and spit though
Absolutely true - and I just remembered, even if your kids are little and using non-fluoridated toothpaste, you should still be using this time to teach them rinse and spit.
What is this rinse? You are supposed to leave the toothpaste on your teeth iirc. No water rinse.
Edit sorry realized this comes off harsh but not sure how to fix it. Lmao
With you having to judge millions of children, that you need to get high just to stay sane; you get a pass.
But there is a general recommendation to not eat or drink for 15-30min after brushing to give enough time for the fluoride to bind to any exposed enamel surfaces. It’s also better to use a fluoridated mouthrinse over water, if getting the grittyness is what you’re after.
Always buy flouride toothpaste.
Fluoridated toothpaste is more effective than drinking water. The fluoride works by direct contact with the enamel. Another reason it doesn’t make sense to put it in drinking water.
Fluoride in the water is beneficial in the pre-eruptive phase (when teeth are still growing). Fluoride ingestion increases tooth resistence to cavities if the ingestion happened while they were growing.
This does mean that fluoride in water isn’t really useful after you have all your permanent teeth though.
For other toothpaste that still strengthens enamel, there is toothpaste with hydroxyapatite (which can be ingested, at least that specific ingredient). Though it is probably more expensive.
Unfortunately hydroxyapatite is not approved for dental use in the United States of America.
Now say something that bros can really understand, like “fluoride affects zinc and magnesium absorption”. Just don’t tell them how it interacts
Lemminologist here:
the fluoride levels vary because that’s how numbers do in reality
My thing is this…
- Adding it requires effort
- Removing it, if possible, requires effort
- It’s not a requirement
- There are other alternative methods to get it, like toothpaste, or sumpliments, that don’t force your neighbors to have your fluoride.
I want someone who knows about these things to respond to this 2012 metastudy that ties naturally fluoridated groundwater to neurological problems. I have used this the past decade to say “well the science is unclear;” I found it back then (2013 at the latest) when I was trying to disprove a crank and really questioned my shit. There was a(n unrelated?) follow up later that questioned the benefits. Since this is very far from my area of expertise, I’m not championing these; I just want to understand why they’re wrong or at least don’t matter in the discourse.
(Edit: for the educated, there could be a million ways these are wrong. Authors are idiots, study isn’t reproducible, industry capture, conclusions not backed up by data, whatever. I just don’t have the requisite knowledge to say these are wrong and therefore fluoridated water is both safe and useful)
You want some fancy rebuttal to a single linked study that the article states was a bunch of partials thrown together, that came from a country famously known for half-assing and cutting corners to get ahead? The country that was caught mixing lead into ground Cinnamon to sell it for a higher weight? The one where buildings sit half done or the cement falls apart by the time it’s together? The ones who lay sod over cement in order to pass the amount of vegetation present on new construction?
That’s the article you could and and latch onto in order to believe? Are you even aware that fluoride occurs naturally in water and that about 40% of all the drinking water across the globe already has around the amount the US gets theirs up to, or a larger amount(some places so large they do actually cause health issues)? It’s literally been drank for thousands of years.
But you trust an incomplete study from China more than anything else? Why?
I’m was just hoping for a solid rebuttal, not necessarily a fancy one! If you’re able to explain why the criticisms you mention mean that specific study is bad, that would be great! I’m assuming you’re not from China and mistakenly think wherever you’re from doesn’t suffer from similar issues, meaning we can only trust you as much as the article.
It would be great to have some citations for that so I can point to things when I get into these discussions! That was part of what I asked for. You seem really passionate about this so you must have that available to help me out. Thanks!
I’m not sure you read my post if you think I trust any of the studies I linked more than anything else. It might be good to reread it!
You stated you’ve used this one half ased article in order to claim “the science is unclear”, which just announces that you’re a troll or a simpleton. You’re giving weight to a Chinese blip of an article and holding it up to an equal value against the loads of research and data that shows its safe.
If someone was holding a penny in one hand and 50 pennies in the other, would you say it was unclear which hand was holding more?
I don’t think you understand what “outside my realm of expertise” means. I’m not trolling, so I must be a simpleton. As a simpleton, my general perspective has always been that it should be safe to ask questions about things you don’t understand so you can better understand. In this case, it’s very simple to say “from my uneducated eye, this appears to be a strong source that contradicts; that doesn’t seem to jive with the narrative so can someone help me understand why it doesn’t?” You seem to feel simpletons aren’t allowed to ask questions or grow, so we’re done here. I will take my specialized, domain-specific knowledge (which I’ve forgotten more about than you will probably ever learn) and sit in my simpleton castle knowing that’s all I ever get to know because it’s not okay to ask questions on the internet in a community based on discourse.
The Takeaway I’m getting from both of these studies being talked about Is that things are very unclear. The Cochrane group is very well regarded for conducting Meta studies and finding flaws in previously held understandings. The term high fluoridation is mentioned many times, and it’s unclear what that is meaning.
Vitamin A is an incredibly important molecule to many biological processes in the human body, but we do not want to supplement it, aggressively, as it can become toxic. Fluoride is noted to be beneficial for enamel hardening. No one is recommending taking large amounts of it. The second link you have points out the important questions, what is the actual danger, and who is in danger the most?
I also came across the same study while looking to disprove a conspiracy nut. We should really do more research on the effects of fluoride.
The Harvard geneticists little opinion piece she wrote completely ignores all the direct evidence that was gathered back then, about how cavities always decreased in fluoridated areas when compared to neighboring cities that hadn’t yet done so.
Also, yeah, it’s bad for you in large doses. Literally anything is bad for you in large enough doses.
It looks like someone else linked one of these studies in a different comment while I was writing my own. I don’t feel as crazy now. I don’t care one way or another; I just want to make sure I can respond correctly! I wonder if the emphasis on fluoridated water is itself linked to industry capture?
I managed to catch myself good old Periodontal Disease. This freaked me out. My anxiety and ADHD shook hands and many of you can imagine what happened.
A couple days and who knows how many hours later I emerged like a butterfly from my self-imposed isolation with new knowledge. In short, yes, the amount of fluoride in water processed in various districts across the U.S. is tiny. The amount used does vary. Some studies have concluded that excess fluoride can have an effect on brain activity. However, they have been inconclusive in drawing actual parallels between any form of neurological functioning - though I can’t remember if I’ve read that particular study.
Anyway, remember who is yelling about this. As with many issues brought up like this it’s more about standing on a hill and shouting rather than any real significant problem. A platform to be seen and heard.
Btw, I completely halted my Periodontal and even reversed some of the lesser effects it had. Sometimes that adhd rabbit hole comes in handy.
A study in Canada was published in 2019 looking at the differences between 2 neighboring cities where on stopped fluoridating water in 2011. They saw that saw a significant increase in cavities in children in the city that stopped fluoridating vs the other. This is despite the fact the the city without fluoridation actually has somewhat higher adherence to brushing, flossing, and going to the dentist. No difference was seen yet in permanent teeth, but that’s because the study would need more time to see effects there.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdoe.12685
Of course, we still should do more studies on fluoride neurotoxicity. Most studies look at levels of fluoride at 1.5mg/L or higher, which is more than double the recommended level by the US (0.7 mg/L). There is a hard limit in the US of 4mg/L, but the EPA strongly recommends a limit of 2mg/L. This only really matters for locations with very high levels of fluoride in the groundwater, and is thus quite rare. The EU’s limit is 1.5mg/L.
There’s a follow up meta study from 2020.:
In conclusion, based on the totality of currently available scientific evidence, the present review does not support the presumption that fluoride should be assessed as a human developmental neurotoxicant at the current exposure levels in Europe.
