Talk:Water fluoridation

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Flouride is poison.

https://8ch.net/b/res/7916623.html#7920540

Blind sheep.

http://www.newsweek.com/water-fluoridation-linked-higher-adhd-rates-312748^{— Unsigned, by: 95.211.211.182 / talk / contribs}

"But I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki!" Drink! — Cosmikdebris (talk) 04:34, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

We're really at this point where the anti-fluoridation people use goddamned 8chan as a source. You read that right. Goddamned 8chan. The "sheep" insult, yeah, like the 40,000th time that comparison is used is more effective to bolster your argument.

Headline from an article in March 2015 says, "Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates".

Article then shortly contradicts it and says

But scientists were quick to point out that this is just one study, and doesn’t prove that there is necessarily a causal link between fluoridation and ADHD. They also noted a number of important limitations: Individual fluoride exposures weren’t measured, ADHD diagnoses weren’t independently verified and there may be other unknown confounding factors that explain the link.

Dr. Benedetto Vitiello, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, says that the link between the two may not be a causal one and could be explained by regional or cultural factors. Charles Poole, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, says that this research suggests fluoride should be more carefully studied, but doesn’t show much of anything by itself. “I think the authors were quite cautious in their interpretation… and [accurate] in their statement of the study’s limitations,” he says. “So it would be ludicrous to draw a strong conclusion based on this study alone.”

I also like how Newsweek farts out their "sources", hidden within their weasel-worded "multiple studies", from freaking Fluoride Alert (which is as credible as any anti-vax scaremonger sites) and Fluoride Research.org (ditto), of all goddamned things, coupled with the Chinese studies again, oh boy, here we go. The Newsweek piece says absolutely nothing about the literally thousands of papers documenting fluoride science, also documented in our talk page archive. I don't know if Newsweek just had a really rough day, but this is HuffPo levels of crankery.

--It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 04:59, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I think there is a fair case to be made against water fluoridation

Fluoride, to my knowledge, has not been proven to be effective as a treatment against tooth decay when ingested. It only seems to work topically. Gargling fluoridated water, using fluoridated toothpaste, or getting a fluoride treatment at the dentist are all effective at preventing tooth decay, but ingesting fluoride doesn't do anything.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15153698

A) It seems wasteful to add fluoride to drinking water if it has never been proven to actually provide its stated benefit.

B) If there's no benefit in drinking fluoridated water, common sense would seem to say that adding fluoride is a needless risk. Fluoride, to me, does not seem to have any major negative effects that we know about currently. But if it also lacks any sort of major benefit, why not hedge against risks we might not know about yet by simply leaving it out the water supply to begin with? ^{— Unsigned, by: Xianny / talk / contribs}

@Xianny Well, I think the fluoride was added to water because some water does reach to your teeth and your mouth, and I bet there's some fluoride residue left after you swallow the water. So yes, fluoridated water provides beneficial exposure of fluoride to your mouth, and our article states that this is how children are mostly exposed to fluoride. It has benefits, shown in the studies in the article, which is reducing cavities, which helps even if you take good care of your teeth. There have been no confirmed risks, but science language being cautious like always and operating on confidence levels, you shouldn't have to worry about fluoride poisoning as long as the EPA does its job and exposure levels are properly regulated, which they should be. I also checked the abstract of the study but its language is very fishy to me ("A dogma has existed for many decades, that fluoride has to be ingested and acts mainly pre-eruptively.") --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 03:32, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Sure. I don't really have a dog in this fight; I just don't think every argument against fluoride that I've heard is absurd or unreasonable. The "B" argument is based on statistical reasoning. It's true, there are no currently confirmed risks of water fluoridation when concentrations are kept within a certain range, but we've only been observing those effects for 50 years or so. By contrast, humans have been drinking non-fluoridated water for as long as we've been around. We are much less likely to see some hard-to-predict tail risk pop up in the second case. So it's not a matter of fluoridated water being bad for you (because as far as we know, it isn't), it's that there is a lot more room for "unknown unknowns" with fluoridated water. It's more likely that it COULD be bad for you, so it's at least worth asking whether it would be better to simply have non-fluoridated water alongside fluoridated toothpaste, especially since actually drinking the water doesn't seem to make a difference in preventing cavities. ^{— Unsigned, by: Xianny / talk / contribs}

the evidence is really strong. it has been since the 50s. Flouridated water has substantial effects on rate of tooth decay, especially in juvenile populations. Large meta-analyses consistently find the same numbers. About 15-35% fewer serious dental issues due to tooth decay. The evidence is overwhelming and profound. Worrying over the entirely hypothetical "unknown unknowns" with no functional mechanism that can be described is a lot like fearing tiger attacks in the plains of north america. There's no evidence it happens, there's particular way it could happen, but hypothetically it could if you allow enough mental flexibility. Dooming 10s of millions to preventable harm because you're not sure is very silly. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:23, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Fluoridated water passes over your teeth when you drink it, providing topical contact. Topical contact has been proven to be an effective treatment for tooth decay. However, there's no additional benefit from *drinking* fluoridated water, as stated in my first post. My question is whether or not fluoridating the whole supply is overkill considering that there's no additional benefit gained from drinking the water. If we get the same benefit from toothpaste, why fluoridate the water supply? It adds (hedge) risk but doesn't seem to add any additional benefit. Context is important, so maybe there are parts of the world where toothpaste isn't readily available and simply fluoridating the water supply is the easiest way to treat people. But that certainly doesn't seem to be the case in the US at least. You can link me to a logical fallacy article, but I think it's important that you understand that I have not said fluoride as a (topical) treatment is ineffective, nor that people should be "doomed" to cavities by not receiving treatment at all. I think you're conflating a case against fluoridating the water supply with a case against treating tooth decay with fluoride in general. ^{— Unsigned, by: 136.62.69.17 / talk}

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:30, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

We fluoridate water because it's effective per studies ikanreed put out (it's a very easy benefit to administer, and authorities such as the New Zealand government-sponsored site say that fluoridated water provides benefits on top of topological applications.

Keeping your teeth healthy also requires brushing twice a day with fluoride toothpaste, dental care and reducing sugar. Community water fluoridation provides additional benefits even if you do all these things. Over half of New Zealand adults avoid going to the dentist because of cost, and over half of New Zealand children don’t brush their teeth twice a day with the recommended strength fluoride toothpaste.

That’s why community water fluoridation is so important – it makes good oral health accessible to all.

--It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 20:15, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

External links

Would this or similar be useful? Anna Livia (talk) 12:35, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

This article about fluoride lowers IQ even at extremely low levels.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fluoride-causes-iq-loss-children/