this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 285 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (17 children)

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 we need longterm studies to learn about. That makes them harder to study.

Still doesn't mean flouride does anything bad longerm. But the argument is bad.

[–] [email protected] 122 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, by this argument lead in the water isn't a concern.

[–] [email protected] 112 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but lead bioaccumulates where as fluoride/ine doesn't

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah? And what if someone ignores that, simply lies and says it's toxic? I'm convinced!

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago

And both of these people telling me about fluoride in water are both experts in their field. One an expert toxicologist, and the other an expert liar. Now I don't know what to believe.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

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.

*edit: Colombia

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 4 months ago (6 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago

I mean, trump got reelected. I hope it's the flouride.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 4 months ago

Toxicologist, toxicity, minuscule, fluoridated -- your big doctor words are just trying to trick us!

[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 months ago (3 children)

So, once again, DHMO is the chemical we need to fear.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (3 children)

The stuff also known as hydric acid. People just don't talk enough about how corrosive it is. Plus, it gets in the air and gets in your lungs!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (3 children)

There was an incident involving it on April 14th 1912 that took over 1500 lives.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 months ago (13 children)

Fluoridated water doesn't seem to make a difference on cavities. It does have neurological effects. It's simply not acutely fatal. It's already in our toothpaste. We don't need it in our municipal water supply and the majority of developed countries don't.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluoridated-drinking-water/

[–] [email protected] 51 points 4 months ago

Thank you for the link. It's worth mentioning that there are response letters to the publication you linked from other experts, the majority of which are critical and point out misinterpretations and omissions by the author. It's always good to question, but in this instance it looks like the consensus amongst experts evaluating that publication is still that fluoridation is safe and improves dental health. The response letters can be read here.

Edit to add: The responses include a letter from the dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine stating that the publication is deeply flawed and requesting a retraction, and a similar condemnation from the students of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. The article was given greater weight by being linked to Harvard, but in fact Harvard dental experts explicitly disagree.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago

This is a disingenuous take. This is a cherry-picked article that does not come to the conclusion you draw here. You also state "It does have neurological effects" but leave out the most important piece of information for that to be true: high doses.

Why should anyone trust what you say when you're twisting the information to suit your narrative?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Counterpoint: I live in an area without fluoridated water, and I'm told that dentists can reliably identify people who didn't grow up here by the state of their teeth.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I appreciate that you put some reputable sources, rather than relying on a random tweet/post.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The source is not as reputable as it appears. The article in question is not from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and in fact was condemned by the HSDM. The actual dental experts at Harvard requested a formal retraction of the article: "Based on the significant flaws in the magazine article, we respectfully request that the article be rescinded, and a correction be published to clarify any misleading information that was provided."

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but I read an article on a bullshit website. I think some no name website knows more than a toxicologist

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why is some dumb scientist expert trying to tell me, a person who pays for an internet connection, what the truth is?

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (2 children)

This is a conspiracy by fluoridians.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thats what the fluoridiots say.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (11 children)

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)

Update: great newer studies in responses! You can have a rational convo starting with these two that moves to newer stuff.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (3 children)

dihydrogen monoxide is also dangerous, we must ban it as well

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

Not to mention there are many natural sources of fluoride which can contain greater concentrations of it than what is in tap water. The ocean has a concentration of fluoride that is in the range of 1.2 to 1.4 ppm, compared to the standard rate of fluoride of drinking water, which is 0.5–1 ppm

edit: I didn't say that people drink ocean water, my point was about the ubiquitous nature of fluoride. The majority of life lives in the ocean, so if fluoride really was as toxic as some people say it is, there would be a lot less life on Earth. There are many lakes and other water sources that people have been drinking from for ages which naturally contain higher amounts of fluoride than what is in fluoridated tap water.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (9 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

i know this guy has a fancy degree and everything, but is he really as reliable a source as rfk junior? you don’t need fluoride when you have an army of worms ready to eat any kinds of bacteria that may enter your system.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I feel like I woke up in the movie Dr. Strangelove

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

I believe the objection to fluoride is that it is a tranquilizer that keeps us from achieving glory through violent uprising... or sweet sweet dentist profits.

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