• RQG@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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.

      • Ferrous@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        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.

      • reptar@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        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?

    • refalo@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      never the concern

      It is when you’re responding to people who think 5G is turning the frogs gay and activating hidden vaccine microchips.

    • Pulptastic@midwest.social
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      2 months ago

      We probably have enough A/B data now to make some inferences yeah? Compare countries with fluoridated water to countries without.

      • jrubal1462@mander.xyz
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        2 months ago

        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.

    • Mango@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Also “because I’m an expert and I say so” is a good way to convince someone to let you poison them.

  • beebarfbadger@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

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

    • Brickhead92@lemmy.world
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      2 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.

    • Hamartia@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Any chemical that can exist as a solid, a liquid and a gas at the same time isn’t safe to put into our bodies!

    • BreadOven@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Fun fact. Literally everyone who has died, ever, has had DHMO in some form. You’re even exposed in the womb!

  • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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.

  • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • macarthur_park@lemmy.world
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      2 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.

    • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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      2 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.

    • tehmics@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        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?

        • LeadersAtWork@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

    • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
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      2 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?

    • Ramblingman@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The bad part about Rfk jr is he probably mixes in some science with quackery. I honestly assumed all his ideas are insane. That’s what’s so hard about being discerning right now, you have to be on one side or the other.

  • affiliate@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • protist@mander.xyz
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      2 months ago

      I 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.

      Second time I got to post this today, unfortunately because it’s almost ceased being satire.

  • madjo@feddit.nl
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    2 months ago

    For what’s it worth, in my country (Netherlands), we don’t add fluoride to our tap water anymore since the early 70s. We just have it in our toothpaste (though you can also get fluoride free toothpaste for those who don’t want it).

    Sure there’s still traces of fluoride in our water, as it appears in nature. But it’s not artificially added by our water companies.

    • scholar@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Most places that do add it to the water supply match the levels of places where flouride occurs naturally