• 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?

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.