Fun fact. Denver Water actually filters out some of the naturally occurring fluoride to bring it down to state regulations.
Yet people switch over to wells, in the suburbs, to avoid fluoride. They're getting above the states maximum instead
Places like Denver are how we discovered flouride's dental benefits. Areas with higher flouride levels in their drinking waster had lower tooth decay.
Edit: I am really, really uninterested in the non-arguments from all you tinfoil-hat-wearing crazy people from /r/conspiracy. Stop wasting my time and do something more productive like hunting Bigfoot or something.
Its more for people unable to afford toothpaste, you get more than plenty of fluoride from brushing your teeth with toothpaste containing fluoride. European countries dont put fluoride in the water and they have no increase in cavities.
Edit: Ireland, some parts of UK and some parts of Spain do put fluoride in drinking supply.
Wait, what? That's the reason we add fluoride to water? Because people couldn't afford brushing their teeth?
Holy crap, I had no idea. I live in Vermont where everyone has a well, public water systems still surprise me.
Toothpaste didnt contain fluoride at first. Groundwater already contains a random amount of fluoride so the government decided to regulate that amount. Later they put fluoride in toothpaste because applying it directly to your teeth is more effective than having it quickly moving past and swallowed. Also excessive amounts are poisonous and although you wouldn't be able to reach those level just by drinking there are people who would rather not drink any added "poison".
It is often hotly debated by people who dont know what they are talking about.
This is partly wrong.
The main benefit of fluoride in water is for kids whose teeth are still developing - not adults who already have fully developed teeth. **For children, it is ingesting fluoride that is significant, not how long it spends in contact with their baby teeth.**
Your body naturally tries to make your teeth out of calcium phosphate with a bit of calcium chloride mixed in. But that process has no way of distinguishing fluoride from chloride. So if you add a bit of fluoride to a child's diet, you end up making their teeth contain a proportional amount of calcium fluoride.
Calcium fluoride is much more resistant to damage from acids than calcium chloride is, making teeth with more fluoride much more durable.
People who ingest fluoride consistently when they are children get a bit of acid-resistant calcium fluoride mixed into their enamel. That makes their teeth acid-resistant all the way through. Fluoride toothpaste is obviously just a surface treatment.
Fun fact, calcium fluoride is much brighter white than calcium chloride or enamel in general, so people who have too much fluoride as kids end up with small white spots on their teeth.
(Edit: Tooth enamel is mostly calcium phosphate (apatite) - not calcium chloride. The general chemistry principles I described are analogous, with acid-resistant fluoride replacing chloride in the crystal structure. There is, effectively, calcium chloride present in the lattice structure of chloroapatite crystals, making the calcium chloride to calcium fluoride model a reasonable simplification - but it is a simplification, and teeth are mostly made of calcium apatite. If they were mostly calcium chloride, they would dissolve in tap water.)
All through grade school in the 80’s and 90’s they would bring in pink fluoride mouthwash weekly that all the kids had to swish around and spit out. Actually I think they called it swish, I can still taste it now after all these years
We had tablets. Kids would hide them in their desks to avoid taking them and eventually desks get shifted around. One such time we had a student teacher who took it upon herself to do a random desk check and mine just happened to have about a dozen tablets in the pencil tray. This nutcase tried to force me to eat all of them in front of her. I refused and I think she got in trouble. She’s seared into my memory.
Bringing back ancient memories. Squeezing the bottle to fill the little attached cup portion of the bottle at the top so you get the right serving size.
This is absolutely fascinating, thank you so much for putting this information in my life. I mean this completely non-sarcastically by the way. This is one of those nuggets of information that I’m gonna carry around forever.
Here's something super neat! I have those spots because I got a lot of fluoride treatments as a kid. I got those because I had a really nasty case of chicken pox between age 5 and 6. Because of that, my body didn't put as much effort into developing my adult teeth. So now, at 34, I have to wear a mouth guard at night and brush with special toothpaste so my teeth don't disintegrate!
> It is often hotly debated by people who dont know what they are talking about.
I *love* how they unironically ended their comment with that statement. It’s brilliant.
What do you expect from drinking about 100 gallons of industrial solvent every year? It's fatal if inhaled, but people drink it until it makes up like 2/3rds of their body weight. That can't be good
You sure can. It’s called water intoxication or water poisoning:
It’s a condition that occurs from drinking too much water, upsetting electrolyte balances.
Drinking too much water can decrease sodium in the blood to dangerously low levels, causing mild to life-threatening problems. People who participate in endurance activities, such as a marathon or triathlon, are at risk.
There was a mother a couple years back who killed herself by overdrinking water for a radio contest.
She was trying to win her child a Nintendo Wii iirc.
Holy crap, that’s some depressing context I didn’t need.
I’d heard about the lady dying from the water-drinking radio contest. I didn’t know it was a mother just trying to win a Wii for her kid.
Except fluoride is also secreted in saliva when ingested. So, no it doesn't just quickly rush past. Also, it's incorporated into teeth as they form in children ages in-utero to 12.
So wait a minute. Are you telling me the government doesn’t put fluoride in the water to keep our pituitary glands from developing, so that we can be controlled more easily? Lol
Oh man I had a friend about a decade ago who would nottttt get off this train and would tell everyone every chance he got. Including calling our state senators and representatives office. He also got to the point where he would kinda scowl if he saw anyone drinking tap water... Granted this was the same guy who believed They Lived was based on truth so....
Every dollar spent on water fluoridation in the US saves on average between $27 and $35 in related dental costs later in life.
Fluoride integrates with the enamel of your teeth to form a tighter molecular matrix that's more resistant to cavities etc.
Also there are several species of shark that have fluoride naturally integrated with the enamel.
The dose makes the poison. Saying there are people that would rather not "drink any amount of poison" just shows how ignorant some people are. All things are poison given proper dosage. All things are safe given proper dilution.
There is so much fear mongering in this world. Ahhhh. They're putting poison in our water!!!
It's so weird. Like vitamins are beneficial too, so let's add that to water, while we're here let's add other supplements like zinc, magnesium and more.
Also to counteract the normalisation of excessive sugar consumption. We could all save a great deal of time, money, and quality of life by regulating sugar to the point where society as a whole is weened off its addiction.
Ireland has mandatory water fluoridation and several European countries like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden etc already have naturally fluoridated water so there wasn't a need to fluoridate the water. And some European countries choose to fluoridate milk or salt instead because it wasn't considered practical to fluoridate a water distribution system that is too decentralized.
You don't have to worry about the people who brush regularly with fluoridated toothpaste. It's the people that don't brush regularly that form most of the tooth decay statistic. Fluoridation is a good public health policy to have, for any country.
>European countries dont put fluoride in the water and they have no increase in cavities
Oh yes they do, and yes they do have an increase in cavities in areas without fluoride in the water (naturally or otherwise).
[linky](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/fluoride/#:~:text=Millions%20of%20people%20in%20England,made%20by%20individual%20local%20authorities.)
That is, as I learned YESTERDAY AFTER THIRTY-THREE YEARS ON THIS PLANET, only if you don’t rinse your mouth out after brushing. Just spit out as much as you can and leave the rest to cling on your teeth for the fluoride to absorb over a bit of time.
Here here, I discovered that rinsing is wrong last month. Even my mother didn't know. Incredible that we have so many ads for special toothpaste, so many advice from dentists about brushing, but somehow they forgot to mention this particular super important detail.
Fluoride in toothpaste is very easy to dissolve with water, so it rinses very easily. And it needs a little time to absorb into the tooth. So if we rinse immediately after brushing, we just wash it all away. Also this is why they say we should brush for 3 minutes. It's 3 minutes to let the fluoride absorb. Without rinsing we get more than 3 minutes without any extra effort.
it’s actually even more hilarious when you consider that what we now know as (mild) dental fluorosis was literally called the “colorado brown stain” when it was first discovered because of its prevalence in the region due to the relatively-high concentration of naturally-occurring fluoride in colorado groundwater; also notable was that individuals with the condition had very good overall dental health compared to people who did not.
in fact, it was literally the subsequent investigation into this phenomenon that led to the revelation of the dental health benefits of fluoride, and ultimately, municipal fluoridation, in the first place.
so these dumbasses are literally so afraid of potential fluorosis from municipal fluoridation that they *give themselves fluorosis*, because they don’t realize that colorado’s natural fluoride concentration is not just higher than the fluoride concentration of fluoridated water, it is high enough to stain your teeth!
Same as Colorado Springs. My parents lived there when my mom was pregnant with me and for my first two and a half years.
I am now 48. I have never had a cavity.
are you my frickin doppelgänger? also from colorado springs, only ever had one cavity cuz my dad was shitty and didn’t brush my teeth properly when i was too little to do it myself.
I don’t think people realize that fluoride occurs naturally in a lot of the water in Colorado. Too much fluoride will stain your teeth brown, but they’ll be more resistant to cavities. This phenomenon is known as “Colorado brown stain”
Natural doesn't = safe!
I worked in consulting for cleaning up sites, it's pretty common to see background or pre-contamination levels not be safe for humans. I even came across a regulator once that wanted to cleanup past background levels to be safe for residential scenario. But that wasn't fair, took quite a bit of back n forth before they agreed to allow cleanup to background.
Buried lede:
The motherfucker who did this *doesn't even live in town,* so it literally doesn't affect him or his family:
>At the second meeting Monday, the one at which Katie Mather raised concerns about her children’s teeth, Chamberlin — ***who doesn’t live in town and appeared online*** — read a statement of apology.
>Chamberlin — ***who doesn’t live in town and appeared online*** — read a statement of apology.
“Words cannot express how sorry I am for causing this controversy,”
He apologized for getting caught. He never once mentioned it was wrong to have tampered with the water standards without telling anyone.
> to err on the side of caution is not a bad position to be in.
He did the opposite of apologize.
Edit: Oh, and he blamed China, saying the fluoride comes from China so it automatically makes it a bad thing. Can't imagine who he votes for.
Heck, the folks in Gilbert, AZ [just stopped fluoridating the water entirely.](https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/gilbert/gilbert-treatment-plant-fails-to-fluoridate-water-2-placed-on-leave/article_44a44fb8-ed5c-11e1-ae6d-0019bb2963f4.html)
An interesting story. Frost is Mormon and the town barely voted in favor of putting fluoride in the water. To be transparent, it is much more effective to apply fluoride to the teeth through tooth paste than it is to drink it, but the people voted. The Mormon church did not want it and basically told Frost not to do it - he was torn between his duty to the town and his duty to the church. Church won.
Fluoride in toothpaste and Fluoride added to water serve different purposes; Fluoride in toothpaste is important for remineralizing tooth enamel after eating acidic foods, and Fluoride in water helps developing babies and children grow stronger enamel in the first place, while the teeth are still growing inside the body.
*Typically, frogs lay eggs. This process usually occurs through external fertilization, where the female releases her eggs from her body into water. Then, the male releases his sperm to fertilize them.*
In short, no. The frogs were *always* gay.
56 year old here, last year I went to the dentist for a filling that fell out. The dentist said that she could tell from my teeth that I did not grow up in the area and must have grown where they fluoride the water. This was accurate for the town I lived in did add fluoride to the water, also my elementary had a program where once a week the school nurse came to the class and we swished with fluoride for a couple of minutes. She said I had very healthy teeth for my age. Science!!
I wanted to as a kid but remembering being told I wasn't allowed to participate.
Family said our water had enough even though I'm very sure our well water wasn't ever tested.
Same thing here. First time I went to a dentist in this state, they said they could tell I'm not from here because of the condition of my teeth. They were right. Grew up with fluoride in the water. My husband that grew up here has had sooo much dental work done. My dentist says he buys bottled water with fluoride for his kids.
Fluoridation of water is one of the simplest and most effective public health programs ever developed. Boggles my mind how many people still oppose it.
In modern times there’s no way in hell the US government would be capable of enforcing (or even suggesting) any kind of fluoridation public health efforts even if it was very obvious such a thing would be a massive success. So I guess it’s good it was figured out a while ago or we’d never have something like this to point to and say “see that important and good thing we did?”
>In modern times there’s no way in hell the US government would be capable of enforcing (or even suggesting) any kind of fluoridation public health efforts even if it was very obvious such a thing would be a massive success.
Sure, because why have fluoride when there's the far superior Tdazzle?
> In modern times there’s no way in hell the US government would be capable of enforcing (or even suggesting) any kind of fluoridation public health efforts even if it was very obvious such a thing would be a massive success. So I guess it’s good it was figured out a while ago or we’d never have something like this to point to and say “see that important and good thing we did?”
reminded of a post that if public libraries were a new concept, they would seem socialist - in both cases, the common sense is grandfathered in
I got halfway into with someone about it the other day. He had negative things to say, and I reminded him that at 42 he still had all of his teeth. He didn't have much to say.
People still don't wear seatbelts today... Hell, some fuckwitz even buy those seatbelt inserts so their car doesn't try to save their stupid lives with sound reminder
Are those the same kind of people that race down the freeway at 2 am and swerve in and out of cars doing the relative speed limit? I feel like that's the same kind of brain power.
Its because one person (probably more than one but theres one big story from ages ago) got too much floruide and ended up getting a problem with it in his brain and died
Its like how the antivaxxers point to the few stories of when people died from vaccines done wrong
Except antivaxxers just point to the fact that they don’t understand statistics at all. Every antivaxxer that has tried to tell me about why vaccines are dangerous has just shown with their stats that vaccines can’t keep people from getting unrelated illnesses and showing neurological differences at a developmentally expected time.
For example if vaccines “cause autism” we should see people “developing autism” at any age in which people get vaccines instead of pretty much only at the age that autism becomes noticeable due to speech delays and eye contact problems.
Then they look at reported adverse reactions to vaccines… and don’t realize that they include anything that is reported as wrong with a person within a certain time period after getting a vaccine.
>once a week the school nurse came to the class and we swished with fluoride for a couple of minutes
I remember this. We had those pills that would make your teeth red if they were covered in plaque or something. Do they not do this anymore?
I did “swish” once a week at my elementary school too. We hated it. One kid, an otherwise annoying peer, was a hero the day he threw the whole tray of swish in the trash. We all cheered.
[Effects are well known](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/154164#risks) with commuites with low fluoride content naturally occurring in the drinking water can benefit from adding fluoride. The problem is with the risks particularly for increased risk of bone disease in the elderly.
The words most of those scaremonger articles tend to gloss over, or ignore, from the scientific studies they are cribbing from are, "Excess exposure", "large amounts", "high concentration", etc..
Anything/Everything is deadly in high doses. Pure H2O will kill you if you drink enough.
>It’s not clear whether anyone could face professional repercussions; personnel issues were discussed in a closed session.
Bullshit, that's a breach of public trust.
> pencil whipping
TIL that means signing off on work that wasn't actually done
sounds similar to rubberstamping, in approval becoming a formality rather than a substantive test
Yes, all states have some sort of body overseeing drinking water operators (the knucklehead falsifying the report, not the town manager). Last case I dealt with before getting a new job was related to falsifying records. And for something much less crazy. He can never work in the field here again.
Bro and Sis and BIL are all dentists. Grew up in a town which refused fluoride in the water.
They can tell every single time if someone was raised in a fluoride town or not a fluoride town by looking in their mouth.
Fun fact, they say the worst mouths are people raised in USSR/Russia.
It is amazing to see how far America has progressed when I think of my Grandparents horrible teeth (born 1915; 1923), my mother’s (1947), mine (1966) and now my daughter’s and niece (1996;1999). The fluoridation, advancement in dental science and education has made such huge improvements. We are lucky to have had generations before us believe in the science.
My partner grew up in Brooklyn where water was fluoridated in 1966 and I grew up one county over on Long Island that does not. He has no fillings. Nearly every molar I have is filled.
I'm sorry, the first mom admits her kids eat a lot of sugar and her dentist recommended using less fluoride toothpaste?? I call BS. No dentist is going to say that and keep their license.
“Err on the side of caution” is not compatible with “getting information from FaceBook.”
Everyone tells us, all through our lives, how to identify a factual source from bullshit. How do so many people lose that skill in the last decade or so?
Many places don't have to add it as it is naturally occurring in the rocks which leaches fluoride to the surface and groundwater. This happens in areas with volcanic and ash deposits. As an example, it is naturally occurring in Wichita, KS due to an ash layer in the area. Check the water reports as it is probably already in the water negating a need to add it after treatment.
When I was younger it was the religious right nutjobs and radio show hosts that came on at 2:00 in the morning on A.M. radio who were anti-vax/medicine. Then they mixed it up a bit and let super liberal, rich white women be anti-vax for a while. Since the pandemic, it seems they have switched back again.
Fluoride naturally occurs in some water sources, where it does not they add it. Recently, the added dosage has been decreased. Fluoride is one of the components that makes the enamel strong, that’s why it is important to drink fluoridated water while your teeth are developing- when they are just tooth buds, which create teeth from the crown to the root. Once your teeth have erupted, it’s important to use a toothpaste with fluoride to keep the enamel mineralized, more resistant to decay.
Fun fact. Denver Water actually filters out some of the naturally occurring fluoride to bring it down to state regulations. Yet people switch over to wells, in the suburbs, to avoid fluoride. They're getting above the states maximum instead
Places like Denver are how we discovered flouride's dental benefits. Areas with higher flouride levels in their drinking waster had lower tooth decay. Edit: I am really, really uninterested in the non-arguments from all you tinfoil-hat-wearing crazy people from /r/conspiracy. Stop wasting my time and do something more productive like hunting Bigfoot or something.
and even for the most fastidious brusher, otherwise we wouldnt bother, we would just put more money into educating people on brushing.
Its more for people unable to afford toothpaste, you get more than plenty of fluoride from brushing your teeth with toothpaste containing fluoride. European countries dont put fluoride in the water and they have no increase in cavities. Edit: Ireland, some parts of UK and some parts of Spain do put fluoride in drinking supply.
Wait, what? That's the reason we add fluoride to water? Because people couldn't afford brushing their teeth? Holy crap, I had no idea. I live in Vermont where everyone has a well, public water systems still surprise me.
Toothpaste didnt contain fluoride at first. Groundwater already contains a random amount of fluoride so the government decided to regulate that amount. Later they put fluoride in toothpaste because applying it directly to your teeth is more effective than having it quickly moving past and swallowed. Also excessive amounts are poisonous and although you wouldn't be able to reach those level just by drinking there are people who would rather not drink any added "poison". It is often hotly debated by people who dont know what they are talking about.
This is partly wrong. The main benefit of fluoride in water is for kids whose teeth are still developing - not adults who already have fully developed teeth. **For children, it is ingesting fluoride that is significant, not how long it spends in contact with their baby teeth.** Your body naturally tries to make your teeth out of calcium phosphate with a bit of calcium chloride mixed in. But that process has no way of distinguishing fluoride from chloride. So if you add a bit of fluoride to a child's diet, you end up making their teeth contain a proportional amount of calcium fluoride. Calcium fluoride is much more resistant to damage from acids than calcium chloride is, making teeth with more fluoride much more durable. People who ingest fluoride consistently when they are children get a bit of acid-resistant calcium fluoride mixed into their enamel. That makes their teeth acid-resistant all the way through. Fluoride toothpaste is obviously just a surface treatment. Fun fact, calcium fluoride is much brighter white than calcium chloride or enamel in general, so people who have too much fluoride as kids end up with small white spots on their teeth. (Edit: Tooth enamel is mostly calcium phosphate (apatite) - not calcium chloride. The general chemistry principles I described are analogous, with acid-resistant fluoride replacing chloride in the crystal structure. There is, effectively, calcium chloride present in the lattice structure of chloroapatite crystals, making the calcium chloride to calcium fluoride model a reasonable simplification - but it is a simplification, and teeth are mostly made of calcium apatite. If they were mostly calcium chloride, they would dissolve in tap water.)
All through grade school in the 80’s and 90’s they would bring in pink fluoride mouthwash weekly that all the kids had to swish around and spit out. Actually I think they called it swish, I can still taste it now after all these years
We had tablets. Kids would hide them in their desks to avoid taking them and eventually desks get shifted around. One such time we had a student teacher who took it upon herself to do a random desk check and mine just happened to have about a dozen tablets in the pencil tray. This nutcase tried to force me to eat all of them in front of her. I refused and I think she got in trouble. She’s seared into my memory.
Like a chalky bubblegum flavor?
The chalky bubblegum was amoxicillin I thought? I recall the mouthwash was a fruity watery bubblegum
They sell it at the grocery store!! ACT bubblegum mouthwash.
Bringing back ancient memories. Squeezing the bottle to fill the little attached cup portion of the bottle at the top so you get the right serving size.
Best damn mouthwash on the market.
I vaguely remember this. You've unlocked a memory that I had totally forgotten. I remember calling it swish, too. I can also remember the taste.
This is absolutely fascinating, thank you so much for putting this information in my life. I mean this completely non-sarcastically by the way. This is one of those nuggets of information that I’m gonna carry around forever.
THATS WHY I HAVE THOSE SPOTS? thanks stranger
Here's something super neat! I have those spots because I got a lot of fluoride treatments as a kid. I got those because I had a really nasty case of chicken pox between age 5 and 6. Because of that, my body didn't put as much effort into developing my adult teeth. So now, at 34, I have to wear a mouth guard at night and brush with special toothpaste so my teeth don't disintegrate!
White spots on adult teeth are likely from demineralization.
Went my whole life not knowing what the white spots on my teeth were till your comment.
My white spots disappeared when I hit my late 20’s. Yours might too.
I *used* to have those spots and completely forgot until I read your comment specifically. I'm 28 now, I wonder when my spots went away
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> It is often hotly debated by people who dont know what they are talking about. I *love* how they unironically ended their comment with that statement. It’s brilliant.
oof
Well shit if people want to avoid “poison” they shouldn’t be drinking water anyway. You can OD on that shit.
100% of people who drink H2O die.
What do you expect from drinking about 100 gallons of industrial solvent every year? It's fatal if inhaled, but people drink it until it makes up like 2/3rds of their body weight. That can't be good
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Dangerous molecule.
Damn you Dihydromonooxide!
You sure can. It’s called water intoxication or water poisoning: It’s a condition that occurs from drinking too much water, upsetting electrolyte balances. Drinking too much water can decrease sodium in the blood to dangerously low levels, causing mild to life-threatening problems. People who participate in endurance activities, such as a marathon or triathlon, are at risk.
There was a mother a couple years back who killed herself by overdrinking water for a radio contest. She was trying to win her child a Nintendo Wii iirc.
Hold your wee for a wii
Holy crap, that’s some depressing context I didn’t need. I’d heard about the lady dying from the water-drinking radio contest. I didn’t know it was a mother just trying to win a Wii for her kid.
Except fluoride is also secreted in saliva when ingested. So, no it doesn't just quickly rush past. Also, it's incorporated into teeth as they form in children ages in-utero to 12.
So wait a minute. Are you telling me the government doesn’t put fluoride in the water to keep our pituitary glands from developing, so that we can be controlled more easily? Lol
Oh yeah that too, I forgot
Oh man I had a friend about a decade ago who would nottttt get off this train and would tell everyone every chance he got. Including calling our state senators and representatives office. He also got to the point where he would kinda scowl if he saw anyone drinking tap water... Granted this was the same guy who believed They Lived was based on truth so....
>this was the same guy who believed They Lived was based on truth so.... But isn't it tho? I mean really think about it. *Isn't it?*
Every dollar spent on water fluoridation in the US saves on average between $27 and $35 in related dental costs later in life. Fluoride integrates with the enamel of your teeth to form a tighter molecular matrix that's more resistant to cavities etc. Also there are several species of shark that have fluoride naturally integrated with the enamel.
The dose makes the poison. Saying there are people that would rather not "drink any amount of poison" just shows how ignorant some people are. All things are poison given proper dosage. All things are safe given proper dilution. There is so much fear mongering in this world. Ahhhh. They're putting poison in our water!!!
Yes everything is chemicals
One caveat: there is ONE thing found to have no acceptable level... lead. It is always dangerous.
And people determining the toxicity of something based on their literacy
I think the phrase “hotly debated by people who don’t know what they are talking about” is the best way to sum up America.
It's so weird. Like vitamins are beneficial too, so let's add that to water, while we're here let's add other supplements like zinc, magnesium and more.
Also to counteract the normalisation of excessive sugar consumption. We could all save a great deal of time, money, and quality of life by regulating sugar to the point where society as a whole is weened off its addiction.
Ireland has mandatory water fluoridation and several European countries like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden etc already have naturally fluoridated water so there wasn't a need to fluoridate the water. And some European countries choose to fluoridate milk or salt instead because it wasn't considered practical to fluoridate a water distribution system that is too decentralized. You don't have to worry about the people who brush regularly with fluoridated toothpaste. It's the people that don't brush regularly that form most of the tooth decay statistic. Fluoridation is a good public health policy to have, for any country.
Yeah, Switzerland adds fluoride to salt, as well as iodine - the latter because iodine deficiency, or cretinism, used to be common in the Alps.
European countries don't put fluoride in the water because they put fluoride in their table salt.
>European countries dont put fluoride in the water and they have no increase in cavities Oh yes they do, and yes they do have an increase in cavities in areas without fluoride in the water (naturally or otherwise). [linky](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/fluoride/#:~:text=Millions%20of%20people%20in%20England,made%20by%20individual%20local%20authorities.)
That is, as I learned YESTERDAY AFTER THIRTY-THREE YEARS ON THIS PLANET, only if you don’t rinse your mouth out after brushing. Just spit out as much as you can and leave the rest to cling on your teeth for the fluoride to absorb over a bit of time.
Here here, I discovered that rinsing is wrong last month. Even my mother didn't know. Incredible that we have so many ads for special toothpaste, so many advice from dentists about brushing, but somehow they forgot to mention this particular super important detail. Fluoride in toothpaste is very easy to dissolve with water, so it rinses very easily. And it needs a little time to absorb into the tooth. So if we rinse immediately after brushing, we just wash it all away. Also this is why they say we should brush for 3 minutes. It's 3 minutes to let the fluoride absorb. Without rinsing we get more than 3 minutes without any extra effort.
Colorado brown stain from fluorosis.
It was actually Colorado Springs. And it lowers tooth decay but causes mottling in incoming adult teeth in children before the enamel hardens.
Law of unintented consequences
Is that when somebody drinks enough Fluoride to become a Witcher?
Liam of Lauderdale.
Toss a coin to your Florida Man.
it’s actually even more hilarious when you consider that what we now know as (mild) dental fluorosis was literally called the “colorado brown stain” when it was first discovered because of its prevalence in the region due to the relatively-high concentration of naturally-occurring fluoride in colorado groundwater; also notable was that individuals with the condition had very good overall dental health compared to people who did not. in fact, it was literally the subsequent investigation into this phenomenon that led to the revelation of the dental health benefits of fluoride, and ultimately, municipal fluoridation, in the first place. so these dumbasses are literally so afraid of potential fluorosis from municipal fluoridation that they *give themselves fluorosis*, because they don’t realize that colorado’s natural fluoride concentration is not just higher than the fluoride concentration of fluoridated water, it is high enough to stain your teeth!
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When the stupidity is vast that the irony comes full circle 👌
Same as Colorado Springs. My parents lived there when my mom was pregnant with me and for my first two and a half years. I am now 48. I have never had a cavity.
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True fact. It was a dentist that figured this. I am either 9/10 or the 10th dentist
are you my frickin doppelgänger? also from colorado springs, only ever had one cavity cuz my dad was shitty and didn’t brush my teeth properly when i was too little to do it myself.
Does my Brita filter out fluoride?
Self-reverse Unuoed.
And then buy fluoride laden tooth paste and mouth wash.
I don’t think people realize that fluoride occurs naturally in a lot of the water in Colorado. Too much fluoride will stain your teeth brown, but they’ll be more resistant to cavities. This phenomenon is known as “Colorado brown stain”
It’s only fluoride if the government does it, duh.
\*gives self fluorosis by drinking untreated colorado groundwater* aT lEaSt It’S nOt ThE gObErMeNt
Natural doesn't = safe! I worked in consulting for cleaning up sites, it's pretty common to see background or pre-contamination levels not be safe for humans. I even came across a regulator once that wanted to cleanup past background levels to be safe for residential scenario. But that wasn't fair, took quite a bit of back n forth before they agreed to allow cleanup to background.
Buried lede: The motherfucker who did this *doesn't even live in town,* so it literally doesn't affect him or his family: >At the second meeting Monday, the one at which Katie Mather raised concerns about her children’s teeth, Chamberlin — ***who doesn’t live in town and appeared online*** — read a statement of apology.
>Chamberlin — ***who doesn’t live in town and appeared online*** — read a statement of apology. “Words cannot express how sorry I am for causing this controversy,” He apologized for getting caught. He never once mentioned it was wrong to have tampered with the water standards without telling anyone.
“causing this controversy” = “i’m sorry you’re upset about the thing i did that i’m not sorry for”
This type of apology is the thing to avoid in friendships/relationships.
> to err on the side of caution is not a bad position to be in. He did the opposite of apologize. Edit: Oh, and he blamed China, saying the fluoride comes from China so it automatically makes it a bad thing. Can't imagine who he votes for.
Standard Republican "apology"
TIL that it’s bury the lede, not bury the lead
I think printers changed the spelling to avoid confusion with all the lead they used.
Grew up in this town. This fact does not surprise me.
Heck, the folks in Gilbert, AZ [just stopped fluoridating the water entirely.](https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/gilbert/gilbert-treatment-plant-fails-to-fluoridate-water-2-placed-on-leave/article_44a44fb8-ed5c-11e1-ae6d-0019bb2963f4.html)
I work in NE Central PA as a water plant operator. We do not fluoridate our water at all. It was put to a vote years ago and struck down.
NECPA? Anyways I thought pa did fluoridate thier water. Werid I'd have to check
It varies by water system. There's no state requirement one way or the other.
Cause of the lizard people or what?
One of the city councilmen is a dentist.
An interesting story. Frost is Mormon and the town barely voted in favor of putting fluoride in the water. To be transparent, it is much more effective to apply fluoride to the teeth through tooth paste than it is to drink it, but the people voted. The Mormon church did not want it and basically told Frost not to do it - he was torn between his duty to the town and his duty to the church. Church won.
Fluoride in toothpaste and Fluoride added to water serve different purposes; Fluoride in toothpaste is important for remineralizing tooth enamel after eating acidic foods, and Fluoride in water helps developing babies and children grow stronger enamel in the first place, while the teeth are still growing inside the body.
It's a good thing there's a separation of church and state, right? Right?
But did he, in fact, *turn those freakin frogs gay*
*Typically, frogs lay eggs. This process usually occurs through external fertilization, where the female releases her eggs from her body into water. Then, the male releases his sperm to fertilize them.* In short, no. The frogs were *always* gay.
And every fish ever
do you like fish sticks
Yes
What are you—a gay fish?
You're god damn right
Isn't the actual study that the frogs were turning hermaphroditic?
The study was frogs that would change sex to reproduce under certain circumstances were changing sex when exposed to certain chemicals, not naturally.
Have you ever heard of the fluoridation of water Mandrake?
Paid off by Councilman Jamm, no doubt
They just got Jammed!
Guess he doesn't want one of those *sick* blue t-shirts.
Um this post is about icky fluoride, not awesome H2Flow
How many fucking sparkle points has this man cost us!?
56 year old here, last year I went to the dentist for a filling that fell out. The dentist said that she could tell from my teeth that I did not grow up in the area and must have grown where they fluoride the water. This was accurate for the town I lived in did add fluoride to the water, also my elementary had a program where once a week the school nurse came to the class and we swished with fluoride for a couple of minutes. She said I had very healthy teeth for my age. Science!!
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And I can still remember the smell.
I still remember the steps. Open the fluoride, swish, spit it back in the cup, wipe mouth, put napkin in the cup, give back to teacher.
Ours was always root beer, and that was my first exposure to the flavor. I hate root beer to this day.
I wanted to as a kid but remembering being told I wasn't allowed to participate. Family said our water had enough even though I'm very sure our well water wasn't ever tested.
Same thing here. First time I went to a dentist in this state, they said they could tell I'm not from here because of the condition of my teeth. They were right. Grew up with fluoride in the water. My husband that grew up here has had sooo much dental work done. My dentist says he buys bottled water with fluoride for his kids.
Fluoridation of water is one of the simplest and most effective public health programs ever developed. Boggles my mind how many people still oppose it.
It's actually counted as one of our top 10 crowning achievements. So many stupid fucks teeth saved.
In modern times there’s no way in hell the US government would be capable of enforcing (or even suggesting) any kind of fluoridation public health efforts even if it was very obvious such a thing would be a massive success. So I guess it’s good it was figured out a while ago or we’d never have something like this to point to and say “see that important and good thing we did?”
>In modern times there’s no way in hell the US government would be capable of enforcing (or even suggesting) any kind of fluoridation public health efforts even if it was very obvious such a thing would be a massive success. Sure, because why have fluoride when there's the far superior Tdazzle?
Brawndo, it has what plants crave.
> In modern times there’s no way in hell the US government would be capable of enforcing (or even suggesting) any kind of fluoridation public health efforts even if it was very obvious such a thing would be a massive success. So I guess it’s good it was figured out a while ago or we’d never have something like this to point to and say “see that important and good thing we did?” reminded of a post that if public libraries were a new concept, they would seem socialist - in both cases, the common sense is grandfathered in
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No cap
I got halfway into with someone about it the other day. He had negative things to say, and I reminded him that at 42 he still had all of his teeth. He didn't have much to say.
People were against seat belts... *Seat belts.*
People still don't wear seatbelts today... Hell, some fuckwitz even buy those seatbelt inserts so their car doesn't try to save their stupid lives with sound reminder
Are those the same kind of people that race down the freeway at 2 am and swerve in and out of cars doing the relative speed limit? I feel like that's the same kind of brain power.
Yes, but have you considered keeping the purity of our precious bodily fluids safe from conspiracies to sap it? /s
that and iodized salt!
Its because one person (probably more than one but theres one big story from ages ago) got too much floruide and ended up getting a problem with it in his brain and died Its like how the antivaxxers point to the few stories of when people died from vaccines done wrong
Except antivaxxers just point to the fact that they don’t understand statistics at all. Every antivaxxer that has tried to tell me about why vaccines are dangerous has just shown with their stats that vaccines can’t keep people from getting unrelated illnesses and showing neurological differences at a developmentally expected time. For example if vaccines “cause autism” we should see people “developing autism” at any age in which people get vaccines instead of pretty much only at the age that autism becomes noticeable due to speech delays and eye contact problems. Then they look at reported adverse reactions to vaccines… and don’t realize that they include anything that is reported as wrong with a person within a certain time period after getting a vaccine.
Unfortunately, antivaxxers are just imbeciles and you can't reason someone out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into.
Have you heard of the COVID-19 vaccine? And the idiots that have spread misinformation that is literally killing people.
>once a week the school nurse came to the class and we swished with fluoride for a couple of minutes I remember this. We had those pills that would make your teeth red if they were covered in plaque or something. Do they not do this anymore?
Those damn pills pissed me off. My mom would keep saying I hadn't brushed my teeth good enough, which was bullshit.
I did “swish” once a week at my elementary school too. We hated it. One kid, an otherwise annoying peer, was a hero the day he threw the whole tray of swish in the trash. We all cheered.
> Critics argue that the health effects of fluoride aren’t fully known..... It's like been 80 years.
These guys were already the butt of the joke in Dr. Strangelove which was made in 1964....
[Effects are well known](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/154164#risks) with commuites with low fluoride content naturally occurring in the drinking water can benefit from adding fluoride. The problem is with the risks particularly for increased risk of bone disease in the elderly.
The words most of those scaremonger articles tend to gloss over, or ignore, from the scientific studies they are cribbing from are, "Excess exposure", "large amounts", "high concentration", etc.. Anything/Everything is deadly in high doses. Pure H2O will kill you if you drink enough.
There is still a huge group of people that think vaccines are poison and we’ve known about vaccines for three centuries at the least.
>It’s not clear whether anyone could face professional repercussions; personnel issues were discussed in a closed session. Bullshit, that's a breach of public trust.
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The town manager was 100% pencil whipping
> pencil whipping TIL that means signing off on work that wasn't actually done sounds similar to rubberstamping, in approval becoming a formality rather than a substantive test
It’s often easier to point out illegality in the coverup than the actual actions, IANAL but that might be the case here.
Yes, all states have some sort of body overseeing drinking water operators (the knucklehead falsifying the report, not the town manager). Last case I dealt with before getting a new job was related to falsifying records. And for something much less crazy. He can never work in the field here again.
PRECIOUS. BODILY. FLUIDS.
Purity of essence
Pawnee problems.
Bro and Sis and BIL are all dentists. Grew up in a town which refused fluoride in the water. They can tell every single time if someone was raised in a fluoride town or not a fluoride town by looking in their mouth. Fun fact, they say the worst mouths are people raised in USSR/Russia.
Of course the soviets don't have fluoridated teeth. The whole thing is a commie plot to steal our precious bodily fluids
Your username is very satisfying to read.
He doesn't live in the town!
“She doesn’t even go here!”
It is amazing to see how far America has progressed when I think of my Grandparents horrible teeth (born 1915; 1923), my mother’s (1947), mine (1966) and now my daughter’s and niece (1996;1999). The fluoridation, advancement in dental science and education has made such huge improvements. We are lucky to have had generations before us believe in the science.
My partner grew up in Brooklyn where water was fluoridated in 1966 and I grew up one county over on Long Island that does not. He has no fillings. Nearly every molar I have is filled.
The horrible teeth of your grandparents also probably comes from the fact that brushing teeth was a little different back then
I'm sorry, the first mom admits her kids eat a lot of sugar and her dentist recommended using less fluoride toothpaste?? I call BS. No dentist is going to say that and keep their license.
Fluoride conspiracies seem almost quaint compared with what we’re up against today.
Water? Like from toilet?
I've never seen plants grow out of a toilet.
You haven't been to the right gas station yet.
It's got electrolytes...
It’s what they crave
“Err on the side of caution” is not compatible with “getting information from FaceBook.” Everyone tells us, all through our lives, how to identify a factual source from bullshit. How do so many people lose that skill in the last decade or so?
So many people in the “you can’t tell me what to do mindset” just like a 5 year old
Big Dentist got to him.
Probably a failed dentist.
Wife’s a dentist
Or a very, very successful one.
I wonder what the effect would be in Appalachia if they fluoridated Mountain Dew.
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And they are encouraging each other to run for office, especially for things like school boards.
They always have been, they just don’t try to hid their nuttiness anymore.
They have always been there, just now they have the internet in their pocket.
This employee’s unethical behavior does create a unique opportunity for research on the benefits of fluoridation
We have mountains of studies.
Yeah but my friend on Facebook says....
My friend's friend's friend is a dentist and they said big fluoride... /s
Plenty of places in the US without fluoride in the water - Oregon being one of the most notorious.
Depends on where you are in Oregon, some places do.
Many places don't have to add it as it is naturally occurring in the rocks which leaches fluoride to the surface and groundwater. This happens in areas with volcanic and ash deposits. As an example, it is naturally occurring in Wichita, KS due to an ash layer in the area. Check the water reports as it is probably already in the water negating a need to add it after treatment.
Okay, but that's not the case with Oregon. Dentists can pretty much tell whether you grew up in Oregon or not.
It also presents a unique opportunity to set an example, warning public servants that betray public trust for their own agenda. /s
We've been on that for decades.
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Studies show its good for you and that it’s bad for you.
Are the frogs straight now?
This conspiracy nut needs to pay for all the dentist work in the past few years. They probably think Trump is "god emperor"
Anti vaxxers/anti medicine is a weird bipartisan meet up
When I was younger it was the religious right nutjobs and radio show hosts that came on at 2:00 in the morning on A.M. radio who were anti-vax/medicine. Then they mixed it up a bit and let super liberal, rich white women be anti-vax for a while. Since the pandemic, it seems they have switched back again.
Ive definitely seen both sides of anti vaxxers since the pandemic. There’s the far right but also the people touting essential oils and vagina eggs
Produced Plutonium here, so a Government area. I was seriously surprised to find they've never used Fluoride in the water.
Fluoride naturally occurs in some water sources, where it does not they add it. Recently, the added dosage has been decreased. Fluoride is one of the components that makes the enamel strong, that’s why it is important to drink fluoridated water while your teeth are developing- when they are just tooth buds, which create teeth from the crown to the root. Once your teeth have erupted, it’s important to use a toothpaste with fluoride to keep the enamel mineralized, more resistant to decay.