Summary
Utah became the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water after Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation prohibiting local decisions on fluoridation.
Cox cited cost and personal choice, likening fluoride to government “medication.”
The ban faces opposition from dentists and health experts, who argue fluoride prevents cavities and benefits low-income communities.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans receive fluoridated water. Some cities have already removed fluoride, and a recent court order requires the EPA to regulate high levels that may affect children’s intellectual development.
Why put fluoride in water when you can sell it over the counter with a 1300x mark-up?
Natural groundwater already has some fluoride in it; it’s the potability processing that takes it away. So of course a lot of places put it back in.
I see the push to remove it in my country, too. People claim is kills children’s brains - but the amount of fluoride to do any damage is so insanely high. You would die of literal water poisoning several times over before you ingested enough fluoride.
Literally anything hurts you if you have too much, that’s what ‘too much’ fucking means. Deciding something is bad because it has an unreachable ‘too much’ is like refusing to eat bananas because of Chernobyl.
The water here is extremely hard and has a lot of lime. Limescale is inevitable. Yet I don’t see people complaining about drinking rocks? Who benefits from blaming fluoride? Where is this fear coming from?
Who benefits from blaming fluoride?
Dentists?
Where is this fear coming from?
Idiotic conspiracy theorists.
This isn’t really a right-wing wackadoo thing (or at least not exclusively).
Portland, OR hasn’t put fluoride in their drinking water for a VERY long time, with many people citing the fact that they don’t want the pristine Bull Run water source tainted.
If you use fluoridated (or even nanosilver particle) toothpaste and/or mouth wash, there isn’t really any logical reason to also have it in your drinking water, right?
and you think the people who are pushing for this aren’t the same people who insist on using fluoride free toothpaste
I’m sure they are, but that’s not my point. I’m just saying that it’s not really medically necessary to flouridate water when fluoridated toothpaste and other treatments are so readily available
there is though because people are too stupid to live
This would 100% be easily enough to make me move away.
That’s a massive negative impact on my child’s health. Anyone with more than 1 braincell who lives in Utah right now and wants to raise kids should be considering leaving to live somewhere with fluoride, unless you want your kid to be at risk of a bunch of health issues.
2025: we are bringing fucking Rickets back baby!
Just take the iodine out of salt while we’re at it. Don’t need no smart thunkers in the Amazon warehouse.
They’ve already lost the Sundance film festival, what’s the difference if they lose all their people?
just get a toothpaste with fluoride. That’s how it is in Europe
I don’t think you understand how bad low-income people have it.
This, this is what people completely whiff on…
People forget not everyone can afford toothpaste…
Some people are unable to comprehend poverty. “just buy toothpaste” is low-key the equivalent of “just get a loan from your family and start your own business” or “Just get your accountant to write it off” or “just buy a second house” or “just let the lawyers clean it up”. If you have the financial means, certain problems just don’t affect you.
I only use home brand toothpaste which is like 50cent here in Europe. Everyone can afford that or they have other bigger issues than their fluoride intake
You’d be surprised how much the intersection of “I luve in a literal cardboard box and can’t afford toothpaste” and “no longer getting fluoride in my water super fucks me over” is.
There’s huge chunks of the population who, yes, can’t a0fford to brush their teeth, they Jaber neither toothbrush nor toothpaste.
But they do drink free tap water, and that as a source of fluoride in any sane city is a powerful cheap way to help with their bone health, teeth health, etc.
Cities that turn off fluoride in the water are, 4-5 years later, going to have some seriously excercerbated problems in their homeless communities which is going to impact everyone.
It’s very dumb short term thinking that only someone very stupid would do…
Anything to make plebs suffer /s
America’s leadership is dog shit. Only reason to get into politics anymore is to bilk the system and join the grift, fuck everyone you have to squash along the way, and especially once you reach the top
Thanks! This is very good point!
Cheaper to add fluoride to the small amount of water children drink than to the huge amount of water that the whole state uses. The state should pay, of course.
I’d disagree. The logistics of tiny local delivery would be massive. The dosing would be inconsistent. And we’d be putting the burden of doing it on already over burdened and struggling families.
Logistics: Stores sell “child teething fluoride essence, one squirt per glass, pocket size”, price subsidised.
I think it’s worth the upside of increased intelligence, which Americans clearly need.
… 21 of 23 recent epidemiological studies report an association between high fluoride exposure and reduced intelligence. The discrepancy between experimental and epidemiological evidence may be reconciled with deficiencies inherent in most of these epidemiological studies on a putative association between fluoride and intelligence, especially with respect to adequate consideration of potential confounding factors, e.g., socioeconomic status, residence, breast feeding, low birth weight, maternal intelligence, and exposure to other neurotoxic chemicals.
First you need to define “high”. The dose makes the poison. High amounts of water are deadly.
There’s zero evidence that flouride at the levels found in public water is anything but positive. And your quote agrees with this. Did you just clip it without reading?
I assume fluorine is one of the many “any dose matters” slow poisons for the brain in which there is no safe dose, only undetectable in insufficiently controlled studies of intelligence development over decades.
That’s another reason to move away.
There are so many others.
This would 100% be easily enough to make me move away.
A bit of an overreaction there. Fluoride may provide some benefit for those who don’t even brush their teeth, but as long as you can manage at least that much self-care then it doesn’t actually do much of anything if at all.
Technically there is very little evidence of the benefits of flouridated water, aside from reducing tooth decay, but there are absolutely zero risks too.
Helping prevent tooth decay is the whole point of fluoridated water isn’t it? I also believe dental health has been linked to other health issues like increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
It doesn’t prevent tooth decay, you still have to take good care of your teeth with it, but it reduces tooth decay. Reduces. Important distinction.
So you’re saying it’s helpful, but while being a dick.
I’m saying if this becomes more of a partisan political issue then I will refuse to argue with the dipshits.
There are much more important issues at hand.
Technically there is very little evidence of the benefits of flouridated water, aside from reducing tooth decay
Reducing tooth decay is such a massive benefit to the population that at first I thought you were making as sarcastic joke here. I think you underestimate what a big deal that actually is.
What an original reply I’m so glad you’re not repeating the same things everybody else is saying.
I don’t know if this is sarcastic or not. We’re in the type of world where would be sarcastic statements could be serious.
This feels like someone saying, “there’s little evidence of vaccines having benefits, aside from preventing disease and death, but there’s absolutely little risk too”
Vaccines actually prevent sickness and death in the vast majority. Like 95% reduction in cases.
Flouridated water has been shown by World Oral Health Report 2003 to reduce the rate at which dental caries (tooth decay) require intervention by 15% and UK NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination found 14.6%, however other studies have explored the idea that this rate of decline could be correlated with flouridated water and was not caused by it.
Again I think we should keep flouridating water but its not the end of the world if we don’t.
Not the flu vaccine. It’s nowhere near 95% effective. But that’s not the point. You still take it especially if you are vulnerable.
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Just wait until they hear what’s in toothpaste!
Toothpaste? I just use Vitamin A mixed with ivermectin.
And tea.
Utah dentists:
Water? You mean like in the toilet?
FLOURIDE! It’s what toilets crave!
Hope they like paying dentist bills.
prohibiting local decisions
cited… personal choice
bruh
Looks like conservatives are going to start feeling actual, physical pain due to their poor decisions.
Have fun with rotted teeth.
As a Brit, I can’t wait to move up a place in the public sphere about our teeth!
Amusingly enough, our dental health is actually better than Americans already 👍
It’s a funny thing about living in a country where healthcare doesn’t bankrupt you.
Americans have been busy convincing the world that anyone British who doesn’t wear a suit (or isn’t married to someone who does) has awful teeth. It’s been a staple of movies and TV since the beginning. They’re jealous of the NHS
The fact that this is normal in the US is incomprehensible to my European brain. I don’t think the fluoride is harmful, I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about it all, I just think it’s weird to add things to the water supply?
Water coming from the tap should just be … water? If you want fluoride in it for better dental health, just add it yourself? Or use fluoride toothpaste?
I feel like if you start doing that, you kinda open the door to mass dosing of other “potentially beneficial” agents. And things we think are safe today, may turn out to be unsafe a few decades from now (see lead, plastics and a number of pharmaceutical compounds that turned out to be unsafe later after decades of use).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_country
Plenty of countries have fluoride in their water. Ultimately, if you brush your teeth, it is a useless policy but if you dont brush your teeth, it helps a little and with 0 negative side effects.
It is a policy that “my individual rights” crowd loves to shit on. Whether individual rights are more important than a minor effect to the health of a few individuals is debatable.
it helps a little and with 0 negative side effects.
Here in the Netherlands we stopped in 1976 because there was an increase in migraines, stomach- and bowel issues and depression ever since fluoride was added to the drinking water supply (+5%).
Toothpaste still has it, but it’s cautioned against to use fluoride-enriched toothpaste for children due to studies suggesting a negative effect on brain development. But even with fluoride-enriched toothpaste the amount is being reduced because there appear to be more damaging effects that are lessened in lower dosages, and the health benefits are seemingly not impacted.
… 21 of 23 recent epidemiological studies report an association between high fluoride exposure and reduced intelligence. The discrepancy between experimental and epidemiological evidence may be reconciled with deficiencies inherent in most of these epidemiological studies on a putative association between fluoride and intelligence, especially with respect to adequate consideration of potential confounding factors, e.g., socioeconomic status, residence, breast feeding, low birth weight, maternal intelligence, and exposure to other neurotoxic chemicals.
it is already accepted that tap water will have chemicals added (at a minimum chlorine) to make it safe to drink, fluoride generally has benefits in small amounts, the amount that the water company addes IMO should be published somewhere accessible so people won’t get too much, but removing contaminants from water is far from a new idea in America.
The concept of a water company is so weird…
Why?
It’s a public utility here. Like electricity and garbage collection.
electricity and garbage collection aren’t companies where you are?
No, the city handles all of that.
I guess that makes some sense, but would be kind of weird if you were forced to get garbage collection in every city (some us cities more or less force it others don’t and some have multiple competing options) or required to be connected to the electric grid.
But I suppose this is just coming from me having lived primarily in rural areas where those services are often less than ideal and having the option to just not use them makes you feel less forced. (water trucks/wells, septic systems, taking trash to a transfer station in a car/truck, generators/solar are the main alternatives)
Not the most retarded state yet! That’s gotta be Florida or Texas.
