The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday announced it will begin the process of pulling prescription fluoride drops and tablets for children off the market. The supplements are usually given to kids at high risk for cavities.
The federal government and some state legislatures are increasingly drawing attention to what they claim are the risks associated with fluoride, a mineral that’s been used for decades in community water systems, toothpastes and mouth rinses to prevent tooth decay.
Dentists fiercely contest the notion that the harms of fluoride outweigh the benefits.
This is all so fucking stupid!
Flouride provides unarguable protection from cavities. To do so it needs to come into contact with teeth.
Flouride also (very likely) has brain health implications. So you should not swallow it.
Obvious solution! : what every dentist already does, swish some flouride or hold it against your teeth, then spit it all out.
Our politicians who want to put it in, and keep it in the water can go right to hell for brain poisoning our youth.
It has brain health implications when ingested at levels way above the standard levels used in virtually all water systems in the United States. Stop spreading bullshit. The only evidence of negative health effects from fluoride is based on studies where people were exposed to over 2x the levels of fluoride in municipal water
2x is not very much wiggle room for something that causes neurological impairment. Countries that do not fluoridate their water have seen the same cavity decline as the countries that do, most likely due to education about good dental hygiene.
“Measurable” is the beast here. IQ typically has to drop 20 - 30 points on average to be measurable. So it’s probable that the current Flouride levels of municipal water are dropping IQs by say 10 points on average.
On a population level, I believe they have found that the 2x current fluoridated water levels that OC mentions cause a 1 point drop in IQ. This is huge on a population level.
And pretty much every study to this effect is correlative. No sane doctor or scientist is going to make kids OD on flouride to see if they go stupid or not.
Flouridated water in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, and many, many more places is 150% SAFE to drink. Curiousaur is just a nutjob.
Safe and makes you 2 - 5% stupider are different things. I never claimed it’s unsafe.
I am unsure about the other countries, but US tapwater (even well water) is very likely unsafe to drink unfiltered in many areas.
e.g. PFAS contamination is prolific and remediation is only beginning — very few chemicals are monitored for or are able to be monitored.