The dose makes the poison
When I was growing up in East Tennessee in the 1960s, there was a local grocery chain owner and right-wing politician named Cas Walker who railed about, among other things, water fluoridation. Water fluoridation was alleged to be a communist plot. If so, then God must be a communist, since water in some parts of the country is naturally fluoridated. In fact, that natural fluoridation, and its correlation with lower incidence of tooth decay, helped lead to the widespread use of artificial fluoridation.
“The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom drinking water may be the only source of preventive dental care.
“If you have to go out and get care on your own, it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Myron Allukian Jr., DDS, MPH, a dentist and past president of the American Public Health Association. Millions of people have lived with fluoridated water for years, “and we’ve had no major health problems,” he said. “It’s much easier to prevent a disease than to treat it.”
Yes, fluoride can be poisonous in high doses. And baked goods contain acrylamide, which is a neurotoxin. Grilled meats contain a variety of carcinogens. Tylenol is hepatotoxic at high doses. Plastic containers used for beverages and canned goods leach bisphenols. As they say in pharmacology, the dose makes the poison.
Anti-fluoridation is making a comeback. It is true that fluoride is in toothpaste, and you can get fluoride treatments for your teeth (I had them as a kid), so maybe artificial fluoridation of drinking water is an anachronism. And yet:
“Juneau, Alaska, voted to remove fluoride from its drinking water in 2007. A study published in the journal BMC Oral Health in 2018 compared the dental records of children and adolescents who received dental care for decaying teeth 4 years before and 5 years after the city stopped adding fluoride to the water. Cavity-related procedures and treatment costs were significantly higher in the latter group, the study found.”
Look, access to clean, safe drinking water is a human right. It is already meaningfully imperiled by climate change. If you don’t want fluoride in your drinking water, there are alternatives (but note that some commercial bottled water is just overpriced tap water in plastic). In the political battle between folks who fear artificial fluoridation and those who embrace it as a public health measure, I don’t have an easy answer. But it ain’t a commie plot and there’s no evidence that people are being poisoned from it. The science I’ve read is most solid on the side of water fluoridation as a public health enhancement.
Of N course god is a communist.
I understand he also invented ecology.
I used to have some sympathy with people who were afraid of “the government” putting things into their drinking water, but they never seemed to mind what the paper mill upstream of them was putting into their drinking water. Now if the government would only put birth control into the water we would solve a lot of out problems. Oh, i just heard that the government doesn’t need to put birth control in the water, all the women on birth control do that every time they pee. It’s a good thing the government builds water treatment plants and sewers and all that. yep, sure be a better world if the government wasn’t the problem.
i don’t remember that the first anti-fluoridation movement was a right wing plot to manipulate people. but this one is.
coberly:
I can not upvote you. It is a good comment.
bill
just to compound the felony, god also invented government, unless they think the Hebrews were wondering around in a capitalist paradise. just to be sure, Jesus made clear that it was about the money stupid: “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and love your neighbor as yourself.”
I remember that the first anti-fluoridation movement was a right wing conspiracy theory
Gen. Ripper: Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?Gp Capt. Mandrake: Well, I can’t say I have, Jack.Gen. Ripper: Vodka, that’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water?Gp Capt. Mandrake: Well, I-I believe that’s what they drink, Jack, yes.Gen. Ripper: On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.Gp Capt. Mandrake: Oh, eh, yes. I, uhm, can’t quite see what you’re getting at, Jack.Gen. Ripper: Water, that’s what I’m getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven tenths of this earth’s surface is water. Why do you realize that 70% of you is water? And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water – to replenish our precious bodily fluids. Are you beginning to understand?Gp Capt. Mandrake: [nervously] Yes.Gen. Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water or rainwater? And only pure grain alcohol?Gp Capt. Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.Gen. Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation – fluoridation of water?Gp Capt. Mandrake: Jack, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes.Gen. Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?Gp Capt. Mandrake: No, I don’t know what it is.Gen. Ripper: Do you realise that fluoridation – is the most monstrously-conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?
@Dave,
Also too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4XhhTF7vRM
Joel
yes, but have you noticed that the counties where there is “natural fluoridation” are the same counties that vote MAGA?
Ten
I wouldn’t put too much stock in “trace.” The morons in Congress use the “trace” of CO2 to prove global warming cannot be caused by such a tiny amount.
meanwhile a trace of fluoride seems to be good for your teeth.
LOL ~ Portland water has everything from estrogen to tetrahydrocannabinol ~ check it out ~ not to mention being the leading edge of the Colombia hypoxic zone from the fertilizers flowing down mostly the Willamette River but some also from as far away as the Snake and Idaho, nor mentioning the traces of both Fukushima and Hanford radiation or the naturally occurring mercury in volcanic areas
Ten Bears 5:04
all true, but i don’t see what you are laughing about.
my dogs are fine with swimming in the Willamette, except downstream of the Exide (?) plant just upstream of the intake to Corvallis water supply.
For some reason they won’t go near the water there. probably been reading those articles about two headed fish…but that’s downstream from Wah Chang and the paper mill in Albany…
..as well as from Corvallis, where my mayor brags that we put the water back into the Willamette cleaner than we took it out.
Ten
good for you. in 1964 I had other things to worry about.
Dave
funny you should mention that. some years ago i said something on AB about “mental hygiene” by which I meant being careful about our logic and not indulging overgeneralizations. Some one I had thought better of accused me of worrying about our “precious bodily fluids.” That’s why we can’t have nice things.
Dave and Ten Bears
I looked up the history of the anti-fluoridation “debate.” You are right that there was a right wing part in that. I think I did not notice it because …it still seems to me…the right wing was not the threat then that it is today. And they seem to have come late to the party..more because they are the kind of people who fall for those conspiracies themselves than that they were leading this one.
I can’t remember Bill Buckley warning us about fluordation sapping our precious bodily fluids.
i am not arguing with you here. just trying to explain why i did not notice.
Alcohol is a poison, we all know it and most all do it. Think of all kinds of ways to dress it up and convince ourselves it tastes good, and that it’s ok
I think it was then freshman Senator Lindsay Graham who thought it would be a good idea to
doseput lithium in the nation’s water supply and calm everyone downGiven everything else in the water the trace of fluoride is peanuts …
A significant level of opposition to fluoride comes from its supposed degradation of the pineal gland functions. This degradation would not necessarily result in specific organic disease that would be classified as poisoning. The pineal gland is frequently a key element in traditions that claim humanity has a much greater reach than the observable material world. For example, it isn’t too surprising that southeast Alaska, which has a very powerful cultural affinity, via the local Native American population, to cosmologies in which human interaction in realms beyond “everyday” perception are considered to be accurate descriptions of existence, would want to limit fluoride so as to protect the pineal gland who correct function serves a critical role in accessing these realms. The “third eye” chakra is also considered to be an energetic manifestation of this gland. Attacks on the pineal gland function have been thought of as coming from dark forces in efforts to restrict the full expression of humanity. Communism was an example of such dark forces that had a lot of resonance during the Cold War, but the ideas behind it are more expansive. Gen. Ripper was your basic New Ager who happened to command a SAC wing. Also, the objections to fluoride are heavily focused on sodium fluoride. I believe there are some other compounds that can be described as “fluoride”.
Eric
well, here i go again: i don’t take the pineal gland too seriously, but if as you say there are people with a significant tradition (now i sound like alito) of not messing with their water supply , i would be inclined to take that seriously. but given what else we have put into the water, they may have to take their chances with the rest of us.
I was a little surprised when they nade peyote illegal, as it was important to some american indians religion…the courts having decided that freedom of religion was of secondary importance to law enforcement. and yes that is as perverted as it sounds.
Eric
i forgot to say thank you. You brought something to the conversation that I was overlooking. Still no easy answers.