Comment by agentultra
19 days ago
That’s going to go poorly. A Canadian city removed fluoride from water in 2011 and reversed that decision 10 years later. There’s hard data on the effects and they’re not good [0].
[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed...
The study [1] that's based on seems pretty typical, and is precisely what drives skepticism towards these policies. The differences for permanent teeth were not significant. The paper claimed this may be because "7-year-olds have not had the time to accumulate enough permanent dentition caries experience for differences to have become apparent." The differences in temporary teeth had a deft (decay, extracted, filled teeth) of 66.1% in Calgary (no fluoride) and 54.3% in Edmonton (fluoridated).
So you're looking at a small positive improvements in dental outcomes, for what may be a permanent decline to IQ. That's obviously not a trade I think anybody would make, so the real issue is not whether or not it improves dental outcomes but whether it's having measurable effects on IQ as we have seen in other studies. [2] I don't understand why a study operating in good faith wouldn't also pursue this question in unison, or in fact as the primary question. I think relatively few people outright doubt the dental benefits of fluoride, but rather are concerned about the cost we may pay for such.
[1] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdoe.12685
[2] - https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
In the 2nd study that shows correlation between fluoride and lower IQ in children, the water had twice as much fluoride as the recommended amount in the US (1.5 mg/L vs 0.7 mg/L).
The only reason for lack of concrete statements on the 0.7 level was a lack of data, owing largely to US political culture (1.5 is the World Health Organization 'safe' limit). Not long ago fluoride stuff was considered a 'conspiracy theory' which greatly deters meaningful scientific research on the topic. This is in part because of social reasons (most people don't want to be perceived as 'fringe') and in part because it results in funding for such research drying up. For that matter even IQ studies themselves are borderline given the US political culture.
So for instance of the 19 low risk-of-bias studies, exactly 0 came from the US. 10 were in China, 3 were in Mexico, 2 in Canada, 3 in India, and 1 in Iran. 18 of those 19 studies found a significant reduction in IQ that corresponds strongly with increases in fluoride (the outlier was in Mexico). With the current administration we'll certainly be seeing funding for such studies in the US and so there should be much more high quality data on the 0.7 level forthcoming. But in general this is a major problem that needs solving. Exploring the breadths of science, including the fringes, should not require an activist political administration.
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The most ridiculous part is that we have an alternative way to apply fluoride without intaking it. It's called toothpaste. But for some reason people act like Utah is banning vaccine.
Using toothpaste with fluoride can be effective when used regularly as part of dental hygiene. What percentage of the population is going to do this? I've encountered grade school children who have never owned a toothbrush.
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Unfortunately, hard data is not acceptable. This is how it works for the current administration:
All previous data is ignored because of political reasons.
Teeth to slowly rot in heads.
Sometime in the 2030s, local voters will notice they have very bad teeth.
Locals will debate if adding fluoride is going to make teeth great again.
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I don't think it's about hard data and optimization of health, but rather bodily autonomy.
I'm sure there are plenty of chemicals that could be forcibly put in the drinking supply that, based on current scient, would be beneficial for the public. But I would still be skeptical. Sell me these substances in my food or toothpaste, but don't put it in my drinking water by default.
It's also worth noting about 3% of western Europe has fluorinated so let's not pretend like this is unprecedented
Many places in Europe have high levels of fluoride in their water naturally. In fact many of them are likely getting far too much fluoride.
Also realistically, if people cared about bodily autonomy cars would've been banned immediately thanks to the amount of particulates and local pollution produced causing far more adverse health effects.
If a state wants to ban cars it should be free to do so. I think the benefits outweigh the costs and no one would choose to live there.
Also important to note no one is banning flouride. They're preventing it from being put in the drinking water. The equivalent would be if cars were distributed upon arriving to the state.
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Is one due the right to potable water at a tap at their home? Or is purified water a service offered by the government as one source of many available to the us population?
Are you not allowed to pay for bottled water instead of paying your local utility for drinking water?
The bodily autonomy argument seems bad to me because you are buying water from the government when you could buy water from any other source instead.
Is the argument that the government water is too convenient and so it should be unfiltered? Who is to say that filtering out poop is not infringing on my right to consume unfiltered water?
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This is textbook whataboutism and seemingly an example of the nirvana fallacy too. All of the above as well as euthenasia and abortion can be included under bodily autonomy and there's no reason we shouldn't support all of it.
Fluoride was introduced late enough in Zimbabwe that many of my childhood adults easily remembered life before it. There were many horror stories about the general state of teeth prior.
That being said, your dentist can apply fluoride to your teeth (boggles the mind why insurance won't pay the $50), and flouride toothpaste is still much more common than not. It's probably not needed in the water supply for dental purposes.
That being said, what are the other fringe benefits: such as microbe control?
The city of Houston has stopped adding fluoride to water but allows natural fluoride levels to exist[0]. We are going on year 6 and the only thing we have noticed is harder water.
There is probably more nuance to both stories tho.
[0] https://houstonherald.com/2018/11/lindsey-and-long-win-count...
All the evidence in that article is based on what a politician thinks. "And I think another meta study came out also".
The actual high quality evidence shows that water fluorination has minimal impact on tooth health in 2025: https://www.cochrane.org/news/water-fluoridation-less-effect...
I was thinking of this study:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdoe.12215
Perhaps more could be done. The situation is complex because of several compounding factors for sure. There are European countries that have no water fluoridation and better oral health outcomes than in North America.
Regardless, there’s 10 years where a city in North America turned off water fluoridation and we have results of that decision to study.
I'm skimming the results, but it looks like adult teeth had less cavities when they turned the fluoride off...and that was not observed in Edmonton where they left the fluoride on the whole time.
"For all tooth surfaces among permanent teeth (Table 1a), there was a statistically significant decrease in Calgary, for the overall mean DMFS, which was not observed in Edmonton."
Based on their data, you could argue that fluoride increases cavities in adults... I'm not making that argument. I agree with you in that I think confounders are at play and the difference attributed to fluorinated water isn't as large.
People will use this study to take about the rampant tooth decay in Calgary, ignoring that there is roughly as much decay in Edmonton which had the fluoride on the whole time.