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Comment by status_quo69

8 months ago

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2925001/

Not everyone has impeccable brushing habits and reducing cavities is a net benefit to public health like sanitation departments. I would be more interested to see a source as to why you think there's no benefit to fluorinated water when there are studies that are a quick search away for fluorinated water.

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status_quo69

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amazingamazing  8 months ago

> reducing cavities is a net benefit to public health like sanitation departments

what is the connection between reducing cavities and sanitation departments? cavities are not communicable.

Also, the paper you linked is my point. there's no actual benefit of ingestion. the effect is purely incidental. it's more effective to apply fluoride to the teeth. nowhere does it actually explain that drinking it is what is beneficial. the difference in the incidence of caries is because by fluoridating the water it obviously will touch teeth, which has well known positive effects.

the main conclusion of the paper is what everyone should hopefully know already - brush your teeth regularly with fluoride toothpaste.

out of curiosity, would you be OK with vitamins being added to the water? most people are deficient in many.

  • pjc50  8 months ago

    > would you be OK with vitamins being added to the water?

    Provided there's reasonable scientific evidence that this is fine and effective and not expensive, I don't see why not. I don't think I've ever seen it proposed.

    • amazingamazing  8 months ago

      that is good to know. fundamentally we'll have to agree to disagree. I do not agree with experimentation with the populace's water supply as a matter of principal. fyi there's already plenty of evidence that supplements are useful for those that are sufficient. of course the main counter argument is that if you're eating a balanced diet supplements are unnecessary (which is true). though that's just about as helpful as saying water fluoridation is unnecessary because you can brush your teeth (which is also true).

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