| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| US lowers fluoride levels in drinking water for first time in over 50 years |
| 2015-04-28 |
| [THEGUARDIAN] The government is lowering the recommended amount of fluoride added to drinking water for the first time in more than 50 years. John Birch is pleased. Some people are getting too much fluoride because it is also now put in toothpaste, mouthwash and other products, health officials said Monday in announcing the change. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #14 This may explain why my precious bodily essence has been more vigorous of late |
| Posted by: Alpha2c 2015-04-28 22:53 |
| #13 A friend of ours was a dentist in New York City and State all his working life, and he did a lot of charity work with poor black kids in Harlem and the Bronx. Before fluoridation, their teeth were a mess, he says, and after- cavities just disappeared. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2015-04-28 19:39 |
| #12 I can't speak to most of the claims around fluoride made in #6, Besoeker. This is the first I've heard about a connection between fluoride and autism, for instance, though it seems to me that if that were a serious risk factor, autism rates would have grown substantially in the years following the introduction of fluoridated water, instead of remaining steady until the definitions were broadened in recent years. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2015-04-28 17:29 |
| #11 Hoping to get Rant-U graduate level credit for #6,9, and 10. The things one learns here... amazing. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-04-28 16:30 |
| #10 Incidentally, the CDC considers fluoridation of drinking water to be one of the top ten public health achievements of the twentieth century: Fluoridation of drinking water began in 1945 and in 1999 reaches an estimated 144 million persons in the United States. Fluoridation safely and inexpensively benefits both children and adults by effectively preventing tooth decay, regardless of socioeconomic status or access to care. [emphasis mine. -- tw] Fluoridation has played an important role in the reductions in tooth decay (40%-70% in children) and of tooth loss in adults (40%-60%) (5). I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in Germany when we lived there in the 1990s nobody drank tap water, which was commonly believed to be unsafe. Rather, they drank bottled water from a variety of sources, none of them, as far as I was aware being fluoridated. Those parents who cared about such things paid for prescription fluoride drops from the pediatrician. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2015-04-28 15:57 |
| #9 My dear Thor Lumumba3940, as it happens, I spent a few years during my varied working life developing new and improved toothpastes for one of our major toothpaste manufacturers. You are quite right that fluoride ingested in quantity is dangerous. As an aside, it must be noted that all chemicals ingested in quantity are dangerous, including water.* In fact, the purer the water, the more dangerous it is. Fortunately, the toothpaste chemists did something rather clever about it. Knowing that the flavours used in toothpastes cause vomiting if ingested in quantity, they carefully chose flavors and flavour levels that would induce vomiting long before a dangerous amount of fluoride could be ingested. This is conclusively demonstrated periodically when someone's unsupervised child eats a quarter tube of the stuff before vomiting it all back up along with the entire contents of its stomach, much to the parent's distress. The parent then, in a legitimate panic, calls poison control, a doctor, shows up at the emergency room, or calls the manufacturer to discover what can be done. Each incident must be reported to the Food and Drug Administration, along with the outcome, so we have a fairly complete record of all such incidents going back to the 1950s, when fluoridated toothpastes first appeared. Ditto for fluoridated mouthwashes, as well. As for your question, what child doesn't get fluoride treatments? The answer is, poor children mostly. In fact, rotting teeth in children is a marker of poverty or neglect in this country. In Germany, though, I saw it in middle class children who constantly drank fruit juice, their parents taking the attitude that baby teeth were only going to be replaced by adult teeth anyway, so why waste the money on pediatric dentistry. * A wonderful site on the dangers of water, including Material Safety Data Sheets, can be seen here. And for comparison, there's this on the dangers of tomatoes, which knowledge had a salutary effect on my behaviour as a child. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2015-04-28 15:19 |
| #8 If they were seriously trying to force it on us they'd put floride in soda. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2015-04-28 15:04 |
| #7 Thinning eyebrows, hairloss, acne, inability to lose weight, fatigue are a few early signs.... Ahhg Thor! You've just identified the symptosis for the majority of the citizens of Georgia !!! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-04-28 13:57 |
| #6 Great news but not broad enough in my opinion. Fluoride is actually toxic--read the labels on your mouthwash: Do not swallow. It will displace iodine in the thyroid, leading to hypothyroidism, and is another endocrine disruptor. It is also linked in studies to autism, and is found in some vaccines. What child doesn't get fluoride treatments? We get excess from our tap water, pharmaceuticals, pools, baked goods, etc. so if we can't avoid it, we can try to detox. Fluoride isn’t really a free radical or a heavy metal, though, and therefore is somewhat immune to both of these modes of detoxification. Instead, it’s referred to as a halide, and it becomes sequestered in the body by binding to iodine receptors. This is bad for two reasons: fluoride essentially hides out in iodine receptors (which is a large part of why most detox practices aren’t sufficient to get rid of it), and it displaces iodine in the process, which leads to thyroid dysfunction and other symptoms of iodine deficiency. Thinning eyebrows, hairloss, acne, inability to lose weight, fatigue are a few early signs but it can cause retardation and lead to other disorders, like diabetes and cancer. Fluoride is an unrecognized health menace, along with glyphosphate in our food supply. |
| Posted by: Thor Lumumba3940 2015-04-28 13:49 |
| #5 Go to your room, ed. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2015-04-28 10:32 |
| #4 There is zero evidence that systemic fluoride prevents cavities. Europe does not fluoridate their water and their cavity rates are the same as ours -- although for these articles they can always find a dentist somewhere willing to say that if you don't ingest gallons a day all your teeth will fall out and your dick will explode. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2015-04-28 09:28 |
| #3 Payoff to the Dental Care Industry? |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2015-04-28 08:44 |
| #2 Well excessive consumption of fluoride does lead to gender confusion. I read that somewhere, can't remember where. Must be true. No, no, no! Counter-intuitive.... progressive governments would be INCREASING fluoride levels. I am so confused. Please disregard and proceed to the next comment. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-04-28 08:41 |
| #1 The next step is to satisfy the demands of The Society for the Preservation of Wooden Toilet Seats. (You know, the birch john society...) |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2015-04-28 07:45 |