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Fluoride in Drinking Water
Trump and America had a great week. The honeymoon is over. I hoped, prayed, and voted, for Trump to win this
election. Now that we won, it’s time to be critical of the person we hired to lead this great country. Let’s not fill the swamp just to drain it.
I’m referring to RFK Jr’s promised position in the Trump administration. It seems he made a deal for an endorsement in exchange for leading the DHHS, or the FDA. His big push is to remove fluoride from municipal water supplies.
When I first heard the story of Kennedy wanting to remove fluoride from drinking water, I just rolled my eyes. Now that it has hit many news outlets, I feel I need to write something about this non-issue.
I am trying to grasp his perspective. I can only think of two possible angles. 1) He doesn’t know it’s a problem that doesn’t exist. Or, 2) He knows it’s not an issue but is good for political points.
In my business I have been in 100-200 water treatment plants in the Northeast. Sometimes I will program and set up chemical feed systems, dumping tons of chemicals into millions of people’s drinking water. I lost count of all the places I have been in, but I know exactly how many have the equipment to feed fluoride. There are exactly two. One is on the north shore of Boston. The other is a ski town north of MA. They don’t use it, and the fluoride tanks are empty.
Obviously putting chemicals in drinking water is highly regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). These people who run treatment plants are just regular people. They wouldn’t put a chemical into drinking water without documentation or a good reason. They would lose their license faster than Kamala losing track of her thoughts. (Limited time on Kamala digs).
I would have guessed people would be worried about Potassium Permanganate. KMNo4. It’s a big scary long word that turns your drinking water purple. It clumps the manganese and iron so it can be filtered out before you drink it. Nobody cares about that.
Anyone can get the DEP reports from their town’s website. The numbers can’t be fudged without huge fines. From my experience, it doesn’t happen. The fluoride issue isn’t an issue from my experience.
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STOP THE PRESSES. I needed to google the statistics so I wouldn’t have it thrown back in my face, which you all are so able to do. It seems according to the CDC nearly everybody is being fed fluoride. My experience says something completely different. Is it that only the northeast has naturally occurring fluoride? The data doesn’t specify where the natural fluoride is. I have never seen it being done in over 100 treatment facilities. This seems strange to me. CDC LINK. Am I not supposed to believe what my eyes are telling me?
2022 National Water Fluoridation Statistics
These statistics were prepared using water system data reported by states to the CDC Water Fluoridation Reporting System as of December 31, 2022, by the U.S. Census Bureau state population estimates as of July 1, 2020, and by population estimates served by public water supply as of 2015, as published by the U.S. Geological Survey June 19, 2018.
Values were aggregated or calculated at county and state levels. National-level values are a summation (or appropriate calculation based on a summation) of state-level values.
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11,850,115 |
I am not qualified to say this is good or bad. Just don’t literally want it forced down our throats.
In any case, I think we will get by just fine without another Kennedy.
Published in General
I guess this gets right to the issue. I assume fluoride in treated water is good, but nobody does it. What I don’t like is it being forced on us. Add it to toothpaste. That way you can choose to have it or not. You can brush your teeth or not. Gross.
I thought it might benefit this discussion to introduce a statement/article that the Children’s Health Defense Team, an organization headed by RFK Jr., published in 2019. It lays out their argument in favor of removing fluoride from drinking water in clear fashion, and contains embedded links to supporting scientific evidence. Here it is:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/u-s-water-fluoridation-a-forced-experiment-that-needs-to-end/
PS:
For a deeper dive into the organization’s take on this issue over time, here’s their page containing search results for “fluoride”, …
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/search/?search=fluoride
For the rest of my life my default position will be suspicion when I hear “The Experts have decided that this is a Good Thing and therefore the government will give you no choice in the matter.”
Of course, the experts may well be right in many cases. But they’ve lost my trust.
I think Robert Kennedy Junior is a nut and I was disappointed when many Ricochetti wrote that they would consider voting for him for President. For instance, RFK Jr. was a lifelong believer that Global Warming is destroying the Earth – until he started his campaign for President. He began walking away from his environmental activism from the past, even starting out his campaign by advocating for bans on fracking and then totally reversing his position in favor of fracking. Kamala Harris couldn’t have been this brazen (well, maybe I should think this one over).
Kennedy was one of those guys who advocated vociferously for windmill power, but fought tooth and nail to keep windmills out of Martha’s Vineyard where he lived because he didn’t like the sight of them.
Something seems very odd to me. If fluoride is so bad for your health, why haven’t we seen billions of people getting sick from using fluoride toothpastes or getting treatments at dental offices? There is certainly more fluoride going in your body from that than from drinking water.
We get our water from a well. Every dental visit, my hygienist asks if I would like a flouride treatment. I tell her no, but not because I’m against flouridation. I had it done once, and a bad aftertaste stayed in my both for several weeks afterward . . .
You are exactly right. There’s an easy solution: don’t drink the water. I’ve been told “Things are so expensive, I can’t afford bottled water” by people who spend $5 at Starbuck’s several times a week.
The unfortunate part of this is that it seems to all stem from COVID. Because the government and others lied to us about the various issues, we decided to stop listening to them, and distrust anything “the government” told us. And we’d listen to anyone who told us what we agreed with. Then we started throwing out the actual good advice with the bad. And ended up with torches and pitchforks over fluoride in the water.
Seeing it play out in my town and thinking we have some actual real problems to solve, I did a bit of reading, and I this is what I learned:
Every single dentist in the area came out in support of fluoridating the water. Some tell me that’s an “argument from authority”. Not really. It’s seeking expert opinion. If I hear a funny noise in my car and take it to 5 mechanics and they all tell me the same thing…
Fluoride isn’t “toxic waste”. It used to be the byproduct of some chemical process, but the fluoride used in community water today isn’t the same.
Fluoride isn’t show to cause any ill effects. “Studies show” correlations in some cases but there’s not enough data for people to be claiming that it’s causing autism, etc. etc. etc.
In the end, it seems to me that a person should brush and floss every day, reduce their intake of sugary drinks, and if their dentists say they need to take a fluoride treatment, they should take it.
You and me against the machine, Steven. I agree with you!
Context:
https://youtu.be/Qr2bSL5VQgM?t=101
https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/films/news/stanley-kubrick-daughter-vivian-donald-trump-full-metal-jacket-b2629880.html
I have been in the water filtration business for the last 30 years and here is my understanding. First, the anticavity benefits of fluoride seem legit. Second, fluoride is frequently naturally occurring at about the recommended level of .7 ppm so many municipal systems don’t need to add anything. Third, reverse osmosis filtration removes fluoride but carbon filters and sediment filters do not. Fourth, the beneficial activity from fluoride is topical, that is, swishing fluoridated water around in your mouth and spitting it out, or using fluoridated toothpaste or mouthwash is all that is needed and not a systemic consumption of the fluoride. How any of that affects your decisions is up to you.
People should learn to spit out the toothpaste after brushing.
I was looking into this recently because my dentist had suggested to me a few years ago to not rinse out my mouth after brushing my teeth (and she gives me a prescription toothpaste that has extra fluoride!). She said the fluoride needs some time to sink in and kill the maximum amount of bad bacteria. I did it once in a while and didn’t give it much thought, but just recently I had my teeth cleaned by a periodontist who recommended the same thing. So I looked it up on the Internet and there seems to be a general opinion that rinsing one’s mouth with water after brushing is a no-no! This is contrary to what I had assumed my whole life.
I recall a TV comic many years ago stating that he was opposed to Fluoridation because it was first tried by a small New England town in 1871 “and not one of those people is alive today.”
I’d actually like to hear more about that. You think you’d be up for writing a post about the ins and outs of the business and what you’ve been doing for the past thirty years?
Sounds about right. Doesn’t sound like we need a national policy. It would be OK to humor RFK Jr and let him prattle on, but this can be handled at local levels.
I remembers the days when rightwingers said fluoridation of municipal water supplies was a Communist conspiracy. I heard some of that repeated among my own extended family.
Much later, not so long after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a newspaper cartoon that had a bunch of Russian commie comrades wearing ushankas while sitting disconsolately around a samovar. One of them perked up: “On the bright side, comrades, we got the water in Grand Rapids fluoridated!”
I thought it was very funny and put it up on my office door, and also showed it to a young man who was working part-time for me. He came from a leftist family–his father was a professor who taught at a small, private college when he wasn’t busy chaining himself to trees to protest nuclear power, etc. But this young man was very competent and productive, and always easy and pleasant to talk to, even when we were disagreeing about politics. And we agreed about some things, too. I think we had some much closer understandings about some environmental issues and some child-rearing issues (which had to do with why he was only a part-time worker while his wife was doing a postdoc in our department).
When I showed him the cartoon, he looked at it and said, “Well, actually…” I learned that the anti-fluoridation people were now to be found on the left.
And now? Who knows.
This article agrees with my memory about the beginning of fluoridated drinking water.
I wasn’t referring to his public speaking. I was referring to where he got his ideas.
It can be debated whether it is healthy or not, but I am very happy Kennedy will be cleaning house as well as our food and water. The new GMO foods, synthetic meats, and the big pharma industry has created a lot of sick people. He has been at the forefront for many decades on these issues along with Dr. Mercola. In this modern world, we can do a lot better on the health front and supporting sustainable farming.
Or, you can choose to brush your teeth with a non-fluoride toothpaste. Or with baking soda or something.
RFKjr seems fine until he starts talking bout something you know, then it becomes obvious that he’s a nut case.
WRT fluoride, there is lots of evidence going back many years that fluoride added to the water prevents tooth decay.
It may no longer be necessary to put fluoride in the water since most people get it in other ways, such as with toothpaste.
Claims about fluoride causing things like fractures are based on populations that get very high exposure levels.
RFKjr isn’t a scientist. He’s a lawyer, and the thinks like a lawyer. He touts data that supports his prejudices and discards and ignores all other data and analysis. His characteristic error is to use raw, uncontrolled data to show associations between things like cellphone radiation and disease. The associations disappear when the data is properly controlled. If anyone calls him out on this he rolls out the ad hominem attacks.
As mentioned previously, that’s just a first-order benefit. Has enough research been done on second-order (and beyond) complications? The ADA isn’t likely to be doing it.
Anyway, it’s the fluoride that does it. Putting it in water is not what causes the benefit. And the fluoride can be obtained in other ways.
This seems like the primary question, is putting fluoride in the water supply the most effective way to improve dental health. I would like to see some good studies on why having a gut full of fluoridated water helps dental health.
We add folate to bread & cereals, because it is very important for fetal development. Safe and effective.
Especially when, as has been mentioned previously, so many people drink a lot less tap water now anyway. I doubt there’s any health benefits from flushing toilets with fluoridated water.
Or irrigating or filling swimming pools or putting out fires with fluoridated water.
If 70% of the population is receiving fluoridated water, why haven’t I ever seen it? I will ask DEP Friday.
I just checked my town’s reports. They didn’t test, or they didn’t list it.
That fluoride is helpful to prevent tooth decay is beyond dispute. The question, as is so often, does the benefits outweigh the negatives. There are vaccines that have been trialed in India that were 100% effective at preventing the targeted disease (yeah! 100% effective!); unfortunately the vaccinated were likely to die much younger than they should from an unrelated disease due to a messed up immune system.
I’ve read that fluoride has contributed to lower IQs. That is something that would not be obvious (who is to say your kid would be smarter) and would take years to show up, and I assume could only be proven with scathes of data. I have no opinion on the matter, but I do remember dentists telling me to make sure my kids spit out their toothpaste. Was that because of the fluoride or something else?
Since I exclusively breastfed my four kids, I was sent home from the hospital with a prescription for fluoride. I think I dosed son #1 once or twice, decided it was stupid and ignored the issue from then on. (He obviously didn’t have teeth …)
Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying’s podcast was noted earlier. The subject was discussed around minute 28; I do remember the topic of fluoride in their book, The Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, which is about four years old.
Election 2024: Rescued Republic? The 250th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (youtube.com)
As far as I’m concerned, it is a subject well worth discussion and study, regardless whether the population is calling for it. Lower IQs is an impactful matter for the country as a whole in more ways than I can count.
What is DEP?
And again, it’s not something we should rely on the American Dental Association to handle.
Even in the best of times, American Dental Association wouldn’t be a wise choice. As the Means siblings say over and over, we need to take a more macro view.
Statins is a subject I follow closely. Statins are very effective at lowering cholesterol. Yippee! But at what cost? Don’t ask your GP, all he cares about is your cholesterol number is down. Similarly, the ADA is just going to care about their particular, narrow lane.
The other term, which I think I used before, was “that’s not their rice bowl.”
Do us a favor and stop being so reasonable. ;-)
Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.