Rutland resident Jack Crowther has been a longtime critic.

“You’re putting a drug, a medicine, in our water to treat tooth decay without the informed consent of the people,” Crowther said.

“Mandrake, have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?” strangelove-wow


“THEY’RE PUTTING MEDICINE IN THE WATER!” frothingfash


Also related, a Richmond, VT waterworks employee secretly lowered fluoride levels in the town’s drinking supply for a decade.

EDIT: I should’ve updated this a month ago, but the town voted to keep fluoride.

  • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Water fluoridation is fucking stupid. Fluoride can cure cancer and make you immortal for all I care it’s still stupid to put it in all the tap water. Of all the tap water you use how much do you actually drink vs washing things? And you know what’s a way more efficient of getting it on your teeth other than drinking water? Toothpaste, which already fucking has fluoride in it.

    Hmm, we have substance that’s good for your teeth. Do we put it in the toothpaste or do we spend millions dumping it in all the fucking water?

    • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Damn if only there were any research pointing out water fluoridation as one of the most cost-effective public health programs in the history of humanity.

      Fluoride is cheap as shit.

      • M68040 [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Not to mention it really pisses off the conspiracy crowd. “To own the chuds” will always be my first concern in decisionmaking and it has a track record there.

        • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Giving myself fluorosis to own the chuds. It’s not just chuds that oppose fluoridation it’s pretty much everybody outside of the US.

      • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        If it’s cheap as shit give everyone a packet of fluoride to smear on their teeth. Also I don’t care about whatever “line goes up” justification there is, it’s just still a roundabout and wasteful delivery method to put it in the tap water. There’s no way to control dosage and it’s wasteful. Also municipalities fuck up the quantity of fluoridation pretty regularly.

        Besides the practical concerns water fluoridation would never pass an ethical review if it were proposed today. People should be able to consent to what medicine they’re taking. It’s banned in almost every country other than the US for a reason.

        Also dentists aren’t real doctors. They don’t go through med school and most of the research they publish isn’t nearly as rigorous as regular medical research. Same fuckers came up with the bright idea to put mercury in tooth implants.

        • Saeculum [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          That creates hundreds of millions of waste packets every year surely.

          It might be wasteful, but it’s probably not more wasteful than packaging and shipping all these packets.

          It’s banned in almost every country other than the US for a reason.

          I can’t find anything to suggest this is true.

        • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Mercury isn’t used any more in fillings but you do know that alloying a metal changes its properties, right? Like, sodium and chlorine will fuck you up real bad but your body will die unless you imbibe salt.

          Also, do you get this frothingfash mad over iodine in salt? It’s all the same shit, cheap and efficient solutions for vast and expensive problems.

          • farting_weedman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            That’s a pretty weak response.

            Metals and metalloids are generally not metabolized safely and the few that are stand out and get specific mentions in rda lists like iron and zinc. There isnt a recommended daily allowance of mercury or lead, don’t eat or breathe them.

            Only table salt gets iodized, not kosher, pickling or road salt. Iodization is like a million times more focused and efficient than fluoridation.

          • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            I literally have mercury fillings. A metallic alloy isn’t the same as an ionic compound. Yeah alloyed mercury isn’t as bioavailable as organic mercury or even just pure mercury, but there are still studies that show that mercury alloy implants give off mercury vapor. There is not “safe dose” for mercury vapor even if it’s miniscule amounts since it does stay in the body for a long time like all heavy metals.

            idk why everyone is all of sudden super defensive of dentists. Fake ass profession one step above chiropractics.

            Iodized salt is literally what I’m proposing to do with Flourine. You can get iodized salt or kosher salt. It says in the label how much iodine you’re getting so you can control your dosage. If fluorine is good for your teeth then put it in the fucking toothpaste like they already do. You can control how much you’re getting and it’s not just getting dumped into the fucking environment in large quantities for no fucking reason.

        • LesbianLiberty [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          If it’s cheap as shit give everyone a packet of fluoride to smear on their teeth.

          jesse-wtf

          Besides the practical concerns water fluoridation would never pass an ethical review if it were proposed today. People should be able to consent to what medicine they’re taking. It’s banned in almost every country other than the US for a reason.

          jesse-wtf

          It’s widely practiced in other countries like the UK, all across South America, Malaysia, ROK, Ireland, Spain, China, Singapore; the rest of what you’re saying is comically wrong but this part is incredibly easy to demonstrate how wrong you are.

          • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Water flouridation isn’t done in China. In certain regions the fluoride level is naturally high and there is a problem with fluoridosis in those regions. In like the 70s they did flouridation and then stopped once they realized it made fluoridosis rates go up slightly.

            A lot of the countries you’re talking about don’t artificially fluoridate their water, they just have naturally high(ish) fluoride levels and get listed as “fluoridated water” in whatever source you’re using.

            UK

            I guess water fluoridation does fuck all for your teeth then lmao. /s

            Wtf is someone with fluorosis gonna do? Drink only distilled water until it goes away?

        • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          There’s no way to control dosage

          too bad we don’t know how much water people drink & can’t calibrate relative to that. one of life’s great mysteries

          it’s wasteful

          great point, we don’t know when people are using water in a way that necessitates chlorination, we should just send everyone untreated water & they can treat it at their discretion when it’s really necessary. stop the waste!

          • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            too bad we don’t know how much water people drink & can’t calibrate relative to that. one of life’s great mysteries

            Some people are sweating in the sun and drinking lots of water to replace it; some people are hydrating almost exclusively with bottled sparkling water. There is actually great variation among how much tap water people drink. You know how some people are getting iodine deficiency even though we supplement table salt, because they’re using sea salt for all their home cooking?

            Not to say that fluoridated water isn’t better than nothing. But I don’t see how it can give everyone a perfect dose.

            • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              you don’t need a perfect dose, just less than would give people fluorosis, which is a fucking lot–people usually get it from eating toothpaste which has a concentration 1.000 times that of the recommended amount in water

                  • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    9 months ago

                    Industrial exposure. If you drink a shit ton of instant tea packets at once you can also get it. Some places have naturally high fluoride levels and in those places fluorosis is a legitimate public health issue.

                • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  yeah fluorosis is a medical condition, someone might need to do special things during treatment, what a wild proposition. but you don’t absorb fluoride through skin so the bathing will be fine lol

                • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  You’re in a forum filled with Socialists and Communists. We support the greater good and government services that help everyone. This is one of those services.

                  I don’t care that five people have some rare condition that makes it hard for them to drink tap water if the tap water being treated is helping literally hundreds of millions of kids have healthy teeth! We can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good!

                  I’m also not going to call for banning trains just because some kid is in therapy for locomophobia.

                  Pick a better hill to die on.

            • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              The amount of fluoride it requires to do any damage is astronomically high and it being in water means you will piss it out too fast for it to be an issue. So you’re safe from too high of a dose. If you’re not eating ionized salt and also are somehow not getting any dietary iodine elsewhere, that’s weird and you can tske supplements, same with fluoride. If you don’t drink tap water it means you’re paying for your water which means you brush your teeth often anyway.

          • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            too bad we don’t know how much water people drink & can’t calibrate relative to that. one of life’s great mysteries

            Everyone knows that every single person drinks exactly the same amount of tap water and get the exact environmental exposure of Fluoride and also have the exact same body mass.

            great point, we don’t know when people are using water in a way that necessitates chlorination, we should just send everyone untreated water & they can treat it at their discretion when it’s really necessary. stop the waste!

            Debate pervert harder.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          Please tell me how to get everyone an individual packet of fluoride to put on their teeth. Are their fluoride depots spread all throughout this great land? How will the homeless access these packets? How about all of the waste from these dingle serve packets? Also it’s not medicine, it’s a mineral that is already part of your teeth and re-minerlizarion is necessary to maintain enamel and stuff. To say fluoride is medicine means that literally all nutrients count as medicine, so should the government stop putting water in the tap water? Cause guess the fuck what water is? Lava. Geologically speaking ice is a rock. So fundamentally there is no difference at all between the two. So running water in general is the government forcing medicine into you apparently.

          • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Holy shit this is the most debate pervert argument I’ve ever seen.

            Fluorosis is real thing you can get that fucks up your bones. It’s a real issue in parts of the world with naturally high fluoride levels/ industrial contamination. I’m not saying you can get Fluorosis from tap water, but if you do get it from environmental exposure tf are you gonna do, only drink and bathe in distilled water?

            Please tell me how to get everyone an individual packet of fluoride to put on their teeth

            Toothpaste is already fucking fluoridated idiot. You act like what I was talking about is some impossible task when it already exists. Also homeless people usually don’t have access to tap water genius. That’s kind of one of the major downsides of being homeless, no access to any plumbing/running water.

            • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              Homeless people can easily access tap water. I am friends with numerous homeless people and noe have died from dehydration nor are they buying bottled water. You go anywhere and either fill a bottle in a public restroom if that’s around or any fast food place cause legally they have to provide water and that water will be tap water because it’s essentially free.

              So you’re saying these fluoride packs (and I was using your own words there, dumbass) are toothpaste which means you need a tooth brush. So those are also available for free and as easy to access as running fucking water? The difference in infrastructure to provide the exact same thing based on a concern you have that isnt real is astounding. Are you sure you’re not a libertarian?

              • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                I’ve literally been homeless before. 1. Just because they legally have to doesn’t mean they will. 2. Going into a fast food place 5 times a day to beg for water isn’t very practical. Also a lot of fast food places actually filter their water to be softer which removes minerals including fluoride.

                • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago
                  1. They will cause it’s easier to just give you the water than get into an argument with someone they already feel uncomfortable around. There is nothing practical about being homeless and you still have to do it. And at least here they just use tsp water unless it’s somewhere more upscale, Wendy’s is giving you tap water. Regardless you’ve yet to mention any solution to getting the homeless toothpaste, a clean brush and a place to brush up. Failing thst any chance of drinking tap water which is way more likely is a positive. There is no downside to any of this and you are weird and wrong.
                  • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    9 months ago

                    Wendy’s does soften their water.

                    Steal toothpaste and bottled water like I did. Brush your teeth with bottled water and spit it out into the gutter. Nobody gave me any water when I asked when I was homeless. Go buy a case of water for your friends instead of assuming they have good access to tap water.

    • TheDialectic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Also, in someplaces they remove the fluoride from water. We are animals that evolved to drink water from pools on the ground. Our bodies want it to have minerals. This is giving our bodies what they need