DDL on 18/11/2008 at 08:34
Quote Posted by SD
it's a crying shame that the very real dangers of fluoride in our drinking water
Brown (but stronger) teeth? I'm confused.
And asking the internet gives you either "OMG CONSPIRACY OMG" (many of whom don't appear to know the difference between fluoride and fluorine*), or -should you ask pubmed- many, many peer reviewed papers where the advantages of fluoride are taken as read.
*Closer reading indicates that the 'fluoride causes X' scientific studies cited are not actually peer-reviewed, which doesn't bode well. You'd get more reliable data from a Japanese 'Scientific' Whaling Journal.
scumble on 18/11/2008 at 09:10
There are come critics of Flouridation not on the level of Jack D. Ripper blaming the communists...
There's more to it than whether flourine is good or bad, it's a question of whether putting it in the water supply is a good idea, and even the EPA seems to have considered being more cautious about how much to use. I think dentinsts tend to recognise an excess of flouride is bad in the long run and causes discoloration. My wife has a problem with flourosis because she used to eat flouride toothpaste.
The problem as I see it, is that the promotion of flouride as if it can do nothing but good gives people less concern than they should about consuming too much flouride. If flouride is in the water supply, using flouride toothpaste additionally is probably unnecessary, and vice versa.
Quote Posted by GBM
He's just a Libertarian of the third-least credible variety.
Possibly lower than that...
DDL on 18/11/2008 at 11:23
I think the problem is the association that brown teeth == bad.
Certainly this CAN be true, if the discolouration is due to..say, massive buildup of plaque, or smoking a shitload of cuban cigars, but in the case of fluoride-related discolouration there's no convincing evidence that this is in any way negative other than in a purely cosmetic sense, as far as I can tell.
Fluoride-related discolouration can be an indication of where further decay has been PREVENTED by fluoride, so in our fluoride-filled world of today, people will naturally associate "brown" with "decay", but that's kinda looking at it the wrong way round, largely.
Anyway: surely the problem in your wife's case is...she used to eat toothpaste? ;)
SD on 18/11/2008 at 17:32
Quote Posted by DDL
Brown (but stronger) teeth? I'm confused.
Mottled teeth and bones due to fluoride poisoning are, of course, an issue, but by no means the only one.
By and large, when we're talking about fluoridation, we're talking about adding hexafluorosilicic acid to the water supply, a corrosive fertiliser industry by-product that is 85 times more toxic than naturally-occurring calcium fluoride. They're prohibited from dumping this stuff in the sea, so what better way to dispose of it than to rebrand it as a health supplement and dump it in the public water supply instead!
The health benefits, such as they are, are over-stated. There's a
little evidence to suggest fluoride prevents decay; something like half a tooth less decay in children in fluoridated areas than those in non-fluoridated areas. Even then, one effect of fluoride is to delay the eruption of teeth in children, so even a straight comparison between 5-year-olds in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas is a little dodgy because while they might be the same age, their teeth might well not be.
In fact, the scientific evidence both in favour of and against the benefits of fluoride is of a rather poor quality all round. That said, the evidence against fluoride was strong enough for Nobel-winning biochemist (
http://www.fluoridealert.org/carlsson-interview.html) Arvid Carlsson to come out in opposition. At the very least, I think there are huge doubts over whether this stuff has any benefit, and plenty of reasons to think that it causes harm.
Of course, all this is moot anyway if you believe, as I do, that a person has a basic human right to refuse unwanted medication. I oppose mass medication on principle; fluoride could be the panacea for all ills, and I wouldn't want it put into the water supply.
BEAR on 21/11/2008 at 03:08
Whats funny about that for me is the fact that I know a bunch of aging hippies, and the matrix is their fucking thing. Any time anything computer related comes up "Its the matrix lol!". That movie gave meta-physic spewing sacred geometry making hippies more to talk about than any piece of media of the last 50 years.
