- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
The new research is the first to measure community water fluoridation exposure during childhood and any potential impact on cognition up to age 80.
The paper is here
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Alternative headline: Science disproves well known conspiracy theory again; conspiracy theorists deny evidence.
yeah I felt that way with the tynlenol one the other day. Its like we are using resources for this. ugh.
Honestly, I don’t mind spending resources on this. Yes it turned out that the expected results were the ones we got, but until you do the study, you can’t be sure you won’t get unexpected results. Plus, once you’ve collected the data, it sometimes shows unrelated patterns that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to see.
people don’t understand science at all.
It’s not a ‘do it once and it’s the truth forever’ type of thing. It’s a perpetual process. You are SUPPOSED TO REPEAT STUDIES. Result replication is the point. You also re-do studies to create new datasets, see if baselines have shifted etc.
The notion science is some system of eternal truths is not science. That’s Scientism… where science has been elevated to a extra-empirical authority.
It’s also why you do experiments in science class… and you compare results.
anyway, a couple of times I tried to explain this to people, even as a teacher, and they basically told me that means science is stupid and worthless if that is how you are suppose to do it. people generally, do not think science is an empirical process, they think it should be revelatory, like the ten commandments.
they think it should be revelatory, like the ten commandments…
Since you brought it up, it’s worthwhile that most Abrahamic churches include common folk arguing about the nitty gritty of what scripture means, what are the consequences of those meanings, and how to account for those consequences in their daily life.
Which is kinda exactly how we should treat scientific studies.
Yup, a little skepticism is healthy. But that doesn’t mean you should actually assume that everyone is a liar and you should only listen to “alternative” sources.
I assume that everyone trying to assert anything could be wrong, and if I do not know their process or track record, I work from the position that they are wrong.
I do not assume lies, since mostly they are simply wrong without malice. They may have believed someone else’s lie, though, especially if there is money to be gained.
People crave certainty. Like are obsessed with it. They will do anything to obtain it including believing all kinds of wildly untrue things. Intuition is usually associated with these hard fictions.
Science starts from the premise that the universe is uncertain. Uncertainty is baked into all scientific measurements. This mindset leads to true knowledge but it is fundamentally not how people are naturally wired to think. It takes repeated practice to stay scientifically minded even if you are trained in the practice and you exercise it regularly. It’s uncomfortable to stay in the uncertain place for long periods of time for most people. Regression to certainty is the norm, science is the exception.
I give people a lot of empathy for the certainty mindset, even if it is wrong it helps people cope with the gaping abyss of uncertainty. It’s not an easy thing to grapple with.
People crave certainty.
I think its slightly different I’d say its closer to: People crave simplicity.
That can frequently mean certain answers, but even if the answers aren’t certain, but simple, they accept it. This is the root of most conspiracy theories. It is much simpler to accept that a global cabal is specifically trying to convince people the Earth is flat rather than accept that we live on the surface of a very large round planet, that “down” doesn’t always mean down, and that gravity exists to prevent people on the “bottom” of Earth don’t simply fall off into space.
Oh I have met plenty of scientists who are scientific only about their own research field. And complete dumbasses about anything else, like they do biology all day but can’t drive for shit because they have zero understanding of the laws of physics, including gravity, and they get hyper defensive if you tease them about this.
It’s mind-boggling, but that’s just how human beings are. And if you aren’t wired like that… it’s pretty hard to socialize successfully because social group identity is so often solely generated on shared beliefs many of which are ‘hard fictions’.
Yes! That’s my point on it being very difficult to live in uncertainty all the time. You can live with it in a field of study but boy is it hard to live with in everything. You should live with it, but its psychologically challenging.
you can’t be sure you won’t get unexpected results
Yeah you can say that about anything and there was data before this indicating it did not have a negative effect. Its like have we studied water enough for its negative effects.
When lots of people believe something in spite of the numbers, it’s often fun to sort of buttress the numbers by getting more and more and more of them. That way at least you can easily prove the correct facts to the part of the population that understands numbers.
It’s not necessarily going to win over those in the anti-intellectual cult that dominates the world now, but it is highly satisfying, which helps maintain morale. Instead of explaining percentages to people, you can just stare at them while tapping the big green number on the graph then pretending to need a microscope to see the tiny, teensy, pathetic red line.
I may have lost the plot there somewhere.
actually I think I get yeah but its always going to irriatate me the necessity of it all. Todays devils panties has a good one where the husband is like. Isn’t it funny your crazy uncle who would talk about the oil industry killing the guy who made an engine that can run on water is now pissed that a car can run on sunlight.
I’ve added so many “Conspiracy Theorist” tags to users thanks to these posts…
I wondered that when I started reading: is this actual science, or being forced to disprove the idiots yet again? But right at the beginning it talked about bringing first of its kind, actual data, yadda yadda … reads like actual science, like something that adds value to our knowledgebase
I think in this case it’s valuable to do the study. A lot of these conspiracy theories are based on the idea that common thing could be harmful in some way, but assumes that it really is and that they know the effects. Some are more plausible than others because chemistry is complex and biology is a lot of chemistry, so it can be hard to say that something is harmless without doing a lot of scientific research.
I’m all for replacing fluoride in water with ethanol. It lowers IQ, damages teeth, and fosters violence, but it’d be a lot more fun than fluoride.
But a MAGA coworker told me Fluoride is bad according to new studies. When asked for specifics the answer was read the studies.
I always assume if MAGA says something is bad, then it’s good.
Blind squirrels eventually find nuts.
Like knowing that there are pedophiles in the Epstein files.
In fact, nearly half of all blind squirrels don’t even have to look far at all to find a couple. ☝🏼
The trouble is, MAGAts don’t know the difference between a couple acorns and the absolute bollocks they’re tweaking about.
🌰🌰🐿️ ‼️🐂💩
🏆
Well, they already have low IQ and poor brain function. They don’t need fluoride.
What MAGA doesn’t need personally, they don’t want anyone else to have. So it makes sense.
But it does have an effect on dental health! A positive one!
HEALTHY TEETH AND GUMS ARE THE FIRST STEP OF THE TRANS IDEOLOGY.
Man, I’m trans as fucking hell.
I became trans by choice.
Oh shit, I’m getting less trans by the day! I should floss.
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Yes it has measurable effect, lots of research has established that with a very high degree of certainty. But maybe the causality isn’t proven?
The claim is that it strengthen teeth, but I’m not sure that is proven, for all I know it could also be it prevents bacteria from flourishing in the mouth to a degree that is significant enough to prevent tooth decay.
But that may just be lack of access to the data. This issue is very heavily researched for many decades, so professionals should have a pretty good grasp on the facts by now. It just irks me that I’ve never seen anything documenting the causality, there is clear proof of correlation, but AFAIK not the causality.If it did prevent bacterial growth it would prevent plaque formation because bacteria doesn’t grow directly on teeth surprisingly and before anybody says anything please go search up some dentistry science
Wait, wtf is plaque then??!? Is there lichen on my teeth?
It creates a layer that it can live on thats how bacteria grows on your teeth
Awwww, no lichen.
The biofilm can attract multiple species so technically not lichen but similar.
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Random guy on the internet claiming to debunk the WHO, various national health authorities, and every dentist I’ve ever talked to ever. Ok buddy.
Just to cover all the bases here: what’s your take on the mRNA COVID vaccines?
Got a source for those claims, buttercup?
…because they brush their teeth? With toothpaste that has fluoride in it?
The only research paper I have been able to find was from my own country Denmark more than a decade ago, and was about natural
flourfluor in the water, because it’s illegal to add to the water here.
That paper was very clear that people in the area that had flour had better teeth health.Mmmm, pancake water.
I bet you never thought it would work. 😋
Source pls. I have seen many, many studies showing the benefits of flouride here in Australia, especially on the teeth of people in the lowest rungs of society, controlled for diet, disease, etc. If you have countervailing studies, great! Show em!
I’m sorry, what were you just lying?
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That’s not fluoride increasing the rate of cavities though. It’s evidence of the opposite.
This study was funded by people that don’t wear tinfoil hats outside. They’re compromised.
Fluoride has a special property that causes people’s low IQ levels to be confirmed.
I love how brainwashed right wingers pretend to be an authority on gender and sex, then believe shit like this.
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What?
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I don’t understand your point. I’m making fun of the right wing for believing in dumb pseudoscience. I’m well aware of the crunchy moms on the left, but that’s not who I’m making fun of right now.
You’re… Bringing in UC Berkeley and the aluminum industry for some reason? It really just seems like you wanted to rant and chose my comment at random to do that.
Anti fluoride people love listening and reading their own words. If they got used to the alternative they might change their mind, hence the correlation.
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Yeah, you’re really not fighting the allegation that you just wanted to rant. Literally no one brought up Berkeley.
Supposing your unhinged rant is at all accurate, why does any of that matter in the context of the article?
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literally trillions
This guy knows his numbers!
How about you first watch a few Count Dracula videos and once you have done thosez you can play with the big numbers again
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good fucking god is that where we’re at.
We always knew excess flouride fucked up your bones and teeth. That was the potential danger. We’ve known that since Colorado Springs. Why are we testing cognition.
A recent analysis (1) finding a negative relationship between fluoride exposure and adolescent IQ was prominently cited in decisions to end community water fluoridation (CWF) in parts of the United States. However, the quality and salience of that evidence have been questioned (2, 3). Most notably, the bulk of the evidence presented by Taylor et al. (1) concerned extremely high dosages of fluoride—far exceeding levels relevant to CWF policy discussions. None of their evidence came from population-representative samples; most failed to account for selection into treatment. None of the research was conducted using data collected in the United States.
this research was done to figure out the unknown
But IQ DOES have a long term effect on fluoridation!
Utah is proof of this.
The worst it does is put spots on your (cavity-resisting) teeth.
You need a lot of fluoride for that to happen.
and thats only if you ingest a large amount of it during childhood.
But having healthy teeth will prolong your life statistically so…
When crunchy lefties were first spouting off about this, they at least had an explanation. It was a nonsense explanation rooted in woo-woo pseudoscience and mysticism, but it was at least an explanation. Also, most people were inoculated against that kind of bullshit, we knew they were slightly crazy and wrong, and it was a view that was relatively harmless and allowed to exist. Most places it was “go ahead, you do you - drink your fluoride-free water and let your teeth rot, but you have to source your water yourself - this municipality fluoridates for the public good, it’s backed by science and dental experts, etc.”
These new crazy people, most of them don’t even have an explanation. (some of them are actually the same people, just moved down the alt-right pipeline after a couple decades of propaganda). If you were to ask them why they think fluoride is bad you could get responses ranging from blank stares to actual physical attacks. Transmission of conspiracy theories is so supercharged in this environment - all you have to do is jump on a bandwagon, and your buddies in the same club as you will give you the approval you desperately need just for wearing that opinion on your sleeve - no critical thought required, just base monkey instinct. This is such an irresistible way of belonging to some group and getting that special feeling that it’s becoming a real problem for most of us.
A small minority of these folks are (small L) libertarians or anti-authoritarians who believe in bodily sovereignty. That’s a rational thought process that I can actually sympathize with, so they get a minimum amount of points for having a comprehensible, defensible position. They just shouldn’t be able to force their choice on everyone else. (That would seem to contradict their own philosophy anyway). The public good of fluoridation, backed by science and experts, should vastly outweigh even that position. As before with the crunchy hippies, fine, it’s your right to choose what goes into your body - along with that comes the responsibility to take care of that for yourself, in line with your own stated ideals.
FWIW, the anti-fluoride thing started off when the John Birch Society, a right-wing hate group, started pushing it decades ago.
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Not to any meaningful degree in the US. It was the John Birch Society and KKK here.
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They both certainly existed, though the latter was somewhat underground in the 1950s.
It’s easy to find documentation of their positions on fluoridation; it’s not so common to find evidence of environmental groups opposing it when there was a clear public health benefit.
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You’ve never met a conspiracy theory you didn’t want to deep throat, have you, sweaty?
I always laugh when people misspell sweetie. You think you’re being clever, but you’ve completely botched your insult.
I didn’t misspell anything, spud.
And you definitely haven’t met a conspiracy theory you didn’t want to dry hump.
You’re assuming they meant to say sweetie. Calling someone sweaty can be an insult too.
What was lefty uber-liberal hippieism got co-opted during covid by right wingers and fascist science deniers.
they are all the same people.
they just have different origin stories for their crazy beliefs.
This is such an irresistible way of belonging to some group and getting that special feeling that it’s becoming a real problem for most of us.
It’s a base human drive, that is far more powerful than critical thought. The only reason we sort of got around this was we had built institutions and had collective identities… and a lot of that is crumbling away the past few decades.
So people are reverting to forming their own little tribes around some niche set of beliefs to make them feel empowered. As most of them no longer feel apart of their larger tribe.
Anecdotally, I left a volunteer org I’d been a part of for ten years because this brainrot had taken it over. The new members wanted our org to some super special club for cool people only, instead of being just open to anyone and my emphasis on it being open and accessible made me persona non grata. BECAUSE HOW COULD I NOT WANT TO FEEL SPECIAL AND SUPERIOR. oh, and they also started saying they should be paid for volunteer work… because felt they ‘deserved’ all that money we were getting from donations from the public…
I am recovering from being raised by ultra crunchy parents. I had no vaccinations until I was already an adult. I have a unique vantage point into both sides of this issue and the thing of it is that yes maybe they are dumb, but the fear comes from a very real, even logical, place. Anything pushed on you by the American government should give anyone pause, because when was the last time the government spent gobs of money in the name of public health? Massive infrastructure spending in order to keep Americans from spending less on healthcare and increase their quality of life? Yeah that does not sound real. Why would the same government that has been dismantling public education and food/medication regulation spend a single red cent to make Americans’ teeth better? It makes no logical sense, so it is easy to see why generations of Americans that have been screwed over by their government at every turn would be skeptical of anything put in the water supply “for their benefit.” This is about a loss of trust in lawmakers, and all they’ve done to perpetuate it.
As an aside, though, I have watched a ton of people traverse the crunchy leftist to MAGA pipeline and it still bewilders me. “I don’t trust the government, but I trust the sleezy car salesman I have vehemently loathed for decades.” I can only blame lead poisoning for that one.
The decision to fluoridate is with the municipality afaik, but there are probably federal guidelines. Some places have never fluoridated, and if you want it you need to use tablets. There are also loads of people on well water where that’s supported by the local geology - it’s super common in my area. Well water may or may not contain naturally-occurring fluoride, and usually not at the level of a municipal source.
But that makes it even more amazing IMO, that a consensus was reached and implemented in a decentralized fashion in most places, to the point where it’s normalized. The only other collective action I can recall, which might surpass it in scope and impressiveness, also backed by scientific insight, was the Montreal Protocol.
Fluoride does harm brain development, but only if you get way too much of it. This happens in some places where the natural water already contains a lot of fluoride. You absolutely don’t want to add even more fluoride there.
But most places, especially in the US, the fluoride level is far below that, so far below that we have to add fluoride to the water to get enough to maintain dental health. But it’s still far below the level that causes harm.
It also begins to have a purely cosmetic but noticeable impact on your teeth long before the detrimental health effects kick in.
The big issue is that the process to make ground water safe to drink removes the Sodium Flouride from it. We have to add it back in, unless you live in a town like mine where they decided to stop flouridating the water because they believe in conspiracy theories and Facebook science.
The levels you need to consume to cause harm are pretty substantial. You would have to be intentionally consuming a LOT of Sodium Flouride to cause issues. It’s almost on the level of “how many bananas do you need to eat to get radiation poisoning”.
That is dangerous misinformation. With an LD50 of 0.052 grams per kilogram of body weight, swallowing a teaspoon of sodium fluoride will kill most people (if they aren’t induced to vomit or receive emergency medical attention). It’s harmless in the dosage put in tap water, but if you have a tub of pure sodium fluoride it is similarly toxic to bleach or moth balls.
Meanwhile you physically can’t eat enough bananas to get radiation poisoning. Bananas are less radioactive than human flesh, less radioactive than hotdogs, less radioactive than potatoes. You can swim in liquefied banana and be exposed to less radiation than walking outside on a cloudy day without sunscreen.
And a teaspoon is 5 ml. Flouridated water is, on average, 0.7 mcg/L. Therefore, you would have to drink over 17,000 liters of water for the flouride to kill you.
That’s cool, but kind of irrelevant to their remark that sodium fluoride is safe.
It is safe. The dose makes the poison.
Shit, even pure oxygen can kill you.
I wouldn’t call a chemical that kills you if you eat a teaspoon of it “safe”. It literally has a H301 “acutely toxic chemical” rating.
sigh
It’s safe in the levels added to drinking water.
Absolutely no one is saying pure sodium fluoride is safe.
You physically can’t drink enough (properly) fluoridated water to get fluoride poisoning.
Some back of the napkin math says a typical American (rounded to 200lbs) would need ~67 liters of water to get a lethal does of fluoride. Some lazy googling says that the absolute most your kidneys would handle is 20 liters in a 24hr period before they start failing. Literally, the amount water you can drink is more toxic than the amount of fluoride in it.
That’s not what they said, though. What they said is that “you would have to be intentionally consuming a LOT of sodium fluoride to cause issues”. Not fluorinated water, sodium fluoride. The actual salt that kills you if you eat a teaspoon of it.
That’ll be a risk if you have pure sodium fluoride sitting around. Fortunately “no one” does. (Yes, industrial toothpaste manufacturing workers might have an opportunity to be exposed to such a thing).
Typical toothpaste is 1000-1100 ppm of sodium fluoride. “Prescription strength” is about 5000 ppm. So to hit your target LD50 you need to eat around 10 g of toothpaste per kg. Assuming on the extremely small end (40 kg bodyweight): if I did my math right, that’s about 400 g of prescription strength toothpaste, or more than two (170 g) tubes.
Normal toothpaste (1100 ppm) for a normal person (80 kg female average), you need to eat more than 22 tubes of toothpaste to kill half the people involved.
Thats just stupid, there’s zero risk of any of that happening.
Look, I’m not saying the average consumer will ever run into this risk, I’m saying that you shouldn’t go around saying H301 acutely toxic chemicals are as safe to ingest as bananas. You’re not the president of the United States.
That’s not what they were saying. They were saying the levels in drinking water are so low that it’s comparable to radiation levels in bananas.
As in, you’d need to consume so much for it to be lethal that you’d have to be intentionally doing it to cause harm to yourself.
I believe it is what they meant to say, but it is simply not what they said.
The big issue is that the process to make ground water safe to drink removes the Sodium Flouride from it. We have to add it back in, unless you live in a town like mine where they decided to stop flouridating the water because they believe in conspiracy theories and Facebook science.
The levels you need to consume to cause harm are pretty substantial. You would have to be intentionally consuming a LOT of Sodium Flouride to cause issues. It’s almost on the level of “how many bananas do you need to eat to get radiation poisoning”.
The bolded sentence is unambiguous. It uses no prepositions, no context-dependent phrases, no complex punctuation. It is a simple sentence ending in a full stop. How can you deny this is what they said?
Why are you getting downvoted for providing relevant facts? Sometimes this place is as reactionary as 8chan
Critically judging authorial intent is a 6th grade reading level, and 54% of USAmerican adults have a 5th grade reading level or below. I could have written it more for my audience, the sort of person that needs to hear that pure sodium fluoride is unsafe to ingest.
Bro, I eat half a tube of toothpaste a day for the health benefits. Have been doing that since I was 8.
Edit: /s for smooth brains
I wonder why we don’t handle it like any other vitamin? Where’s my multivitamin tap water?!
I filter my water, so the fluoride goes to waste sadly. Wonder if it comes in a small dose pill.
It does. But I don’t know if there’s a reason we fluoridate water and not something else, like iodine in salt and all the stuff they put in enriched flour.
Perhaps has to do with the medium and the tendency of things to decay away. Maybe fluoride is stable in water, but something like Vitamin D would break down. Sunlight for example breaks down some things like that. I imagine water is probably a difficult medium to survive in for a lot of things.
I grew up in Moscow in the 80s, I think they tried fluoride in the water, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make a difference.
As a child, my teeth were atrocious. Constant cavities despite brushing and not eating a ton of sweets and never even trying soda.
After I moved here at 18, my teeth got significantly better. I’m glad there is fluoride in the water!
I think there are town where the fluoride occurs naturally and the inhabitants teeth turned brown, but their teeth were healthy as hell
Russian dentistry during that time period, from what I recall reading, was horrific.
Yeah, it wasn’t fun, even though I was able to get “the good stuff” cause my dad started working for the government in an important position. The good stuff was… marginal.
