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flouride
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this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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Toxicologist here. I think that take is dishonest or dumb.
Taking a lethal dose is almost never the concern with any substance in our drinking water.
Hormones, heavy metals, persistent organic chemicals, ammonia are all in our drinking water. But for all of them we can't drink enough water to die from a high dose.
Some of them still have a large effect on our bodies.
It's about the longterm effects. Which longterm studies to learn about. That makes them harder to study.
Still doesn't mit flouride does anything bad longerm. But the argument is bad.
It's so funny I was just having a similar conversation about neurotoxic venomous animals in another thread. Lethality is an obviously concerning threshold, but there are substances out there that can easily destroy your quality of life and livelihood that never reach the concern of being lethal.
I think for mostly rational people concerned about fluoride in their water is that it was a public health decision made with little to no actual science proving it's safety or efficacy when it was first decided that they were going to add it to the public water supply. The proposed benefits of it weren't even supported by scientific evidence, it was just supposed that exposure to sodium fluoride could potentially reduce tooth decay for some.
Personally, I've suffered from the cosmetic damage of dental fluorosis, and I'm not necessarily thrilled about fluoride. But I have way more issues with public mandates founded on pseudoscience than I am with sodium fluoride. Especially now that we can see evidence that for some people fluoride can be especially beneficial.
So what was wrong with giving people the option of using fluoride toothpaste or mouthwashes... Why did it have to go into the public water supply?