- 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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Study does not list all data or amounts per person.
I love how brainwashed right wingers pretend to be an authority on gender and sex, then believe shit like this.
Ah yes, right wingers like… The university of California Berkley.
What?
What what? What part of that didn’t you understand?
While it’s trendy on the right to be against Fluoridation because of ‘big government’ or ‘fauci’ or whatever drivel happens to appear out of the American education system; the original fight against fluoridation was left wing, and still is in countries outside the Amerisraeli empire, which is really the only handful of countries that fluoridate their water; they were the only ones stupid enough to give literally trillions at this point to the global aluminium mining industry.
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
80 years across 75000 or so individual water systems, once a month at about 10k (pops under 800) to 1 million (for larger cities) per dose.
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.
…Why? Because Berkeley has non-fluoridated water, after mass encouragement from professors at UC Berkeley.
As to why the aluminum industry… THAT’S THE EXCLUSIVE, AND I DO MEAN THE EXCLUSIVE REASON THE US STARTED FLUORIDATING WATER. There was no other reason. Sodium Fluoride is toxic waste that is a by product from refining aluminum. It cost the industry millions (in 1920s month) actively cleaning up and properly disposing of that waste according to the few ecological protections present in the day.
Then hey, Fluoride is useful in dentistry in high amounts, why don’t they sell to that industry? So they did. And then someone had the clever idea of paying off dentists to help lobby for water fluoridation, as was SO INCREDIBLY COMMON AT THE TIME (sugar, milk, leaded gasoline, cigarettes, lead paint, lead pipes). And so they got a way to get PAID to dump their toxic waste. They just had to make sure it was under a certain concentration; which just meant they aggressively pushed fluoridation across the US and Canada so their margins would be higher. Eventually fluorine became the easiest way to dump that particular chemical, and despite the extra cost for that step of refining (which resulted in sodium metal as a bonus sellable item) it is still more profitable than having to pay to properly dispose of the material.
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?
Why does the incredibly shady history of Fluoridation, the long-standing left-wing fight against it, matter in the context of an absolute ninnyhammer saying it’s a right-wing conspiracy?
I don’t know, let’s use our critical thinking skills here for a minute little buddy.
Why would you put it in water if you can also put it in toothpaste?
Because that puts the burden on the citizens.
For you that may be bearable. But for poor people, who have to choose between eating and brushing their teeth, that may not be as straightforward. Similarly small children are at higher risk, because they don’t usually choose their toothpaste. So if their parents incorrectly believe that fluoridated toothpaste is harmful or cannot afford it, they might end up with tooth decay through no fault of their own.Not everyone have great dental habits.
Studies have shown significant improvements in dental health from adding flouride to water. As an example getting kids to brush their teeth regularly is difficult, but we can provide a layer of protection and avoid expensive dental costs whenever they drink water.
Sure, tell that to General Jack D. Ripper.
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.
You hear that, people? You have no excuse
The worst it does is put spots on your (cavity-resisting) teeth.
and thats only if you ingest a large amount of it during childhood.
You need a lot of fluoride for that to happen.
Can we trust this study though? Everyone is dumb as shit now, the baseline has degraded, and people are more docile. Something is going on, somethings. I wouldn’t absolve flouride that crystallizes in the decision making part of the brain, and it in the soil and food to a huge degree, from aluminum smelting, because of a study. Given, you know, things.
I just want to complement your honest to goodness tin foil hat beliefs. Don’t forget to mention the homosexual amphibians. And more than anything else, Godspeed in your quest for loosely connected facts!
That is telling, of your understanding, I say not lose the Frog of War. Also eat a dick
Sodium Flouride is a naturally occuring salt in ground water. The water purification process for public water systems removes the Flouride, and it needs to be put back in to maintain dental health. This was directly observed and figured out in the 1940’s.
The type of flouride used is the aluminum smelter byproduct, which is what is added to our water, is not the naturally occurring molecule of flouride. So your premise is wrong.
People arent dumber. People have always been dumb. The difference is that the internet exposes this idiocy more, makes it easier for idiots to organize and influence the world, and uses marketting and propaganda to take advantage of this dumbness. But the dumbness itself isn’t new or increasing.
While I already responded, people are dumber, are you denying that? I give to you the president of the US. Tell me we aren’t dumber! Tell it bitch! I want to hear a logical explanation. We are dumber.
The President being dumber than any president before, and frankly dumber than most people in many ways, doesn’t mean that humanity as a whole has become collectively stupider.
In the 50s doctors had recommendations for the healthiest cigarettes. In the 70s, the thought they could give people drugs to unlock superhuman mental abilities. In the 90s, people thought mortal kombat was responsible for gun violence. In the 2010s, we thought that social media would free the world from corporate media control and misinformation (and leads to shit like Trump). And today we have people who outsource there every thought, question, and task to an AI chat bot.
Now that last one will almost certainly lead to fewer people. Average IQs fluctuate, and are in part dependent on good health and nutrition and the ability to exercise logic and critical thinking. As people outsource more of their critical thinking to a robot, they may very well get dumber. But on the whole, as it is now, we’ve always had smart people and we’ve always had dumb people. You’re bias towards seeing more dumb people is just that, a bias. You’ll see what you’re looking for. But a single point of reference is never going to be a good judge for the whole system.
You are so far mistaken. On the contrary. Do you not realize we are being systematically poisoned? On a thousand levels, but as such several levels come to term here. We need to organize to protect ourselves, because you Dumb motherfuckers Just will not get it will you Question mark Don’t worry I will help you through this
Well you’re certainly helping your own case by demonstrating unintelligent discourse. Denial without cause, assertions without supporting reason or evidence, vague implied claims that can’t be refuted because you didnt give enough detail to understand what you’re even really claiming, a call to action without any actual suggestion of what action to take, personal attacks (apparently using talk-to-text “question mark”), and then your mic drop was “I’ll help you through this” without doing any helping whatsoever. Wow. What a useless comment. Impressive in it’s pointlessness.
apparently using talk-to-text “question mark”)
LMAO has this dude genuinely been yelling into his phone this whole time?
Everyone is dumb as shit now
That wouldn’t implicate fluoride, because not everyone was exposed to it. And the study indicates that fluoride exposure (on a community level, which would take into account soil and food) doesn’t make a difference.
There are huge levels of flouride in some foods, per National Geographic. California raisens are super high for instance.
And I’m not saying flouride is bad, only that I wouldn’t say it’s not bad because of a study and “experts.”
And it’s obviously death by a thousand cuts in the dumb department/low sperm count/90% loss of insects worldwide since the 90’s/crash of the frog populations, et al. Flouride is a bit player. Yet something is affecting our trust center, and it’s not all taxoplasmosis, we are being dosed, coincidentally or no by pollutions. It’s worse than you think.
I wouldn’t say it’s not bad because of a study and “experts.”
While there are always biased studies, the data in this case comes from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, a broad health and social sciences study conducted by the University of Wisconsin that’s been ongoing since 1957. You can access the data yourself here.
Yet there might be limitations in what they’re looking at, changes in Behavior are subtle. And would be missed in such a study would they not? I am not declaring fluoride guilty, I am saying I would not absolve it.
Those kinds of issues would come into play if they were trying to establish a correlation between two things—it’s notoriously hard to eliminate confounding variables, spurious coincidences, etc.
But it’s far more straightforward to establish a lack of correlation, which is what this study does.
They don’t know shit. And if they did they will be stopped. Support big oil and no one gets hurt!
To fight forces like big oil, we need to be able to focus our attention appropriately. Indiscriminately attributing everything to big oil serves their purposes as much as complacency does.
And I’m not saying flouride is bad, only that I wouldn’t say it’s not bad because of a study and “experts.”
So what criteria do you have for thinking a thing is true? Why the quotes around experts?
Because In our society the experts are often the last ones you can trust. They are paid and influenced by Monied interests.
Crossing corporate interests will get one of these experts de expertified. And or they will find something to destroy them with, be it sexual in nature or not.
And all I am saying here is that I would not admit that fluoride does not have an effect on human behavior and or health because of these experts and their studies.
Am I wrong? ( no.)
That’s a whole lotta words to avoid answering a pretty simple question.
What criteria do you have for thinking a thing is true?
That is a whole lot of words to make a gibberish statement on your part. What? Did you have a stroke should I call an ambulance?
trust the establishment
Working at a university is part of the “establishment”? What the fuck does that even mean
I wouldn’t say it’s not bad because of a study and “experts.”
That means you are dumb, the group of them have the collective experience of over 100 years of academic and research work. These people are the literal definition of experts.
Your lack of any actual investigation means that your suspicion is something that the rest of us should not trust.
A study claiming something is safe is not sufficient to determine it is safe, this is the dumbest fucking argument I have had in a long time.
Do you not the fact that you don’t realize that studies are commissioned by Private interests to work backwards From where they want to end up, exposes you For a fool in truth. Now piss off.
study claiming something is safe is not sufficient to determine it is safe, this is the dumbest fucking argument I have had in a long time
Yooo same!
Don’t let several scores of half wits support you here, you are dumb as shit. Sweet dreams.
Yeah I don’t care about studies either when my feelings are telling me otherwise.
You should care about the fact that studies will tell you roundup is safe, atrazine is safe, and the like. My sweet summer child, the system is corrupted. If you don’t know that yet, there is little hope for you.
My honest answer, is to do your own research. To be more specific though, read the article. Then the study the article is based on. Then do a few google searches and read a few related studies. Look for a general consensus. How many studies are there. What methods do they use? Sample sizes?
Basically, validating this stuff requires work and critical thinking. It’s much easier to claim the institutions are corrupt, and that you don’t trust anything they say. Doing that also leaves you with nothing but popular opinion, rumors, and whatever you think sounds about right based on a knee jerk reaction.
How can anyone hold a conversation or argument about it when you look at data and go “no actually I don’t agree because spooky unrelated study on a different thing by a different journal like 10 years ago”
I did not reference any 10-year-old journal. I referenced a lack of faith in these United states.
You can talk your establishment bullshit all you want, all I said was I am not willing to concede the point that it is safe because of a study commissioned by someone.
Were you born yesterday? Or do you just not understand the world we live in? The answer is obviously the latter. Go back To sleep
I was referring to the (retracted) study by monsanto, saying Roundup was safe. I was actually underestimating though, the study was from 2000, so the study you referred to in terms of roundup is actually from 26 years ago :)
Though there was a study in 2019 bringing up a lot of the concerns, and I think that might be the one I was thinking of. https://www.washington.edu/news/2019/02/13/uw-study-exposure-to-chemical-in-roundup-increases-risk-for-cancer/
Also, just in case you were serious, hard to tell, I wasn’t born yesterday. I’d have a hard time typing if so.
I’m sorry, you are pro roundup? Wtf? Holyfuck, is lemmy nazi? Fuck you.
The trick here is to look at who is funding it and if the methods are correct. If it’s independent and competently done, it’s probably correct
“the system” doesn’t mean scientists are corrupt, it means your politicians are.
Are you for real? Do you not realize mercenary scientific outfits take jobs with the understanding of working backwards from the position their funders want them to be that’s and engineer those studies to come to that conclusion, which is in turn taken up by lobbyists and politicians and all that bullshit. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. The fact that you don’t realize this at this point, frankly it’s just fucking depressing. We are fucked because you are fucking, ahem, not so enlightened.
Dumbass
I think the top of the post you replied to is speaking out of hard earned personal wisdom. /S
Do you not realize mercenary scientific outfits take jobs with the understanding of working backwards from the position their funders want them to be that’s and engineer those studies to come to that conclusion, which is in turn taken up by lobbyists and politicians and all that bullshit
Source?
Those things are safe, kiddo. We use this thing called evidence to determine that.
You either need more drugs or less drugs. Whatever level you’re at now is not working.
First of all, the answer is always more and better drugs. That you don’t know that indicts your understanding!
Second of all, you have no idea what you are defending, you trust the establishment and follow their lead. I would argue at this point to not question what you are told by the experts exposes you for a fool.
I guess that answers that question.
Oh rather, and accepting what you are told without question is such a display of intelligence by the way! We’ve all seen how trustworthy the experts are, to not trust them, ha, right? GTFO. I don’t care how many half wits vote with you because they think they are right on this issue, you are, how can I not be offensive, a sheep. A particularly dumb one trusting your shepard to lead you to safety when you are heading to the slaughterhouse.
Nobody here is listening to you without question. That’s what bothers you.
Yeah what do the experts know?
That is a good point, they know who pays them and who can take their living away from them. What were you fucking born yesterday? That last sentence was delivered in a yell.
I agree with you.
In a world of sheep be a Steve Jobs.
Please explain the chemical process that results in “fluoride crystallizing in the decision making part of the brain”.
Everyone is dumb as shit now
A couple of the dumbest people I know believe that fluoride is bad for you
So you don’t respond with any intellectual points but, that some dumb people think that so obviously the opposite is true. Yet dumb people also think what you think. So piss off, your argument Falls flat outside of this Echo chamber of fucking sheep.
you have to have some intellectual points to respond with intellectual points. Human beings if baseline inteligence was less can certainly do the scientific method properly. Its a procudure and does not require hawking level intellect to work with. The studies do not require any new field of math or such. You points he was resbonding to where your feelings. you feel baseline intellect is degraded (which if it was would not give a feel for the intellect of the average scientist), you freel something is going one. you would not absolve flouride based on your feelings.
No wonder why we are fucking losing. I had a stroke reading this, but words to text I understand. I did not find an actual point in this entire post. Don’t let any score of half wits convince you you have a good argument here, that we should trust the experts because they regurgitated the study to us. Really? Were you born yesterday? Jesus fucking christ, you guys are redacted.
That’s a correlation, not a causation. It’s infinitely more likely it’s the mass propaganda outlets that have only gotten more effective. Especially with the advent of algorithms and the brainwashing brick.
The one does not preclude the other, it in fact amplifies it. Mark my words, we are being systematically poisoned in multiple ways, be flouride one of them or no, and the fact you would argue against that at this point would lead me to classify you as a sheep, a particularly ill informed one at that.
“even if what I’m saying is factually incorrect I’m still right and you’re still wrong.”
Incredible, thank you for distilling your world view for us
Acknowledging a lack of certainty as you do exposes you. Don’t let a few score half wits convince you otherwise. You are ignorant, not engaging on issues, just following the lead of an establishment that has lied to us every step of the way for our entire lives, progressively getting worse.
I have an exciting investment opportunity for you by the way, because I see how intelligent you are! Ha ha.
No it doesn’t. I think the fact that they’ve looked long term for links and found none does male a song argument however. Yes we are being poisoned in multiple ways. But we can generally prove them.
Just DM’d to me from this fuckin guy:
The fact you shut down any questioning of if it’s ok to put this in our water, speaks a lot. You trust the establishment, I get it. Ha ha. How are t hose endocrine disrupgtors going for you? Which is to say, you are a fool.
That’s just what they want you to think.
/s
But having healthy teeth will prolong your life statistically so…
Alternative headline: Science disproves well known conspiracy theory again; conspiracy theorists deny evidence.
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’ve added so many “Conspiracy Theorist” tags to users thanks to these posts…
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.
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.
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.
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.
you can’t be sure you won’t get unexpected results
What about autoimmune diseases and inflammation? It looks like there might be a link, but they haven’t studied it enough.
Maybe, but the study you linked is specifically studying people who get way more than the highest recommended amount of fluoride and have fluorosis
SOME of the evidence was from way more than what humans get. Also, let’s not get all gloaty and dismiss all questions about flouride’s safety just yet. Science is a process.
Based on the body surface area of humans and animals, and considering the metabolism and absorption of fluoride in rats, according to calculations, the WHO’s safety threshold for fluoride intake from drinking water (1.5 mg/L) corresponds to a fluoride concentration of 10 mg/L in the drinking water of rats. After 1 week of acclimatization, the 150 rats were randomly assigned to 5 groups (n = 30) and provided with drinking water containing 0, 10, 25, 50, or 100 mg/L of fluoride. Although 50 and 100 mg/L are not equivalent to the doses humans are exposed to in natural environments, they are commonly used in animal models of fluorosis and have been widely demonstrated to be robust in rat models of fluorosis [35,36,37]. According to the exposure mode and time of fluoride, it can be divided into three modes: fluoride treatment for 12 weeks (12 w), fluoride treatment for 24 weeks (24 w), and fluoride treatment for 12 weeks and 12 weeks of improve water(12 w12 wi) (Table S1). Rats were euthanized with isoflurane anesthesia at the end of the breeding period.
Dose matters.
Warfarin is a old anti-blood clotting drug that has saved millions of lives…but you can also buy warfarin at Home Depot to kill rats.
The dose is the poison.
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.
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.
Bro, I eat half a tube of toothpaste a day for the health benefits. Have been doing that since I was 8.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No shit says majority
