- cross-posted to:
- health@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- health@lemmy.world
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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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
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.
…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.
But IQ DOES have a long term effect on fluoridation!
Utah is proof of this.
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.
No measurable effect, no.
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.
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.
IQ research is boring, does it calcify pineal gland or the third eye or whatever the legend is. That’s a more practical control method than stupidification
Yeah, the pineal gland doesn’t seem to have anything to do with IQ or cognition in the first place. It deals with melatonin and sex hormones.
The internal secretions of the pineal gland are known to inhibit the development of the reproductive glands because when it is severely damaged in children, development of the sexual organs and the skeleton are accelerated.
Calcification rates vary widely by country and correlate with an increase in age, with calcification occurring in an estimated 40% of Americans by age seventeen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland#Calcification
I’d like to see relevant factors beside cognition considered, like development.
Nothing more than conjecture so take it with a massive grain of
saltbrain sand, but if the gland not functioning leads to a speedup in the development of sexual organs, I’m curious if it could be one of the factors involved in the age of puberty declining. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6378593/)It’s good this study exists nonetheless. Nothing amiss from what I’ve read, so I trust the conclusions.
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.
This is very much incorrect, it was started off by environmental activists in the 1950s as a push back to dumping aluminum mining waste into drinking water while charging the tax payer for the right to do so
Not to any meaningful degree in the US. It was the John Birch Society and KKK here.
This is objectively false history as neither were particularly popular in Wisconsin in the 1950s.
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.
They existed, in the US south, underground and still using fronts like the Daughters of the confederacy.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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
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.
Try telling that to a generation of anti-science troglodytes who believe some rando chiropractor on YouTube over FUCKING SCIENCE.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
i feel like if you drew a venn diagram containing people who complain about fluoride in the water and people who argue we should bring back leaded gasoline, it would just be a circle. making this study particularly hilarious
who argues that? I haven’t seen that.
And what is their reason? that it would be cheaper?
Not recently but last I heard it was from boomers that are mad kids aren’t drinking out of hoses and riding bikes on the roads.
Any changes for safety, they presume, make us weak.
I see kids riding bikes on the roads and drinking from hoses, and I live in a major city.
I see bikes too, less numbers. Haven’t seen hose drinkers in a long time. Just had a conversation with my youngest today that we didn’t carry water bottles in school when I was young, we just used water fountains.
he was appalled :)
Are these groups of people in the room with you right now? Who’s asking for leaded mogas back? Or do you mean stuff like avgas 100LL? No one really wants that either, other than the last owners of planes that don’t work with unleaded…
Doubly so when you remember that the people worried about fluoride affecting their brain function haven’t ever demonstrated that they possess a functioning brain.
The worst it does is put spots on your (cavity-resisting) teeth.
You need a lot of fluoride for that to happen.
But having healthy teeth will prolong your life statistically so…
I didn’t think it would but I still don’t want it in my water.
I want flouride toothpaste, flouride rinses and free teeth care for children though.
I still don’t want it in my water
Why?
If you buy spring water do you check the fluoride content to make sure it’s below a certain threshold? Magnesium, Calcium, Potassium?
All that lead we still spew into the atmosphere does though.
