It is a scenario playing out nationwide. From Oregon to Pennsylvania, hundreds of communities have in recent years either stopped adding fluoride to their water supplies or voted to prevent its addition. Supporters of such bans argue that people should be given the freedom of choice. The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing the mineral makes it no longer necessary to add to public water supplies, they say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while store-bought products reduce tooth decay, the greatest protection comes when they are used in combination with water fluoridation.

The outcome of an ongoing federal case in California could force the Environmental Protection Agency to create a rule regulating or banning the use of fluoride in drinking water nationwide. In the meantime, the trend is raising alarm bells for public health researchers who worry that, much like vaccines, fluoride may have become a victim of its own success.

The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom drinking water may be the only source of preventive dental care.

“If you have to go out and get care on your own, it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Myron Allukian Jr., a dentist and past president of the American Public Health Association. Millions of people have lived with fluoridated water for years, “and we’ve had no major health problems,” he said. “It’s much easier to prevent a disease than to treat it.”

According to the anti-fluoride group Fluoride Action Network, since 2010, over 240 communities around the world have removed fluoride from their drinking water or decided not to add it.

  • @theneverfox
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    2 months ago

    Floride is an element. What we use in toothpaste isn’t nearly the same as the industrial byproducts dumped in the drinking water

    Edit: I was half asleep when I posted this, fluorine is the element, floride refers to salts with ionized fluorine in them. The stuff in toothpaste and the dentist’s office is sodium fluoride

    What is added to drinking water is hydrogen floride mixed with God knows what else, because it’s an industrial byproduct with lax restrictions.

    Most of Europe and Japan don’t use this, and despite having great data to do statistics on, there’s little evidence it’s doing anything for dental health

    This wasn’t science that led to public health policy, this was a solution to a business problem and a PR campaign

      • @JustAnotherRando@lemmy.world
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        102 months ago

        They are, in fact, wrong. Fluorine is an element, Fluoride is a common ion of Fluorine. And it being “an industrial by-product” makes no difference (other than whether it was purified/separated - which it is, they aren’t just dumping waste into the drinking supply), it is, in fact, the same stuff put in our toothpaste.

        • @Squidigital@lemmy.ml
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          -12 months ago

          You are assuming I believe the stuff they put in our toothpaste is safe. If the government cared about your teeth they would outlaw added sugar. Lol lick boot heel pleb!