Fluoride in tap water

Ben84

BernardM wrote: »

Actually its contaminated or poisoned. Not just by Fluoride.
Our whole planet is contaminated by thousands of man made chemicals that have never been properly researched before being exposed to us.

Here in the UK we drink some of the cleanest tap water in the world, and it brings with it huge benefits to human health. There are extensive restrictions and quality controls regarding tap water and the materials used to pipe it to our houses, and they have been getting tighter.

I realise there are issues with water quality around the world, very serious issues, but not here in the UK or most of Europe.

Cardelia

BernardM wrote: »

What a poor argument that is. Not everyone eats refined bread. Why boycott a food that is having back some of the nutrients that were lost through refining in the first place.

It's not just "refined" bread though. It's ALL bread. Most people in this country eat bread of some kind. Anyway, that's slightly away from the point which is that the additives are added to flour. Any flour which is sold in this country has to meet minimum nutritional standards as laid down in law. If that involves adding artificial nutrients to top up what is already there then that's what flour producers have to do. So it's not just bread, it's any flour-containing product: cakes, pizza, doughnuts, pies etc. etc.

BernardM

Ben84 wrote: »

This situation has been taken far out of context. Fluoride is not banned in Belgium and never has been. Nor was it ever proposed. You can still quite easily buy toothpastes and mouthwashes containing it in shops there. They never said or believed fluoride is bad for you, they were concerned that excessive use of fluoride tablets and chewing gum could have health problems.

To put it in perspective, across Europe there are also various restrictions on things like the salt content of foods. However, nobody is trying to dress these up as a 'salt ban' or use them to say that salt is bad for you when consumed in sensible amounts.

I'm not even convinced that Belgium were on to anything anyway. Their findings did not fit in well with the general scientific opinion. These products have been tested and approved for sale everywhere else. However, I did agree with them at the time. High concentrations of fluoride in chewing gum and tablets could, unlike tap water, cause someone to go over the recommended daily limit regularly. I would like to mention, to keep this in context however, that everything we consume has a limit past which the effect becomes negative. Even vitamins. This situation is not specific or special to fluoride because it's 'toxic' or 'poisonous'.

To quote the Belgian health minister in the BBC article linked from that page "These products are used excessively and often abused." Many products have been pulled because they were abused in some way. A number of cold/flu products in the UK were banned because people were extracting recreational drugs from them. I don't think the misuse of a product should reflect badly on the product if it was not sold to be used in that manner.

Anyway, despite being often repeated, the claim that fluoride is or has been a restricted substance in any country is fiction. Belgium banning a couple of products that they believed were being misused and abused does not really support the idea that fluoride is bad for you either. If that's what they believed and the message they were trying to present then the myriad of other fluoride containing products available in Belgium would have also been banned.

http://www.fluoridation.com/c-country.htm

Ben84

BernardM wrote: »

http://www.fluoridation.com/c-country.htm

Fluoride is not banned or restricted in any of these countries. You can easily buy fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash in all of them. Many of the letters support this point by saying you can buy these products.

I also find it unfortunate that we do not get to see the original letter sent to each organisation, just their reply. In the case of the letter from Austria and the letter from Denmark, I wonder why they both used the phrase "toxic fluorides", did they pick this exact phrase themselves by pure coincidence or were they using it because the original letter asked if they added "toxic fluorides" to the water.

Anyway, none of this proves fluoride is dangerous and the fact that it remains readily available in dental care products in all of these countries who are being used as examples here says more than I can about their conclusions on this subject. If all these countries believe fluoride is dangerous why is it still in their dental products and as far as I know has never even been challenged as an ingredient?

BernardM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ys9q1cvKGk

tbs624

Cardelia wrote: »

It's not just "refined" bread though. It's ALL bread. Most people in this country eat bread of some kind. Anyway, that's slightly away from the point which is that the additives are added to flour. Any flour which is sold in this country has to meet minimum nutritional standards as laid down in law. If that involves adding artificial nutrients to top up what is already there then that's what flour producers have to do. So it's not just bread, it's any flour-containing product: cakes, pizza, doughnuts, pies etc. etc.

You may want to check again Cardelia - AFIAA it is only white & “brown” flour that has those additives and, as Bernard says, its about replacing what has been taken out by the processing of the flour. Wholemeal flour does not have those additives - those vitamins are naturally present in wholemeal flour but are removed by the flour producer’s manufacturing processes and then get put back in for the non-wholemeal types.

The analogy is further flawed because there is no such thing as a fluoride deficiency - fluoride is not a vitamin or a nutrient and no-one has ever become ill due to a lack of fluoride. Any dental decay problems are due to frequent sugar consumption and poor dental hygiene rather than any “lack” of fluoride in the water supply.

Your flour & other foodstuffs argument is an entirely different scenario from adding fluorosilicic acid to the water , not least because you can live without consuming processed flour products (& you can also manage without eating margarine, which is pretty disgusting stuff altogether). Water is such a very basic commodity, you clearly cannot live without it and the supply of it should be left unadulterated by artificial fluoridation schemes.

tbs624

Ben84 wrote: »

..........the fact that it remains readily available in dental care products in all of these countries who are being used as examples here says more than I can about their conclusions on this subject. If all these countries believe fluoride is dangerous why is it still in their dental products and as far as I know has never even been challenged as an ingredient?

The fluoride in dental products is sodium fluoride, its application is topical (which the studies say is effective for those who can’t keep off the sugar or be bothered to clean their own/their kids teeth) and it carries very clear warnings about not swallowing the stuff and especially not allowing very young kids to do so. There are plenty of studies on the both views on the effects of sodium fluoride.

An additional point is that there are, of course, plenty of non-fluoride products available for those who don’t want or need fluoride. Slap flurosilicic acid in the drinking water as a one-size-fits-all dose, irrespective of our individual dental/medical health status or fluoride intake from elsewhere, and there is no such choice.

Tooth decay is not life threatening, it is not infectious - it is caused quite simply by frequent consumption of too much sugary processed rubbish, a lack of dental hygiene and a failure to get along to a dentist a couple of times a year. It can be addressed by using targeted measures for those who want and/or need it.

If my kids or I were lardy ( along with a proportion of the rest of the population) through eating too many of Cardelia’s poisonous white flour doughnuts & pies or frequent piles of greasy chips etc, I wouldn’t expect the rest of the nation to have to have a standard dose of Orlistat via their drinking water . This is no different - the suggestion is that we should all have to ingest fluoride via the water supply because some people feed their kids blackcurrant juice in a bottle or they eat too many sweets and guzzle too much fizzy pop, and their parents won’t get them along to a dentist or supervise their toothbrushing?

Apparently, chlamydia is on the rise too, perhaps we should pop something in the water to sort that out too? Alcoholism, what about that - all those teenage binge drinkers - they’re kids whose health needs protecting too aren’t they? Statins - now they’re apparently good for everybody over 50 but I reckon if the pharma companies try hard enough they could come up with a few “unbiased” studies that show everyone would benefit from dropping some of those in to the water supply. There are still people who smoke, so perhaps we could treat that too - a sort of nicotinell in the water?

You may personally be a toothless, anorexic, celibate, teetotal non smoker with low blood cholesterol, but surely you won’t mind if any of these are a cheap way of attempting to sort things out for other people because they or their families can’t/won’t do it for themselves and the NHS is poorly run and poorly funded? Got a couple of health problems of your own that may be affected? Tough, because some quango somewhere has decided its for the "greater good"


Adding fluoride to everyone’s drinking water to deal with a minority health problem that is preventable/treatable by other targeted measures is inequitable. Even if everyone was provided with a reverse osmosis water filter for their homes, we would all still have any processed food that we bought cooked in fluoridated water; restaurants, hospitals, schools etc would all be using it; we’ll be watering our home grown fruits & veg with fluoridated water ( & bought fruit & veg will also have other phosphate industry contaminants).

There’d be no way of getting away from it and to add insult to injury we all still have to pay our water bills.

tbs624

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http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/Huge-health-risk-in-Limerick.4730866.jp[/FONT]

Ben84

The purpose of my post was that the site tried to present fluoride as a banned or restricted substance, which it clearly is not as it's still available in many products, and these uses have not been questioned. On these grounds I don't believe these countries consider fluoride dangerous, as implied, and that the site's claims are exaggerated and misleading.

Also, fluoride has nothing to do with sugar consumption, lifestyle or diet. It is effective at reducing tooth decay regardless of all these factors. The suggestion that the tap water is being 'mass medicated' to stop dental decay in families who eat rubbish and drink nothing but fizzy drinks is a negative image created for the sake of a negative image, and I feel plays more on social stereotypes than real logic.

As for 'different types of fluoride', this claim has been repeatedly questioned in previous posts, which counter claim that fluoride dissociates in to ions and they're all the same regardless of the compound used. As I have stated before, artificial fluoride is no different to fluoride that naturally occurs. In fact, all the resulting ions are identical to those naturally present. These posts are extensive, and certainly not easily missed. However, so far none of the anti-fluoride contributors have made any attempt to respond to these claims, and still continue to repeat that there are different types of fluoride.

I feel that when a claim is questioned and criticised this significantly, people who continue using it should attempt to answer the criticisms in some form. They clearly have a reason for not believing them, so why not share the reasoning? The lack of any direct response has led me, although perhaps unfairly to wonder if they haven't even investigated the claims, or that they didn't understand the science behind them.

geordie_joe

tbs624 wrote: »

The fluoride in dental products is sodium fluoride, its application is topical (which the studies say is effective for those who can’t keep off the sugar or be bothered to clean their own/their kids teeth)

How can putting fluoride into tooth paste be effective for those who can't be bothered to clean their teeth?

Can I have a job making up these studies?

I'm sure I could make up a study that shows putting disinfectant in soap is effective for those who can't be bothered to wash their hands after going to the toilet.