Fluoride in tap water

moonrakerz

tbs624 wrote: »

Moornraker perhaps likes to make a statement on a public board but doesn’t welcome anyone else commenting?

Oh dear ! If you are trying to keep this going, at least have the courtesy to spell my "name" correctly.

meekgeek

moonrakerz wrote: »

Personally, I would rather not see Fluoride added to the drinking water (or Folic acid to flour, etc, etc), but as some areas do actually have naturally occurring levels higher than the "added dose" and as these areas still seem to have a healthy population, I don't really see that it can do much harm. I will not be rioting in the streets over this !

Absence of evidence to the contrary does not make something safe. At some point in human history we assumed it was safe to smoke tobacco because smokers seemed to be healthy enough and look how that turned out.

Not fighting action by the government against the masses when you believe it to be harmful is foolhardy indeed.

saying you don't want it but you're not going to act, shows complete lack of moral fibre.

I despair.

Cardelia

tbs624 wrote: »

But they will make an exception to that behaviour, becoming suddenly & unaccountably compliant, and drink the fluoridated tap water as they're told to won't they?

Nobody is telling kids to drink tap water though. There's nothing to 'rebel' against. It's tap water, it's just there.

More on mass medication - British law currently requires additives in bread (niacin, thiamine, iron and calcium) and additives in salt (iodine). Any comments from the pro-choice brigade? Or does the fact that it's been occurring since WW2 make it ok?

Cardelia

I also meant to get round to this but ran out of time last night:

tbs624 wrote: »

I can’t agree with your assertion that its safety and effectiveness have been proved beyond doubt

Ok, so I went and had a brief look for reviews of the scientific literature to see what the research looks like. Unfortunately I won't have access to the full articles for a couple of weeks but the abstracts are usually a good summary and they're free. Public libraries might have subscriptions if you want to read more. On the subject of the effectiveness of fluoride:

In Evidence Based Dentistry I found one review from last year:

C. Albert Yeung, Evidence Based Dentistry (2007) vol. 8, pp 5–6.

Which commented on an article also published in 2007:

S. O. Griffin, E. Regnier, P. M. Griffin and V. Huntley, J Dent. Res. 2007, vol. 86 (issue 5), pp 410-5

Both reviews indicate that the medical literature supports the idea that fluoride is beneficial to human beings of all ages:

Among studies published after/during 1980, any fluoride (self- and professionally applied or water fluoridation) annually averted 0.29 (95%CI: 0.16-0.42) carious coronal and 0.22 (95%CI: 0.08-0.37) carious root surfaces. The prevented fraction for water fluoridation was 27% (95%CI: 19%-34%). These findings suggest that fluoride prevents caries among adults of all ages.

So, it looks like water fluoridation is also beneficial to human beings of all ages.

Bear in mind these are reviews of the literature, not single studies in their own right, so the author(s) have looked at all the published studies which are out there and they show that overall, water fluoridation has a beneficial effect on health.

I'll have a look for reviews on the safety of fluoride now, lets see what that comes up with.

meekgeek

The problem, as I see it, is that the kids that need(?) flouride to protect their growing teeth, (the ones from poorly educated and poor families) are the least likely to drink tap water, and the most likely to be drinking fizzy drinks instead.

Mass medication, by additives to Bread and Salt, is still wrong, but by choice I can avoid that. How can I avoid flouride in my water? is it fair to take that choice away from me?

Just because there's one accepted wrong, doesn't mean it's right.


Maybe I need to read more of this thread, to work out which side you're on, or maybe we should all wear badges?

meekgeek

Idly googling for more information I turned this up:

"Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, called for fluoride to be added to more areas of England’s water supply, to prevent dental decay. In passing, he acknowledged that, for all the benefits of fluoride, too much can lead to a permanent discolouring of the teeth, called dental fluorosis. But only, he said, when children “ate toothpaste”.

Toothpaste causing bad teeth? It seems illogical, particularly since dentists so fervently urge us to use it. But many parents are unaware of the potential risks of letting children under 7 swallow fluoride toothpaste, especially in fluoridated areas, where they are already receiving a background dose of the chemical.

They might also not know that dental fluorosis appears to be on the rise, according to government-backed research from the University of York. This indicated that, while increasing use of fluoride toothpastes has cut the average number of decayed teeth per child from nine to two in 20 years, 48 per cent of children in areas of fluoridated water, and 15 per cent in nonfluoridated areas, show some traces of fluorosis."
http://women.timesonline.co.uk

so would we agree that persistent and indiscriminate dosage is likely to lead to fewer cavities and more discolouration?

Cardelia

There appears to be less literature on the safety of fluoride, especially at low concentrations (ca. 1 ppm). I did find this review:

M. Giachini and F. Pierleoni, Minerva Stomatol. 2004, vol. 53 (issue 4), pp 171-7.

which lists all the nasty effects that fluoride has, yet goes on to say this is only applicable at high fluoride concentrations. It says at the bottom:

At encephalic level, then, high doses of fluorine cause the onset of neurological symptoms and of a decreased spontaneous motor activity due to a reduction in the number of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Nevertheless, epidemiological studies about fluoride toxicity have established that such oligoelement may be safely used at odontoiatric dosages.

So at low concentrations it's ok. But as per the other post, I don't have access to the full text (which is in Italian at any rate) so I don't know what sources they cite for their conclusion.

So, fluorosis. Globally, it's on the up. This review:

A. Khan, M.H. Moola and P. Cleaton-Jones, SADJ 2005, vol. 60 (issue 10), pp 418-21

suggests that since the 1940s, fluorosis has increased 16-fold in areas of low fluoride concentration, whereas in areas of high fluoride concentration fluorosis has only increased 2-fold. It's still an increase but it's not possible to attribute it to fluoridation of water supplies because there are so obviously other factors at work.

There's also the Government-backed University of York study which showed that fluoride had no beneficial nor detrimental effects. Other literature disagrees on the beneficial effects, but I'm not finding much which disagrees on the detrimental effects.

Certain areas of the country have high natural levels of fluoride in the water and other areas have had fluoride added for the best part of 50 years. That's more than long enough to carry out studies on the long-term effects of fluoride, but there's no data coming out which suggests it's bad.

So as I understand it, the balance of opinion in the literature is leaning towards the idea that there are no detrimental side effects through water fluoridation, yet the evidence is not strong enough to draw firm conclusions.

Cardelia

meekgeek wrote: »

Mass medication, by additives to Bread and Salt, is still wrong, but by choice I can avoid that. How can I avoid flouride in my water? is it fair to take that choice away from me?

There are two alternatives. 1) Install a water purification system which will remove the vast majority (though not all) of the fluoride in your water supply. 2) Drink bottled water. Although some bottled waters have added fluoride so you'd need to read the label carefully.

Anyway, as I said further up the thread, water naturally contains a certain amount of fluoride (it varies area by area) so you're already drinking the stuff, probably just in a slightly lower concentration than you would be if your water was artificially fluoridated.

jinnan_tonix: I came across the legal definition of a medication whilst doing the research for the above post:

The legal definition of a medicinal product in the European Union (Codified Pharmaceutical Directive 2004/27/EC, Article 1.2) is any substance or combination of substances “presented as having properties for treating or preventing disease in human beings” or “which may be used in or administered to human beings either with a view to restoring, correcting or modifying physiological functions by exerting a pharmacological, immunological or metabolic action.

The emphasis is mine, but it goes to show that chlorine does count as a medication due to its use as a water sterilisation agent - it prevents water-borne diseases from manifesting in humans.

meekgeek

Cardelia wrote: »

There are two alternatives. 1) Install a water purification system which will remove the vast majority (though not all) of the fluoride in your water supply. 2) Drink bottled water. Although some bottled waters have added fluoride so you'd need to read the label carefully.

Why should I?

I don't want to bathe in the stuff either. Why do we have to have this in our water supply? Why can't it be applied topically where needed? Leave it in the toothpaste, so I can choose not to ingest it.

geordie_joe

meekgeek wrote: »

Absence of evidence to the contrary does not make something safe.

Nor does it make something unsafe.

meekgeek wrote: »

At some point in human history we assumed it was safe to smoke tobacco because smokers seemed to be healthy enough and look how that turned out.

Yep, it turned out that a lot of scientists were wrong. Funny how all of them are right now, but when now becomes the past they say "Ok, I was wrong then, but I'm right now, honest"

meekgeek wrote: »

Not fighting action by the government against the masses when you believe it to be harmful is foolhardy indeed.

Yes but you have to believe it is harmful

meekgeek wrote: »

saying you don't want it but you're not going to act, shows complete lack of moral fibre.
I despair.

No it shows it's too far down the priority list to spare time on. You can't fight everything, so you choose which are worth the bother and which aren't.

Personally I don't care one way or the other. I drank the stuff for decades and know it doesn't do any harm. If they put it in all the water my opinion will be, ok, it might do somebody some good.

It's got b*gger all to do with personal choice and mass medication. We all live with not having a choice for some things, it doesn't kill us. As for mass medication, I lived through times when every school kid got more jabs that holidays. None of us were ever given a choice, we were just put in a queue and told to roll our right sleeve up. When you got to the front of the queue some nurse jabbed you with a needle and another shoved you out the way to make room for the next one. We were never given a choice.