1905
Yeah, well...
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
1905 points (99.1% liked)
Memes
45197 readers
2215 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Fluoride might be sufficiently safe in the drinking water and it's slightly effective but you know what would actually help? Dental hygiene. Fluoride in a form that actually stays with the teeth for more than a split second and has a chance to soak in instead of being drunk, i.e. toothpaste. Fluor in tap water is an absolute stop-gap measure introduced by a country which can't be arsed to have universal healthcare, they apparently can't even be arsed to have a campaign to get people to brush their fucking teeth.
Stop-gap measure like the Teletubbies. No, wait, hear me out: The whole thing is a very scientific, and successful, way to teach basic language skills to toddlers parked in front of the TV. It does the maximum possible in the situation but the results are still worse than plain old interactions with actual people.
Fluoride is more than slightly effective. It's the most sucessful public health project in history. It's saved millions of lives, is cheap AF, and is completely trivial to distribute.
The human body can't turn dietary fluoride into harder enamel, it has to stay on the teeth, topically, for a while to soak in. As such drinking water is a suboptimal way of going about applying it to teeth. Fluoride in toothpaste is highly effective. Dentists applying highly-concentrated fluoride stuff directly to your teeth even more. In people who actually get their teeth made resilient by such measures fluoridated drinking water has exactly zero impact as the teeth can't get more resilient, in people who don't, well, it's something, a little step. There's a reason Europe isn't fluoridating drinking water: We don't have huge segments of the population falling through the gaps of the health system.
And if you were Brasil or India that would make sense. The US, OTOH, does not have an excuse when it comes to stingy with more effective measures: You have the resources to do better.
The benefits were overstated but isn't "unsafe" the way our tinfoil-chapeaued comrade wants us to believe