Rutland resident Jack Crowther has been a longtime critic.

“You’re putting a drug, a medicine, in our water to treat tooth decay without the informed consent of the people,” Crowther said.

"Mandrake, have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?" strangelove-wow


"THEY'RE PUTTING MEDICINE IN THE WATER!" frothingfash


Also related, a Richmond, VT waterworks employee secretly lowered fluoride levels in the town's drinking supply for a decade.

EDIT: I should've updated this a month ago, but the town voted to keep fluoride.

  • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    too bad we don't know how much water people drink & can't calibrate relative to that. one of life's great mysteries

    Some people are sweating in the sun and drinking lots of water to replace it; some people are hydrating almost exclusively with bottled sparkling water. There is actually great variation among how much tap water people drink. You know how some people are getting iodine deficiency even though we supplement table salt, because they're using sea salt for all their home cooking?

    Not to say that fluoridated water isn't better than nothing. But I don't see how it can give everyone a perfect dose.

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      5 months ago

      you don't need a perfect dose, just less than would give people fluorosis, which is a fucking lot--people usually get it from eating toothpaste which has a concentration 1.000 times that of the recommended amount in water

      • oregoncom [he/him]
        ·
        5 months ago

        And what do people who do get fluorosis do. Not drink water ever? Only bathe and drink distilled water from the store?

          • oregoncom [he/him]
            ·
            5 months ago

            Industrial exposure. If you drink a shit ton of instant tea packets at once you can also get it. Some places have naturally high fluoride levels and in those places fluorosis is a legitimate public health issue.

        • Dolores [love/loves]
          ·
          5 months ago

          yeah fluorosis is a medical condition, someone might need to do special things during treatment, what a wild proposition. but you don't absorb fluoride through skin so the bathing will be fine lol

        • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          5 months ago

          You're in a forum filled with Socialists and Communists. We support the greater good and government services that help everyone. This is one of those services.

          I don't care that five people have some rare condition that makes it hard for them to drink tap water if the tap water being treated is helping literally hundreds of millions of kids have healthy teeth! We can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good!

          I'm also not going to call for banning trains just because some kid is in therapy for locomophobia.

          Pick a better hill to die on.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
      ·
      5 months ago

      The amount of fluoride it requires to do any damage is astronomically high and it being in water means you will piss it out too fast for it to be an issue. So you're safe from too high of a dose. If you're not eating ionized salt and also are somehow not getting any dietary iodine elsewhere, that's weird and you can tske supplements, same with fluoride. If you don't drink tap water it means you're paying for your water which means you brush your teeth often anyway.