[amazingamazing]

> reducing cavities is a net benefit to public health like sanitation departments

what is the connection between reducing cavities and sanitation departments? cavities are not communicable.

Also, the paper you linked is my point. there's no actual benefit of ingestion. the effect is purely incidental. it's more effective to apply fluoride to the teeth. nowhere does it actually explain that drinking it is what is beneficial. the difference in the incidence of caries is because by fluoridating the water it obviously will touch teeth, which has well known positive effects.

the main conclusion of the paper is what everyone should hopefully know already - brush your teeth regularly with fluoride toothpaste.

out of curiosity, would you be OK with vitamins being added to the water? most people are deficient in many.

[pjc50]

> would you be OK with vitamins being added to the water?

Provided there's reasonable scientific evidence that this is fine and effective and not expensive, I don't see why not. I don't think I've ever seen it proposed.

[amazingamazing]

that is good to know. fundamentally we'll have to agree to disagree. I do not agree with experimentation with the populace's water supply as a matter of principal. fyi there's already plenty of evidence that supplements are useful for those that are sufficient. of course the main counter argument is that if you're eating a balanced diet supplements are unnecessary (which is true). though that's just about as helpful as saying water fluoridation is unnecessary because you can brush your teeth (which is also true).

[ndsipa_pomu]

Whilst I can see your point of view, I think that fluoride in water is an issue that provoked knee-jerk reactions.

Here in the UK, there's areas with and without fluoridisation - the reason being that naturally the water in different areas has different fluoride concentrations with some areas having no need for adding fluoride as it's already there. The benefits were very easy to determine as (presumably) cavities were more common in those areas with low fluoride content, so it's less about experimentation and more about ensuring that more people can gain the same benefit.

[kelipso]

There’s a left-right split on the issue in America, which leads to a lot of specious and lazy reasoning, breaking away from typical impulses to have clean unpolluted tap water, etc.

[jjeaff]

if the natural water supply has fluoride in it, wouldn't removing the fluoride be akin to "experimenting" with the populace?

[kelipso]

Natural water supply has feces, bacteria, etc too. Civilization has progressed because we have managed to remove them from the water and provide clean water to the masses.

[Tadpole9181]

So what you're saying is that, as educated humans with access to decades of scientific research, we can use that research to make decisions about treatment plans for water to keep our population healthy?

[areyourllySorry]

some people need fluoride. nobody needs e coli.

[fc417fc802]

They're already added to many staple foods, at least in the US. Pretty similar in my view.