Matt Bors for May 29, 2013

Cripes. What next — banning vaccination?

Fluoride lowers IQ and does little if anything for teeth. If you want healthy teeth you need a nutrient-dense diet of foods that “coincidentally” aren’t heavily subsidized by the government. Read Weston A. Price. Don’t let them give you mercury dental fillings either.

A local city stopped putting fluoride in the water several years ago. then when election time came around, 3 of the 4 who voted to ban fluoride were voted out, replaced by commissioners who were for(?) Nobody knows, they just put the fluoride back.

This strip should bring out the anti-science kooks in droves. Ima is babbling, but that is only normal. I see a new one, Alan Legath, who doesn’t even know how to spell “fluoride,” but seems capable of mindlessly repeating wackaloon talking points. Bring on the anti-vaxxers, the creationists, the holocaust deniers and the conspiracy crazies!

motivemagus: There are powerful forces in Pakistan doing just that over polio vaccine.

Hello Neighbors,I prefer my dental chemicals to be in my toothpaste and/or mouthwash. Fluoride in the water has supporters and detractors, but just as I want to know what chemicals are involved in fracking for gas, I also want to know more about the negatives of fluoride. Lacking sources I can definitely trust, I would vote to ban the product and err on the side of safety.Respectfully,C.

Such as? I’m not talking about antibiotics or the like, which are helping evolve “superbugs,” I’m talking about vaccines, which properly speaking only spur the body’s own immune system. Not sure how that could be a problem unless you have a very specific reaction or sensitivity to a given vaccine.

The form of fluoride that is put into municipal drinking water is not the form that is, in small amounts, beneficial to health. It is industrial waste. Companies wanting to get rid of this waste lobbied heavily to gain support for their scheme to put their waste in drinking water, rather than pay for hazardous waste disposal. They were successful for many years in suppressing credible scientific findings on the matter, but communities like Portland are now looking at actual science.

I see that your “extensive research” involves “random Google reading without the toolkit to tell good information from bad.”

“Natural” fluoridation of water is usually more dangerous, actually, because it occurs at higher levels than the 1ppm which is both safe and efficacious.

Also, fluoride is hardly “industrial waste”; actually, there are so many uses for fluoride in industry that we have to mine a lot of fluorite mineral to keep up with demand. Fluoride is used in the smelting of aluminum and steel, but it is also used:

- to etch glass in decorative glass-making as part of hydrofluoric acid or related compounds,

- in the making of specialist lenses for infrared,

- as an additive to certain ceramics,

- as a dielectric medium in electricals

- and as part of the inert electrical insulator gas sulfur hexafluoride, used in transformers,

- to make the compound polytetrafluoroethylene (that’s teflon),

- as part of hydrofluorcarbons, which are used as refrigerants and propellants

- as a petrochemical catalyst, to help break down heavy hydrocarbons in petroleum refineries

- in a number of anesthetic gases, like halothane, sevoflurane, desflurane, enflurane, and isoflurane,

- as part of the sodium fluoride which is used as a medical treatment of osteoporosis, as well as for dental care,

- and in a full 20% of all commercially available pharmaceuticals, such as modern antibiotics like ofloxacin and trovafloxacin and ciprofloxacin (Cipro) and levofloxacin (Levaquin), phosphatase inhibitors, glucocorticoid anti-inflammatories, anti-cancer drugs like Efudex, anti-cholesterol drugs like Lipitor, among many others.

In other words, fluoride is not used in water supplies because there are some vast piles of toxic waste which evil government lackeys wish to use the unsuspecting public to dispose of. It’s actually one of the most common chemicals in demand in modern life.

thank you for using an intelligent word, however unfortunately for your argument silicofluoride otherwise known as silicon tetrafluoride SiF4 is not used for fluoridation, Sodium Fluoride is used

http://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/1449

That said if it is so your wish, and this is something I would recommend, protest for better filtration systems from fertilizer plants so as to prevent contamination from excess chemicals

finally every element is toxic in excess, pure oxygen is toxic, pure sodium will kill you. too much calcium creates bone deficiencies

The old truth, everything in moderation remains true

motivemagus: Those killing vaccinators are all from religious fundamentalists. The liberals were the ones promoting compulsory smallpox vaccination that finally eradicated the disease. The Faux News fundies are the ones spreading lies about fluoridation, and have been since the 1950s – before Ailes discovered the profit in the cause.

What is the common denominator here? All were opposed by religious crazies, conservative wackaloons, and vested interests.Never forget that quite literally every step of human progress has been opposed by those three groups. The names have changed (it used to be royalty, clergy, and nobility), but the “I’ve got mine, f*** you all” mentality never has—and we still see it every day on these forums.

It’s been conclusively proven that fluoride helps prevent cavities. Anyone who wants to argue otherwise is going against an overwhelming amount of evidence.Anyone who is brushing with fluoride toothpaste is not going to get much benefit from the extra fluoride in drinking water. Fluoridation of water started in a time when a lot of people didn’t brush with a fluoride toothpaste. There aren’t any reputable studies that show any harm from fluoride in water, but I doubt Portland will see much of a difference in cavities either way.Making sure kids brush & regularly see a dentist seems a lot more important.

Serious question: is opposition to fluoridation and vaccination along party lines? You may well be correct, opponents possibly tend to be mainly folk who would vote what you call “liberal”, but I would have thought that it is your more conservative voters that hate government meddling, even in such things as compulsory seat belts and helmets.BTW, by implication we seem to be in agreement regarding the benefit of providing the facilities of evidence based science.

Dihydrogen monoxide is an industrial grade solvent as well as a byproduct of commercial combustion. It has caused the deaths of millions over the years, yet it is regularly added to water supplies ALL OVER THE WORLD! Yet no one is doing anything to stop it!!Filtration won’t remove it, and it is now present in everything you eat!

What I’ve seen about resistance to water fluoridation and anti-vaccinationism both is that these cross political lines.

Conservatives are often anti-science these days, so anything which claims scientific support AND is endorsed by the government MUST be conspiracy to control their lives, or control the population, or control people minds(!);

libertarians often object on the basis of they don’t think that government should be enforcing any public health measures (kind of boils down to a blind and somewhat angry resistance to being told what to do, or not having a choice about something, as far as I can tell);

and the far left lunatic hippie contingent seem to object on the basis of “OMG TOXINZ” and believing that every/any chemical substance being introduced into the body as a health intervention is “not natural” and/or an affront against the body’s “natural health”/“natural integrity”/“natural wisdom”/take your pick of hopelessly idealized versions of the human body/naturalistic fallacy.

Personally I am rather bitterly amused that a fierce resistance to what science might tell us, and a fierce resistance to public health programs, is what can unite the far reaches of the political spectrum.

" Next: clandestine solar panels providing clean electricity!"#OH!! The horror of it all!! What next? Global Warming?? Nooooo!

Please read my post above, or look it up on Wikipedia, or something; fluoride is not a “by-product of aluminum mining”, it is deliberately used in the smelting of aluminum, and the smelting of steel, and dozens of other industrial uses, as well as in numerous pharmaceuticals. It’s a poison in high doses – just like aspirin and paracetamol are poisons in high doses. Just like calcium is a poison in high doses. Just like alcohol is a poison in high doses. Just like just about every substance you could ever name is a poison in high doses. The 1ppm which is in public water, on the other hand, doesn’t hurt anyone, and has in the past made a huge contribution to dental health.

Wow, still going!Here is a video of a guy breathing sulfur hexafluoride.He has to stand on his head to get it out.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2FR6-gEwjU

And I suppose the numerous studies, including this one from Harvard’s School for Public Health, linking flouride consumption to lower iq in children are “antiscience” too.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-childrens-health-grandjean-choi/

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-childrens-health-grandjean-choi/