- Former President Donald Trump said that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s proposal to remove fluoride from the U.S. water systems “sounds okay” to him.
- Kennedy, who is poised to play a health policy role in a potential Trump administration, recently wrote, “The Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “the safety and benefits of fluoride are well documented and have been reviewed comprehensively by several scientific and public health organizations.”
I’ll take the:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “the safety and benefits of fluoride are well documented and have been reviewed comprehensively by several scientific and public health organizations.”
…over your:
fluoride only helps out when used topically (like in toothpaste). Drinking it may actually weaken your bones, supposedly.
You have anything says that ingesting or actually helps? That’s the part I find kinda weird, and that quote doesn’t address that specific issue. Using it on the surface of your teeth is shown to be helpful, I get that; but drinking it is a whole different ballgame… Besides, I thought the fluoride in the toothpaste was the reason you’re not supposed to swallow?
You can always use examine.com to start base level research on most substances. It tries to cover the most common questions and link the research papers most relevant to that question if available. Excerpt below, but I recommend scrolling through the whole page. It also discusses maximum safe daily levels, toxic levels, and symptoms when you exceed those levels.
Fluoride (from drinking water, supplements, tea, or dental products) is absorbed by the small intestine, and about half is excreted via the kidneys. Absorbed fluoride in the blood can bind with apatite in bone and teeth, becoming fluorapatite. Blood and bone concentrations of fluoride are in equilibrium and are impacted by bone remodeling activity and age.
Casually states without evidence that fluoride was only introduced to keep people docile, then demands citations on rebuttals. Looks like we got ourselves a full blown case of the MAGA.
That’s a fair question. I Googled around and arrived at a couple different gov health websites (National Institutes of Health, Cleveland Clinic) which mention that, while high levels of fluoride can be harmful, the amount put into the US drinking supply doesn’t approach that threshold.
Fluoride, when swallowed, can be distributed throughout the body, which includes being in the saliva that covers the teeth. Nevertheless, fluoridated water has been shown with more than enough evidence to improve the quality of teeth in humans compared to its risks (if any) and removing it in water will reduce those benefits.
I’ll go ahead and press x to doubt. First, no, it absolutely will not go everywhere in your body. Chemistry/biology doesn’t work like that. Second, the amount of fluoride you’d have to ingest to still have an effective amount in your saliva would be well past the safe limit (by the way, only poisons need to have a safe limit; aka fluoride is not good for you). Finally, it’s in our toothpaste, we don’t actually need any more than that.
Putting it in our water has no benefits. Really. But you do you, man.
