Water utility announces it’s ditching fluoride—then reveals it did so years ago

The water utility highlighted unsubstantiated health concerns.

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[Quadraginta Duo]

The way I learned about dental hygiene, there are alcohol/antiseptic mouthwashes, and there are fluoride mouthwashes, and they're supposed to be used differently, so I don't think it makes sense to put them both in the same product.

Antiseptic mouthwash kills bacteria while you're swishing it around, and then you can rinse out the residue with water. But for a fluoride mouthwash, after spitting it out, you're supposed to leave the residue in your mouth and not eat or drink for about half an hour, so that your teeth have time to absorb enough fluoride.

I'm glad that someone posted about this distinction, because I have questions!

1. I was an alcohol/antiseptic mouthwash user for a long time, but I read somewhere that the alcohol-based ones can actually be quite hard on your gums and teeth.
2. At that point I switched to a non-alcohol fluoride-based mouthwash. Anecdotally speaking it had a much less intense mouth feeling compared to the alcohol one.
3. Recently I had a dental cleaning where my hygienist mentioned that a lot of mouthwashes kill all mouth bacteria, i.e. both beneficial and harmful bacteria. Her recommendation was floss first, then brush with a fluoride toothpaste, and then to spit thoroughly and avoid drinking/rinsing with water for 30 minutes so as to let the fluoride do its job.
4. She also mentioned that if you're sick, a good old fashioned salt + warm water rinse and gargle between flossing and brushing can be very effective at taking out mouth/throat germs.

I'm having a hard time verifying this info with an external source; I don't want to query the AI synophants, and I assume that Big Mouthwash would never admit that mouthwash isn't that necessary.

I figure that if anyone will have answers on this, it'll be the Ars hivemind