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

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I will keep repeating this. Down here in Belgium, they do not add fluoride to the water. Our teeth are fine. No the water is not naturally high in fluoride. We have dental care that is payed back by government. No it does not mean we have dozens of cavities that need to be filled. We just brush our teeth two times a day with tooth paste with plenty of fluoride. What does make a difference in my own experience? Less soda.

This usually fills my message box with tons of replies. Of course I may be missing something. Some people did argue well that some nuance was missing. They are right. A lot of others just had trouble seeing beyond black and white. To those people, do not respond immediately. Wait a day.

Here goes nothing.
I'll just point out that the edentulous rate in Belgium is higher than in the United States by a pretty significant amount.
 
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Harvey Brown

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As someone who spends a lot my day in customer testing sessions to help evidence policy choices, it is wonderful that Birmingham has volunteered its residents to partake in this long term testing program to provide robust evidence for the efficacy of personal, as opposed to collective responsibility when it comes to community dental outcomes.
 
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crepuscularbrolly

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...Trumpers would follow Trump off a cliff, ...
What do you mean would? They are following him off a cliff. And a whole lot of non-Trumpers are doing sweet f-all about it.

We all know how Trump projects. Think about what that projection means when he calls other countries shithole countries.
 
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I don't really care about fluoride debate, but having ditched fluoride and not notifying people for years is an incredibly scummy move, no matter what you think about fluoride in water. Even in the case of a law "implement change X, effective immediately", there should be a notification of the change by the utility.
But no, instead of being apologetic for having completely fucked up messaging, they are proud of the fact they "forgot" to let the public know their water changed. How is that even legal?
 
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Americans want an empire, but we only accept paying for the violent bits. In 50 years we'll be absolutely indistinguishable from Russia, and the national narrative will be "see what China has done to us."
50? Aren't you an optimist 🤣

EU is already beginning to treat USA more like Russia than an ally. Some EU countries more than others (looks at Hungary).

Probably 3 years max. Because then we'll see what happens with Trump and if he ends up staying "president" like Putin has.
 
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justin150

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Ever heard of the Scottish wedding gift ?

Back in the 18th and 19th century a well regarded gift for well off or upper class newlyweds was a set of dentures.
As you were going to lose them anyway what would be better than a new set of teeth to start you new life together
This of course first required all your remaining teeth to be pulled.

Its now commonly referred to as ‘the Scottish wedding gift’ because the practice apparently continued in certain communities in Scotland until mid 20th century

… but primarily only for the bride, (stop it!) as a kind of reverse dowery
Yes this was a real thing and it continued until the mid 20th century. I grew up just south of the border and in NE England it was still a common thing, at least in mining communities, up until the 1960s even for middle class children to get a complete set of dentures for their 21st birthday. In fairness I should mention that that area was so backward/conservative that even by the late 1960s some kindergarten teachers would regard left handedness as an impediment to be "educated" out of usually by requiring the relevant child to use only their right hand for crayons, pencils & pens
 
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SixDegrees

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I'll just point out that the edentulous rate in Belgium is higher than in the United States by a pretty significant amount.
I had not heard this, but I checked and was shocked at the difference. Roughly 20% of the US elderly population is edentulous, while the rate in Belgium is over 40%, more than double.

Maybe soda prevents tooth loss? /s
 
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MilanKraft

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I never would have expected Dr. Strangelove to age so poorly. When it was written, ranting about water fluoridation was suitable for indicating complete madness in a fictional character.
Everyone who's anyone knows flouride in the body interferes with the production of natural essence.
 
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SixDegrees

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SixDegrees

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How did they manage to keep this a secret?
Didn't the general population notice an immediate change in [insert whatever metric the anti fluoride tribe are trumpeting today]?
The preferred metric is, I believe, a positive correlation between fluoridation and adherence to communism.
 
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MilanKraft

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Imagine being a "both parties are bad" person in 2026. JFC.
Trying to conjur a good food analogy...

"I don't eat salads because the sugar and preservatives in mass market salad dressing are just as bad for you as the ones in a Big Gulp... which I enjoy as a salad substitute because Wild Mountain Cherry Blast goes down easier, amiright?"

or maybe

"It's OK to get all your protein from steak, because steak isn't processed like a Big Mac, and people can get nasty bugs from produce that hasn't been washed properly at the processing center."

I got nothin'.... but hopefully people get the idea. Maybe someone here can do better. America is quite literally so dumbed down by: social media (culture wars, mis/disinformation); AI (self-serving, hallucinated crap); poor reading habits (minimal non-fiction books on science-related and historical topics — IOW failed to continue educating themselves after "school is out for-EVAH!"); and yes, TV news that fails to do its job (less partisan failings than focus and depth failings), that at this point "helpful food analogies" is exactly what we need to drive home the correct message, for those who refuse to think.

Like, I am FAR from a person who makes excuses for the worst actors in the democratic party over the last 30 years — or the weaker aspects of the party platform in general — but JFC is right. When you've discovered a large fire in one room of your house, and your house is 90 seconds from going up in flames if you don't act, you don't turn away someone handing you a fire extinguisher because "that's the old one; go get the other fire extinguisher — I'll wait because that one is bigger / newer / better." You USE ANY FUCKING FIRE EXTINGUISHER given to you, and solve the problem of not having enough and/or the right kind in your home LATER !!!¡¡¡E1even7Ywun™©
 
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SixDegrees

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German here. We also do not add fluoride to our water and Germany’s water purity law is one of the strictest I know. Most tooth pastes available here have fluoride in them, but I’m also using fluoride-less ones for quite some time now. With age 50 in sight I have not had a single tooth go bad. So imho this is a non-issue.

What’s worse to me: Every time I visit a country that puts chlorine in the water I can hardly drink that. It’s like drinking swimming pool water. The UK and France come to mind here.
And again, the rate of edentulism in German seniors is around 25%, compared with ~20% among US seniors.

Purity of water is unrelated to tooth decay. Not sure why you bothered to latch onto that.
 
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My late Mom was a dentist. She started practicing at around the time Dr. Strangelove was released, in which film a fluoride conspiracist is portrayed as a bug-eyed lunatic. And theatre audiences laughed. Because it was ridiculous. This shit was thoroughly evaluated as paranoid nonsense over SIXTY YEARS AGO. What is even happening?

Sixty years of republicans eagerly demolishing all forms of public education while gaslighting the american citizenry into believing that "truth" doesn't exist and that reality is dictated by the loudest narrative.

That's what happened. The Bug-eyed lunatics are today in the US no more than people holding a "different opinion" - along with the fascists, racists and bigots which is and always has been the safe social circle for the clown willing to adopt malice.
The village idiots have been given the perception of respectability and so when the Emperor and his entire court parade down main street with their exposed dingleberries gently flapping in the breeze, no one dares to argue that the new fashion of nothing at all is less than desirable or even comment on its lack of pockets.
When the child hollers "They're all naked" no one reacts, because that, in this new weird world, is just another fashion choice.
 
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these people voted for dumpy even when their water was fluoride free, which means fluoride can't be the reason that they are stupid.
While the entire state of Alabama voted for Trump, the City of Birmingham voted overwhelmingly for his opponent each time he has appeared on a ballot
 
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And again, the rate of edentulism in German seniors is around 25%, compared with ~20% among US seniors.

Purity of water is unrelated to tooth decay. Not sure why you bothered to latch onto that.
Didn’t know that. I just had the feeling that people were concerned about fluoride-less water and wanted to share that this is normal in other parts of the world. Reading some of the comments it seemed that tooth decay was the worry of no longer having fluoride in the water.
 
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TimeWinder

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Isn’t this a perfect opportunity to study the science further? You have an entire community of people that were essentially given placebo (thinking their water is fluoridated, but wasn’t). So these people would not have made any change to their brushing or fluoridation habits.

Now, what health impacts can be measured now after 2 years, versus in earlier years?
Science? In a red state? Not a chance. Assuming the data even exists, if it disagrees with what those in power "know" to be right, they'll just order it destroyed. Or make up their own and use that instead.
 
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Dental health in locations that do fluoridate their water versus those that don't are pretty stark. I'm sure it's a boon for business for dentists in the latter.
In completely unrelated news, the Guitar Center in Birmingham, Alabama reported record-breaking sales of Gibson and PRS instruments since August 2023
 
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SixDegrees

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The fact they did this without telling anyone is atrocious. But the data should be stark to show the effects as no-one would have changed their behavior as they didn't know.
Where's the data?
Feel free to collect it, but there's already a huge amount of data on this from the early 20th century - when it was noted that areas with naturally fluoridated water had lower rates of dental caries - through multiple large-scale studies done on public water supplies, starting with Grand Rapids, Michigan where dental caries fell by 70% within 10 years of the introduction of fluoridation, a result duplicated many, many times over the years. What more "data" do you need?

Stop bleating, start thinking. There's no need to duplicate research that's already been done over and over and over again that has demonstrated conclusively that fluoridated water reduces the incidence of dental caries by huge amounts.
 
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Some time ago in my area, the water was tested showing rather worrying levels of contamination. This was before I moved into the area, but since then, they've done regular testing to demonstrate they've resolved the problem since then. Whenever I get the test results mailed my way, I see it's still got the tooth juice in it, so at least locally all's well. It didn't stop me from installing a water filter on my main sink faucet though, which I use for drinking and cooking with primarily. I had a roommate for some time who drank bottled water up until that point, then got rather used to filling a thermos full of filtered water instead. That saved a lot of money, since replacing a filter every few months is certainly cheaper. When said roommate moved out, I got them a filter as a parting gift.
 
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Tofystedeth

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I grew up on well water, didn't really use "city water" daily until I was in my 20's. I'm almost 60 now and my teeth are in fine shape.
Water is called the universal solvent for a reason. Your well water likely had plenty of fluoride and other things dissolved in it that it picked up as it seeped through the aquifer.
And if not, congrats on a being a pointless anecdote. There's plenty of actual data showing it's beneficial.
 
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I love how MAHA gets all would up about the government and health transparency conspiracies…

But then doesn’t anyone that literally changed the water that goes into their bodies.

I want to be sassy and say they should have doubled down and stopped chlorinating their water, but I see they are already in Alabama. They already have it rough.
 
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