Oh, yes.
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So, one of my friends was living on SSDI and could not afford the $200+ for a reverse osmosis filter that she wouldâve needed to get fluoride out of her water which she needed with her chronic illnesses. And she isnât a science hater at all. That made me think âhmm maybe this does have a disproportionate impact on people with disabilitiesâ.
Anecdotally, I grew up in a city with fluoride and have never had a cavity. Every dentist in Oregon looks at my teeth and says âyou must not have grown up around hereâ
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So, most of Oregon doesnât have access to flouride? Why?
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We like to be special.
Quite honestly the counter-culture anti-science is high here - either on the hippie or libertarian side*,and most of our population lives in the portland metro area, which has mostly been fed from a beautiful well field that is so untouched it meets requirements for not being filtered (just treated) thanks to our urban growth boundary. Outside the main population centers, oregon is sparse enough many many people have well water.
*we also have a lot of anti vaxxers.
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Most of the tooth problems here are meth-related (there are lots of those, but teeth are not always the peopleâs priority in those cases).
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Yes that is also true here, which is of course inextricably linked to class, unfortunately, just like oral health.
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I mean, everything does.
Weâve definitely written medical need letters to have filtration covered by insurance.
ETA I think we could agree that avoiding fluoride out of medical necessity isnât the same thing as avoiding it because one thinks itâs harmful, which is by far the more common argument.
We also all know our healthcare billing and support is poo but as someone who works with families who have a lot of atypical health needs, I still feel that the stories of people who would be adversely affected should not be the deciding factor in not fluoridating at all.
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When I was little I had adult tooth come in without any enamel, and they told us it was because Iâd had too much fluoride while it was developing. I looked it up again a few years ago and turns out itâs actually a known side effect of antibiotics, and Iâd had an ear infection right before the tooth came in.
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My experience with the anti-fluoride position is just really bad calculation of risk/reward. I literally do not understand it.
Seems like it would be a simple process of setting up a grant system to pay for appropriate filters for those below X income level.
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I see an unintended side effect of public fluoridation would be that the folks who donât support it (I mean, it was OVERWHELMING in my friend group in the 2014 vote to not support fluoridationâŚincidentally except for my friend that is an MPH and was running the pro-fluoridation campaign) would get it filtered out and then
- there would be no fluoride regime in school for kids because the water is fluoridated
- ergo, weâd continue to have the same problems
Shakes head, just so you knowâŚthis is why our state keeps having measles come back⌠our vaccination opt-out rate is alarmingly high.
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Yeah that would kind of defeat the purpose, lol. I wish we could send those people back in time. Even just 70 years back would be scary, but pre-smallpox inoculationâŚshudders. People have no idea how good we have it right now that covid-19 is panic worthy to most.
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The thing I learned from reading a public health report on this:
Early Childhood Cavities are caused by a bacteria in the mouth. The bacteria are transmitted from the
primary caretaker to the child.
That means that actually, itâs not quite as genetic as we might think, but a bit more to do with childhood lifestyle, interesting.
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I was recently learning about the Haitian Revolution, and the expedition Napoleon sent to attempt reconquering the island and reestablishing slavery saw a yellow fever season that killed IIRC 90% of the soldiers sent in just a few months.
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Weird. Same parents, different house mostly, most food home grown in different soil by the time he cane along- wonder if that has an effect? But the fluoride difference surely does.
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In this case, I think Iâm on the yellow feverâs side.
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Lol, yep.
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My parents were super anti-fluoride when I was a kid. I remember them talking about it and telling us about it. Our county didnât fluoridate the water until 2002, which was me at 7 years old and my sister at 5 (youngest sister has had fluoridated her whole life). I think even before the 2002 mark, I remember whenever we visited family in NY state they were like grumble, grumble, donât drink the tap water. I remember a period where we drank gallons of distilled water, but that didnât last long (because itâs ridiculously stupid lol). Eventually we were just drinking tap water again.
My parents are religious (religion in question Christianity) nutjobs, so not surprising they were against it. I also think itâs weird how religious nutjobs pick and choose issues like this because in my experience they and many of their peers are never against some of the more egregious environmental/actually poisoning our bodies issues. (Like, fracking is a huge issue in my state and I donât know of any religious groups upset about how that ruins/contaminates water supplies through those little ponds that overflow during the process). I also always think that if I had been born after 2010, I probably wouldnât have any vaccines (my parents werenât that trendy in 1995, theyâre more bandwagoners)
I actually took a class all about water systems in college and discussed a lot of this, but remember mostly general knowledge guidance, not the actual science. In a really awkward class, someone actually chose to do their assignment on how fluoride in water was bad and the teacherâs response was very gentle but very disapproving.
One of the only websites (anti fluoride) google pulls up on the first page says that pre 2002 something like 6% of the county residents somehow already had fluoridated water? We lived in the actual city limits so I wonder if that included our house somehow.
But, regardless of the fact that I didnât have fluoride outside of a dentistâs office until age 7, I have really ridiculously good teeth. My sisters both do too, with them getting more fluoride. So, maybe genetics were enough to cover the fluoride gap there. I didnât get my only cavity until I was over 18 and Iâm giving myself a pass, because the dentist told me it was to fill a hole from grinding my teeth. I didnât have any pain so I think it was a very small cavity or just preventative.
My teeth are somewhat of an outlier case. I didnât lose my first tooth until 9, which I remember because I was jealous of the other children. I also had to get 6 baby teeth pulled out of my mouth with light oral surgery (I was put under general anesthesia, they had to stitch some things up) at age 13 because they literally just wouldnât come out of my mouth. I donât know if this affirms my teethâs power and good health or if itâs actually bad somehow.
The city I live in kind of has a rumor going around that there is lead in the water. Anecdotally, I would assume this is because we have a high population of Black residents and the city is historically f***ing awful to them, and the case of Flint, MI has led to distrust all the way over here on the East Coast. The city water department swears up and down that there is no lead in the water. I (white) trust them and have always drunk water straight from the tap since I moved here in 2018. Itâs really a shame if there truly isnât an issue (seems likely) because it seems the households that can least afford the extra cost rely the most on bottled water.
Edit to add: both my parents have multi-decade running addictions (truly, addiction) to drinking diet soda every day. Somehow paying a premium to poison your body is better than getting public health measures for the low cost of a municipal water bill.
Iâm not super clear on the science, but what Iâve seen makes me believe that artificial sweeteners are like ingesting garbage and I wonât touch them. so maybe thatâs me being a bit of a quack. Just the kind of quack who trusts local municipalities more than Pepsi/Coca Cola
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That was a very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing.
(Also we have lead in the water here but it is due to pipes not the water supplyâŚit was a big scandal because 98% of Portland public schools tested positive for dangerous levels of lead in the water 3 years ago. Itâs not good.)
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Yeah Milwaukee has a big problem with lead service laterals. Our house is one of the only ones in my neighborhood that doesnât have one.
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Did something happen with fluoride in 2002? I know the municipal water I was on as a small child was fluoridated from the mid 60s or so
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