The fluoride fights are a decades-old cultural war America can't quit

[Zorro]

Folks reported strange things in a New York town in 1945, right after the government announced an experiment adding tiny amounts of fluoride to the municipal drinking water.

“Dozens of Newburgh residents called the water department to complain that the water was discoloring their saucepans, hurting the flavor of carbonated beverages and causing digestive upsets,” the Washington Evening Star reported on Feb. 22, 1951.

One Newburgh resident demanded restitution from the city, claiming her false teeth dissolved overnight in a glass of tap water.

The same thing happened in North Carolina, where residents of Charlotte flooded the city water department with complaints of illness not long after the water fluoridation program was announced there in 1949.

All of these complaints? They came before the fluoride had actually been added to the water.

https://wapo.st/4eNkVjl

[roscoeroscoe]

1. Placebo Effect

Social engineering is sadly going on non-stop around us.

[nycbos]

2. You mean it's not a commie plot.

https://m.

[Irish_Dem]

3. The PutinGOP has done an excellent job reviving old conflicts.

They didn't have to invent issues, they just used the existing societal conflicts.

[Igel]

4. This "conflict" has simmered for many a year.

Although I heard a recent spin on it.

A lot of fluoride comes by ways other than drinking water (which is a good thing since a lot of drinking water my kids use comes from plastic bottles and "fluoride" isn't one of the ingredients listed -- assuming it as to be and 'water' doesn't automatically include fluoride and choramine.)

Anyway, the upshot is that if you get adequate fluoride from other sources *and* on top of it get what's in drinking water, that may be excessive consumption of fluoride, whatever the local water supply contains. Of course, what about the people that don't get all the added fluoride from their toothpaste or dentist or whatever.

I have no way to set policy to accommodate all the variation or even how to adequately quantify it. Perhaps others have.

[Irish_Dem]

5. The reality is that R's do not care about fluoride at all.

It is just an old issue they dredged up to get votes.
The pros and cons of the issue are of no interest to them whatsoever.

[Aristus]

6. I'd love to see a Venn diagram of the areas of the country

where the people bristle and push back at the stereotype of toothless hillbillies, and the regions that oppose fluoridation. I wonder what the overlap would be.

[Skittles]

7. I hear you

yes indeed

[Dulcinea]

8. Keep people angry & scared, and they can be easily controlled.

It's worked for dictators & demagogues throughout the ages. The McFelon is no exception.