SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In other words, what happens when a population suddenly stops taking fluoride in their drinking water, like Juneau's citizenry did?
Now, thanks to a recent study led by first author and public health researcher Jennifer Meyer from the University of Alaska Anchorage, we've got new insights into the subsequent effects.
In the study, Meyer assessed Medicaid dental claim billing records for two groups of children and adolescents aged 18 or under.
One of these groups represented what the researchers call "optimal" community water fluoridation (CWF) exposure: 853 non-adult patients on behalf of whom Medicaid dental claims were filed in 2003, years before the fluoride cessation began in 2007.
The other group was made up of 1,052 non-adult patients from families who similarly met Medicaid income requirements, and who made the same kind of dental claims almost a decade later, in 2012.
[...] "By taking the fluoride out of the water supply... the trade-off for that is children are going to experience one additional caries procedure per year, at a ballpark (cost) of US$300 more per child," Meyer explained to KTOO News.
Reference: Jennifer Meyer, Vasileios Margaritis & Aaron Mendelsohn, Consequences of community water fluoridation cessation for Medicaid-eligible children and adolescents in Juneau, Alaska, BMC Oral Health, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-018-0684-2
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 16 2019, @03:05PM (4 children)
Science is fine. I still prefer my non-chlorinated, non-fluoridated well water to the municipal piped stuff.
If you want fluoride on the kids' teeth, get that at the dentist - pumping a steady drip into the whole population seems... insensitive to the poorly studied negative aspects of polluting our precious bodily fluids... O-P-E Code prefix locked. Switch all receiver circuits to CRM discriminators.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 17 2019, @10:15AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 17 2019, @03:39PM (1 child)
Natural variation ranges from zero fluoridation through higher levels than you might want, as does "natural" variation of other elements in water like salt, arsenic, lead, etc.
Just because residents of the Colorado Rockies and airline pilots/crew receive a dose of radiation equivalent to a chest X ray every year isn't a good basis of argument to irradiate everyone with a chest X ray every year for little benefit.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 17 2019, @04:25PM
Put that match away, your petrol-soaked straw man will burn.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @01:46PM
Also we should stop the disingenuous practice of calling all different things "fluoride". Sodium Fluoride is what occurs naturally and at the dentist's office. The chemical being added to civic water supplies is HydroFluoroSilicic Acid, a waste product from the phosphate mining industry.