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The argument for fluoride is very odd. It's like "Well, you wouldn't want people to get CAVITIES would you? It's worth the risk." But there's no one out there saying "Well, you wouldn't want people getting SCURVY would you? Vitamin C in the water supply!"
Why is this one issue powerful enough to involuntarily dose everyone?
edit: jeez, a lot of flouride fans around
On the one hand, scurvy is not a concern, because it is very unlikely to develop it, even with a bad diet, as far as I know. On the other hand, it might not be possible, economically viable or environmentally sound to add vitamin C to water in the way fluoridation is; I don't know enough to judge here.
Good question! Is it possible to add vitamin C to water supplies in the same way?
I've never heard anyone complain about iodized salt or enriched flour.
Or Vitamin D in milk. Make Black Kids Get Rickets Again!
I'm not sure. Vitamin C was just something that came to mind because I know it is beneficial and I have not heard of anyone complaining about it. It may be entirely impractical to add to a water supply.
the risks have been so incredibly thoroughly tested and found to not exist in a meaningful way. whether you trust science to be able to tell us that is irrelevant. i just wish we had a government that listened to science and data again.
Well, that's kind of my argument. Why not augment the water supply with other things that are beneficial and low risk? Why is it only cavities that get this treatment?
Because it's easy. We enrich lots of stuff for public health. Breakfast cereals have tons of extra nutrients, vitamin d is put in milk, white rice and flour are supplemented to offset the loss compared to whole-grain. It's mostly done in response to lots of children in poverty getting sick.
Ah, but one is able to avoid those types of cereals and milks rather easily. If you live in a city with a florinated water supply, I suppose you could buy only bottled water, but that's significantly harder than avoiding the other product classes.
But there's no reason to avoid them. Flouride in water is safe at the regulated levels and has a measurable impact on dental health, just like enriched milk safely reduced the incidence of rickets in children. If you need pure water you can buy distilled gallons but clean, healthful tap water is a modern marvel.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3510389/
The study uses particularly clean water (clean enough to be suitable for medical injections) with a pH of ~7.4. At that acidity and a temperature of 20°C (≈70°F), it takes about 95 days for the vitamin C to decay to 10% of its original concentration, or 28 days to reach 50%.
Normal drinking water has a pH of 6.5-8.5, but also contains a lot of other substances, which might increase the rate of oxidation. Given the potential time between treatment and consumption as well as the fact that people might boil it and increase the rate of decay that way, it's just not as economical to add ascorbic acid to the water supply if only a small percentage of it will ever reach the consumers.
Additionally, the exact dosage will be hard to control, leading to a risk of excessive side effects such as kidney stones. People with a specific enzyme deficiency may also suffer anemia as excessive doses.
Compare that to, say, lemons, whose juice has a pH of ~ 2.4 and renders the vitamin a lot more stable. If you want people to get a good intake of vitamin C, tell them to eat fruits and vegetables, preferably uncooked. The vitamin C dosage you'll get from that will hardly lead to megadoses, unless you eat such vast amounts that you'd probably get other problems anyway.
The reason fluoride is added is that it's quite stable, safe and effective, while also being fairly cheap.