Fluoride
has been a subject of much debate in recent years. Not the chemical itself, but
its inclusion in many municipal water supplies. Your whole life, you have been
drinking fluoride whenever you have a glass of tap water. But how does this actually affect you? I found an article online entitled, "Expert Testimony: How Your Drinking Water May Be
Damaging Your Brain", which was a very…interesting article, leading me to
question what was actually truthful in the article. But first, this article
reminded me of what we've been learning in chemistry. We've talked about
solutions quite a bit recently, and our tap water is indeed a solution.
Everyone knows that there are natural minerals and chemicals in our water, but
there are also additives, like fluorine. In fact, our tap water has between 0.7
to 1.2 mg of fluorine/L (Ontario Dental Association, 2011). This is a very
unsaturated solution, and using very simple math, I discovered that there is
only 0.7-1.2 ppm of fluoride in our water (mg/L and ppm are the same).
This article states that fluoride damages the hippocampus and leads to increased aluminium intake (Joseph Mercola, 2011). It goes on to praise the steps that some small towns are taking to get rid of the fluoride in their water, while continually bashing every town or city that does add it to their water. The article is poorly sourced, linking to studies or articles that examine the effects of large quantities of fluoride, not the small amount we consume daily. It concludes with a "Donate" button that allows readers to donate to the Fluoride Action Network, a group of people against the use of fluoride in our water.
I kept my summary of the article short because it is not worth repeating. This article showed everything wrong with pseudoscience and how people are willing and able to ignore actual scientific facts and allow themselves to be scared. Fluoride is not a very toxic chemical; it takes 5 to 10 grams of sodium fluoride to kill an adult human (Ontario Dental Association, 2011). A solution with only 0.7 mg/L is nowhere near that harmful, and I don't think that people understand how unsaturated of a solution our tap water is. With some basic knowledge on solutions and solubility, anyone should be able to look at this article and see the glaring holes.
But perhaps I'm wrong. Do your own research, and decide for yourself. Should we continue to add fluoride to our water?
This article states that fluoride damages the hippocampus and leads to increased aluminium intake (Joseph Mercola, 2011). It goes on to praise the steps that some small towns are taking to get rid of the fluoride in their water, while continually bashing every town or city that does add it to their water. The article is poorly sourced, linking to studies or articles that examine the effects of large quantities of fluoride, not the small amount we consume daily. It concludes with a "Donate" button that allows readers to donate to the Fluoride Action Network, a group of people against the use of fluoride in our water.
I kept my summary of the article short because it is not worth repeating. This article showed everything wrong with pseudoscience and how people are willing and able to ignore actual scientific facts and allow themselves to be scared. Fluoride is not a very toxic chemical; it takes 5 to 10 grams of sodium fluoride to kill an adult human (Ontario Dental Association, 2011). A solution with only 0.7 mg/L is nowhere near that harmful, and I don't think that people understand how unsaturated of a solution our tap water is. With some basic knowledge on solutions and solubility, anyone should be able to look at this article and see the glaring holes.
But perhaps I'm wrong. Do your own research, and decide for yourself. Should we continue to add fluoride to our water?
Link to article:
In the article I read the main purposes and effects of fluoride were explained, and they were all related to the repair and prevention of tooth decay. I decided to figure out how much water you would have to drink in a day to consume a fatal amount of fluoride and it works out to approximately fourteen thousand litres… that’s about as much water (including water in coffee, juice, tea, etc.) as the average Canadian drinks in forty years! I don’t see the harm in ingesting such tiny amounts of fluoride, it’s definitely easier than having to go to the dentist all the time.
ReplyDeleteI was very interested to read your blog on fluoride in tap water, which was so interesting that I read the article too and did some additional research on the subject. For many years, there has been an interesting debate in the U.S.A. about whether or not our drinking water should be fluorinated as a way to help prevent tooth decay. There seems to be more of a conspiracy theory there—that the government is trying to poison everyone and I don't think we have the same intense debate in Canada. However, it seems that only about 45% of Canadians have access to fluorinated water. I was especially interested to read in the article that increased intake of fluoride can lead to brain damage. It's true what you say that fluoride is not very toxic and our water contains very small amounts (0,.7 mg/L), which is not at all harmful. How can this amount damage our brain? As well, my research convinced me that there is a lot of evidence out there (done by Health Canada and the World Health Organization) that fluorination of water is a safe and effective way to reduce dental cavities. And a plus is that even poor people who can't afford dentists can have access to this simple, cheap solution that can provide some protection against cavities. Here is the article I found: https://www.cda-adc.ca/jcda/vol-75/issue-6/451.pdf .
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