A bill to ban the use of the mineral in public water passed the Florida House 88-27. It now awaits Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature.
Lawmakers in Florida gave final passage to a bill to ban fluoride in public water systems Tuesday, with the state House voting 88-27.
SB 700, also known as the Florida Farm Bill, doesn’t mention the word “fluoride,” but it would effectively ban the chemical compound by preventing “the use of certain additives in a water system.” The bill awaits Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature.
If DeSantis, a Republican, signs the bill, Florida will become the second state to ban fluoride from water supplies.
Leave Florida if you can. Especially if you have or are expecting children. Moving isn’t always possible, but if you live in Florida know that your state is actively trying to hurt you.
You know who doesn’t need Fluoride in their drinking water? People with dentures.
Checkmate whipper snappers.
You don’t need municipal water to be fluoridated if you just want your kids to have fluoridation. When I was a kid, we didn’t have fluoridation available in our municipal water, and so my folks got themselves a water cooler and ordered delivery of five gallon bottles of fluoridated water for it. Mom made a point of making milk with it from powdered milk so that everyone got their fluoridation. You can still get those bottles.
I mean, I’m sure that the great bulk of people aren’t going to do that, and that it’s going to lead to dental problems down the line, but it’s not like an individual can’t get ahold of the water if they want it. Costs more per unit of water volume to have it delivered than to pipe it in, but then, you’re not drinking all that much volume of water, either; most residential water use goes to things other than drinking.
EDIT: Plus, if you have a water cooler, you also can have chilled water. We didn’t have a powered cooler; ours was just an unpowered, gravity-fed dispenser, but all of the modern-day ones I’ve run into in offices have a chiller.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=water+dispenser+cooler
If I lived in (tropical) Florida, I’d probably want to have chilled water handy…
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Not to mention infeasible for people already struggling to afford food and other basic necessities. Which means they will struggle to afford the dental care from not being able to afford privatized fluoride.
Its all a trap to push people in poverty into deeper states of vulnerability, eventually prison, and therefore free labor for the state
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You’re kinda missing the point. It doesn’t stop at flouride. It doesn’t stop at deregulating manufacturing waste. Nothing in politics is “just one thing” it’s either an up or down trend that continues until people force change.
Being able to circumvent their measures doesn’t mean they aren’t actively trying to increase harms for residents.
You don’t leave Florida because you want flouride in your water. You leave Florida because it’s the type of state that would ban flouride in the water.
Done even need that.
I went to a rural school and every week on Tuesdays we took 10 minute shifts to go rinse our mouths with a fluoride mouth wash. 1 gallon jug with a pump and Dixie cups. Lasted most of a school year.
I feel so bad for anyone who lives there through no choice of their own
Ban chlorine and chloramine in the water too! The microorganisms will strengthen your immune system. Just like Haiti. :)
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You think chlorine is mostly known for being used as a chemical weapon? Not, you know… Swimming pools?
You’re a good example of why people make bad choices about science related public policy.
First, the poison is in the dose. There’s a big difference between inhaling concentrated chlorine gas and drinking trace quantities.
Second, how do you propose we uv sterilize the water? We’d need to do so at the plant, but also at any holding cisterns. Or were you thinking of retrofit for houses? And not all microorganisms are strongly impacted by UV. It’s tricky to find legitimate research, since the people who sell them say they work great, but what’s out there paints a different picture of efficacy.I already edited it to infamously anyways thats what comes to my mind at first when i think of chlorine.
And how would i propose we do this? By living in a country that already does it. Here is the page of my local water provider:
https://www.evides.nl/uw-drinkwater/productieproces/de-zuiveringsprocessen
Daarna maken we het water bacteriologisch betrouwbaar: de hoofddesinfectie. Dit gebeurt door middel van ultraviolet licht (UV).
Then we make the water bacteriologically reliable: the main disinfection. This is done by means of ultraviolet light (UV).
So on whatever way the Netherlands does it seems to work out.
Being used to this type of water when i go on vacation it really smells like im drinking swimming pool water.
The Netherlands also chlorinates water, just not to the degree some other countries do. The chlorine is what keeps the water safe during transport and storage after it has been sterilized.
Didn’t know anyone was doing it at scale. Neat.
In any case, retrofitting most municipal systems just to protect against a non-existent danger just isn’t feasible.
Looking a bit more into the process in the Netherlands, it looks like it’s not just UV light. It looks like it’s also aggressive filtration, and treatment with lye and hydrogen peroxide. Also benign, but not quite in line with the “nothing that seems toxic in the water” story.
a substance as dangerous as chlorine
Water is often said to be the “element of life”, and we need oxygen to live. But if you add one oxygen atom to a water molecule you end up with H2O2, or hydrogen peroxide, which is deadly.
This is the thing that the majority of people don’t understand about chemistry. Just because one chemical (water is a chemical, btw) has the same word in its name as another chemical that’s known to be highly toxic doesn’t mean they’re both toxic.
Chemistry is insanely complex and we are entirely unable to evaluate the toxicity of a chemical just by its name (without prior knowledge).
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You literally just proved my point. Congrats.
Maybe do like 5 min of research to learn how the treatment works and why it’s completely safe?
Man, just wait until you hear about this awful chemical called dihydrogen monoxide. It’s used as an industrial solvent, cleaning agent, and all other kinds of destructive things, and they put it in your food! This shit can kill you if you breathe in too much, yet they put it in our food?!?!1?1
Is your argument that chlorine is as safe to consume as water?
No, just that your dAnGeRoUs ChEmIcAl assertion is FUD and spreading ignorance. But considering you ‘unironically yes’-ed a comment referencing Haiti and how the microorganisms will strengthen your immune system, I’m entirely unsurprised.
As another person put it ‘the dose is the poison’. Sure, chlorine is poisonous in large doses. But so is water.
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If I had to choose between panicking over chlorinated water or spending billions of dollars to disinfect water in a less effective way…
I’d probably just let the water sit out for a while or run it through a cheap carbon filter because I’m not an idiot.
Does your tap have a UV light in it, or do you think there’s no possibility of bacterial growth between the water processing plant and your house?
Stop being so negative. They’ve clearly given this a lot of thought. At least two to three seconds.
Yes it does
So then why do you care?
And how much did it cost?
You actually fell for that? UV takes hours to kill any amount of microbes in numbers that could make you sick. That thing is doing nothing but costing you money.
Try this, get yourself a cheap microscope and run some pond water through that gizmo and see what you get out of a drop at the other end.
mustard gas is not the same as chlorinated water, or even bleach and ammonia. its a different compound.
Chlorine gas was actually used in world war 1. It’s still a massive stretch to invoke that in relation to water treatment.
It’s like invoking water boarding to say we shouldn’t have a water supply.
I was not talking about Mustard gas but chlorine gas, according to wikipedia first deployed on masse during tbe Second battle of Ypres by the germans.
Ban sodium chloride too!
Is your argument that chlorine is as safe to consume as salt?
Are you claiming that chlorinated water is as dangerous as chlorine gas?
No, but i am saying i would rather not drink disinfectants.
Then enjoy waterborne diseases - apparently that’s preferable to chlorine concentrations of, at most, 4 parts per million.
when UV sterilization exists and is proven.
And costs orders of magnitude more.
Using chlorine to treat drinking water is fine dude, just stop.
When are they going to ban dihydrogen monoxide?
More like DEI Hydrogen Monoxide
They probably should in some parts of the U.S. right? It’s that badly contaminated.
The other state is Utah.
Bring back asbestos, Florida! And leaded gasoline!
And gas station bath salts!
Yanks love to stereotype Brits as having bad teeth when statically your teeth have more cavities and removals (our dentistry focuses on health over cosmetics). Hopefully shit like this can fully kill that off that stereotype.
The UK largely doesn’t fluoridate, so this is one of the (few) areas where the US actually does better than the UK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_country
The UK does generally have better tooth health in the grand scheme of things, but it’s actually pretty close, and the US is still really high on the list.
https://www.yongeeglintondental.com/blog/healthy-primary-teeth/
Without checking, I suspect the US’s slightly higher cavity rate is more down to sugar consumption than received dental care.
and also dental care isnt usually covered by most insurance so people try to ignore the problem til its too late.
Did you read the rest of the Wikipedia article? How is better to add fluoride in the amounts the US does? It says in the Wikipedia article:
Recent studies suggest that water fluoridation, particularly in industrialized countries, may be unnecessary because topical fluorides (such as in toothpaste) are widely used and cavity rates have become low. For this reason, some scientists consider fluoridation to be unethical due to the lack of informed consent. However, a recent study funded by NHS found no significant difference between individuals who receive fluoridated water and those who don’t in terms of missing teeth and reducing social inequities.
I found this good review article based on a study commissioned by the Canadian government.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2023.2295338
It seems like potential IQ effects are still difficult to distinguish as a dose response, so they weren’t able to come up with a point of departure. It doesn’t help that in a lot of studies comparing “high” and “low” fluoridation effects on IQ, the “low” is still higher than the WHO recommended level of 1.5 mg/L, and the US recommended level of 0.75.
I think the optimal level is likely going to vary by municipality based on the quality of dental care and the use of fluoridated toothpaste (that everyone overuses), and consumption of high fluoride beverages like tea. I guess my main takeaway is that people need to read their local water quality report, and do what they will with that information
That’s only because we have states like Alabama skewing our statistics
No it’s because your bread has so much sugar the rest of the world would call it cake.
It’s also a diet thing and a result of people damaging their teeth with whitening and cheap veneers.
The majority of people I know with dental issues couldn’t afford to have minor things fixed so they turned into major things.
Dental insurance is a joke and lots of people don’t even get that joke.
i had to wait 10years befor going to the dentist, because it was mostly unaffordable, one of my bros went to a dentist who dint take insurance but they charged hundreds per (whatever they were doing for the teeth), ultimately resulting in an abscess /root canal and then a very expensive implant.
the dentist reasoning is because insurance dont fully reimburse for the cost of the procedures, plus its a hassle to deal with in general.
what ive found out when i was looking for toothpaste is how many people are obsessed with whitening thier teeth, that alot of toothpaste have it. whitening toothpaste actually damages the teeth overtime, either via through peroxides, or high abrasive toothpastes. Also if your going sls and flouride free, they also tend to have alot of whitening products in them too. and these also cause ulcers and chelitis issues.
How can the bill not say fluoride specifically but mentions “certain additives”. Surely it must list what those certain additives are? Odd.
It basically says you can’t add anything to water except for “water quality additives” and has a fuzzy definitely of water quality additive.
403.859 Prohibited acts.—The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited and are violations of this act: (8) The use of any additive in a public water system whichdoes not meet the definition of a water quality additive as defined in s. 403.852(19)
And then 403.852(19) has
“Water quality additive” means any chemical, additive, or substance that is used in a public water system for the purpose of: (a) Meeting or surpassing primary or secondary drinking water standards; (b) Preventing, reducing, or removing contaminants; or © Improving water quality.
Bold are the additions. The “primary and secondary drinking water standards” are legally defined terms where the EPA sets limits on maximum allowable amounts of stuff in water.
https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/how-epa-regulates-drinking-water-contaminants-documents
Personally, I would argue that fluoride is added to water for the purpose of “improving water quality” because water that protects people’s teeth is higher quality than water that doesn’t. If I were someone from a municipality whose job was ensuring water quality, I would read this as still allowing the addition of fluoride. If anyone doesn’t like that, let them try to prove in a court that fluoridated water is lower quality.
let them try to prove in a court
I don’t think that would help these days
Do not obey in advance. The only way fascists succeed is by people chosing to appease them.
Because Republicans like vague language in their bills so the can get away with shit.
Dentist lobby keeps winning
I think it’s more a case of “Don’t be a surgeon in a county where surgery is illegal because surgery isn’t in the Bible” situation.
Like the people this will affect the most can afford a dentist.
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It is
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Fluorida
What a stupid and shitty timeline we’re living in. Holy shit.
Florida was always stupid. Anything they do, will not surprise me.
You’ve been Jammed!
“Sir! The radar! It appears to be - jammed!”
FYI it was a reference to parks and rec, where the local dentist (Jeremy Jamm) tried to prevent Fluorine in water so people had more cavities… because it was good for his business.
His catchphrase was “you’ve been Jammed”.
I thought it was a reference to Space Balls
And raspberry… I hate raspberry!
They are deporting teeth too
The three people who still have teeth in Florida are in trouble now.
Take iodine out of salt while you’re at it.
Let’s bring the gioter look back!
As if people’s teeth in Florida weren’t already bad enough from all the drug abuse.
meth mouth. plus meth gators.
