How do you feel about the amount of flouride in your drinking water?

We don’t have fluoride in the water in Oregon. I suffered poor teeth as a result. I would have preferred more fluoride actually. Of course I don’t know the ill affects of consuming too much fluoride. What are they?

I have no cavities! Thank you Milwaukee

Now w live in a ‘burb. Our aquifer fed well also has a fair amount of fluoride, which means I won’t need any treatments added to my child’s dental visits.

@RedPowerLady It can actually have bad effects… Here is the wikipedia article on Fluoride Poisoning. You’d never get fluoride poisoning (which causes gastrointestinal distress) from fluoridated water, as there’s nowhere near enough fluoride in it, but I linked to the bit on chronic toxicity. It looks like it can be bad for the bones, the kidneys, the thyroid etc when you’re chronically exposed to it. It looks like this would be at higher levels than we have it at in our water, though.

@fireinthepriory Interesting, thank you. Now do most tap filters(like Pur) filter out fluoride?

@RedPowerLady Nope, they don’t. Here is an article about how to remove fluoride from water, and otherwise reduce your exposure.

Despite this article saying reverse osmosis is too expensive for personal use, the house I lived in when I was 12–18 (my parents and younger sibs still live there) had an RO system in the basement because it had a well as a water supply. So I only got fluoridated water till I was 12. Course now I drink buckets of tea, so I’m probably super-fluoridated now! I guess if I get osteoporosis I’ll know why.

@fireinthepriory We don’t have fluoride here. I was just curious if the filters work on fluoride. Interesting they don’t. Thank you.

Personally, I don’t like it. I do not like mass medication through water, which should be as close to pure water as possible. People can take care of their teeth themselves; the government doesn’t need to baby us. Also, I have fluoride stains on my front teeth that are permanent and have been there for years and it’s one of the few (yes, few) features of myself that I find undesirable. I’ve seen it on a couple of my friends too. We don’t know what caused it for sure, but I just think it’s better to leave fluoride out of the water. No, I’m not a conspiracy nut or anything. I believe 9/11 was not an inside job and that we did land on the moon. So there.

Flouride is a by-product of aluminum manufacture, so guess who is the world’s largest supplier of flouride? Yup, ALCOA. I really don’t mind that too much, what pisses me off is the amount of PCBs, fertilizer run-off and mercury in the freshwater rivers, lakes and streams around here. Do you know how much local fish I’ve eaten in my lifetime? The cigarettes won’t kill me, the mercury and PCBs will have killed me long before I get emphysema.

Let me ask my other head.

I’m torn. I think adding flouride does help the health of our teeth, I believe it helped me. If I had to make a choice I choose to flouridate the water supply. In an ideal world I like the idea of not flouridating the water and people adding flouride themselves if they want, but I would fear poor people would not have access.

@Austinlad Quality.