DANGEROUS CHEMICALS IN YOUR DRINKING WATER!!!1!!eleventy-one

[rustybutterkniv]

Portland, I love you, but I'm going to be disappointed in you if the fluoridation measure gets defeated, as now seems likely.

Comments

[martianmooncrab]

if they really want to increase the dental health of children in Portland, they should have affordable dental care and fluoridate milk and carbonated beverages.

[rustybutterkniv]

I agree, and many european countries do that (also, table salt fluoridation) but it's harder to implement milk and carbonated beverage fluoridation in Oregon, since much of the US fluoridates water. Implementation runs into problems of such as, fluoridation has to start at a larger number of points of entry, how do you mandate it across beverage manufacturers, would fluoridation go into only cow milk, or also rice and soy milk for people who are lactose intolerant, etc. or people who don't drink soda. If you can't mandate fluoride across all types / manufacturers of beverages (as seems likely), then you run into the problem that fluoridated vs. non-fluoridated beverages would be distinct in taste, packaging, price, availability, etc. thus making fluoridated beverages possibly less attractive, even if more healthful for people who want them.

[martianmooncrab]

and yet they claim that its tasteless. What gets me is that they add crap to milk all the time, but they claim its healthy, and lets not get started on the ingredients in carbonated drinks.

[rustybutterkniv]

I was more talking about the fact that if there has to be a separate brand that caters to people who want fluoridation, it's likely to taste different (worse) just by virtue of being different, i.e. Coke vs. Fred Meyer Big K, Alpenrose vs. Darigold. This is not in relation to the fluoride specifically (which is tasteless) but because different brands taste differently. There could be different varieties within the same brand, i.e. Coke Classic vs. Coke Classic Fluoride, but my guess is that because of issues in distribution, increased cost to production and consumers, etc. it wouldn't work so well from a public health standpoint (where it should ideally be widely available and low cost).

Anyway, apologies for the inflammatory language in the title. I'm convinced that the risks are low, this is a good method of distribution, and that fluoridation helpful from a public health standpoint but I could have been kinder about this perspective.