post of the day. 
It matters not a jot where it came from. Fluoride is an ion. It is an atom with an extra electron. (There is always a corresponding positive ion, but let’s leave that for now.) Fluoride compounds dissociate easily in water which means that they dissolve. What you have in fluoridated water are charged fluorine atoms dispersed in the solution at a concentration that has been shown to be effective at strengthening teeth.
I repeat. It does not matter where the fluoride compounds were sourced. One fluoride ion is chemically indistinguishable from another. There is nothing wrong with reusing industrial waste. In fact it is the most responsible thing to do with wastes. In biological systems everything is recycled and reused. The fact of the matter is that our bodies benefit from small amounts of trace elements. We suffer when our diets contain insufficient fluoride. It is added to drinking water supplies in small amounts because in low concentrations it benefits us.
If there is a real question here it is concerning the sensibility of adding fluoride to water supplies when such a small proportion of our tap water is actually ingested. Is this good use of resources? Are there any environmental impacts arising from fluoride salts in waste water.
Answers:
- Yes. The investment is cheap. The benefits are large.
- None that I have ever heard discussed. Water in natural environments typically contains a huge amount of dissolved salts including fluoride salts. This is essential in properly functioning ecosystems. The concentrations we are talking about in domestic supply (and hence waste water) are very low and in all likelihood have either no effect or small positive effect on the environment.
I agree wholeheartedly with j_sum1. Seems to me there is also an additional point to be made. The argument seems to be “it costs money to dispose of this ‘industrial waste’ so lets pretend it’s good for us and stick it in the water”. That strikes me as a very odd argument if you think about it. It also costs money to add it to drinking water - it needs to be cleaned up so it doesn’t have stuff that really is icky in it and it needs to be added in consistent amounts and the equipment that adds it needs to be monitored and maintained. Seems to me it would be much cheaper just to dump the stuff if all you wanted to do was dispose of it.
The dose makes the poison. There are such things as a harmless amount of arsenic, and a fatal amount of orange juice. And water is a very common industrial waste.
So the thing to do is to stop talking about what fluoride is, and start talking about what it does. Which is harden your teeth at small doses, discolor them at larger doses, and way out in the “how in the hell did you get that much fluoride” category, it may be harmful.
And three quarters of a century after we started introducing fluoride in drinking water, you’d think we’d have some data on how common each of those doses is. Here’s a hint: how many people do you see with gray-brown fluoride discolored teeth? Well fluoride overdoses are much, much rarer than that. Does anybody have evidence of one?
“Industrial Waste” is a pointless and misleading term. Most things you would think of as industrial waste are either useful in other contexts (and thus not ‘waste’) or just hasn’t been found useful by someone else yet.
I’m sitting in on a phone conference now, but if I had the time, I’d make a list of things once considered a useless waste product and now considered a valuable by-product. Fluoride would probably be one of them.
Reminds me of an email I got from my sister. She had a party and served some dish of fancy “fingerling” potatoes - you know, those little bitesized ones? Anyway, my mom and aunt were there. They were raised on a potato farm. They started laughing, and my mom said, “What are those doing there?” My sister responded that those are fashionable fingerling potatoes. My mom replied to her sister “Recognize those? We used to feed them to the goats because they were worthless for anything else.”
Wasn’t natural gas considered a waste product at one time?
Yes. It largely still is and huge quantities of it are flared off rather than captured.
My bit of anecdata:
Years ago, I moved to a small town in Oregon. A few months later, I went to a local dentist for a routine checkup. She took one look at my mouth and asked me where I’d moved from. I asked her how she knew I was from out of town, and she said it was because I didn’t have the microcavities that the locals all had- because the local water supply wasn’t fluoridated.
So, yeah. Fluoridation fights tooth decay.
It’s worth noting that most of the industrialized world (Finland, Japan, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, Iceland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Portugal, etc.) do not fluoridate their water.
The issue is far from resolved.
The European nations mostly object on the grounds of that it’s forced medication, rather than on efficacy grounds. And even if the water isn’t fluoridated, there’s access to fluoridated toothpaste.
There’s no real scientific debate on the merits of fluoridation. It works. Whether or not local water supplies need to be fluoridated may still be a matter for debate (at least in the developed world, where fluoridated toothpaste and adequate dental care are both available) but not the fact that it works.
I grew up in Norway in the 70s. We had regular fluoride mouthwashes free in school. We also had very cheap fluoride chewing pills, I suspect they were subsidised.
Pretty much everyone goes to government public school here, and uses free government-run dental services for kids, so this method works here.
From your first link:
[QUOTE=NAP]
Because fluoride is well known for its use in the prevention of dental caries, it is important to make the distinction here that EPA’s drinking-water guidelines are not recommendations about adding fluoride to drinking water to protect the public from dental caries
[/quote]
I.E. Fluoridation works for healthy teeth. Too much may be bad in other ways.
Well, guess what? We know too much fluoride can be bad (too much of nearly anything can be bad, after all) and that it’s good for teeth.
The second link:
Again deals with high levels of fluoride (usually naturally occurring) and concludes nothing. We know high levels of fluoridation may be bad. What does that have to do with the low level found in municipal drinking water.
The third link again offers no data - only the potential for harm for consumption of large amounts of fluoride.
Worse yet, all three of these links acknowledge the dental benefits of fluoride. Did you actually read them?
In other words, none of these links raises ANY debate on the dental benefits of fluoride. Only on possible consequences of regular consumption high levels of fluoride, which isn’t even applicable to the levels of fluoride added to most municipal supplies.
Where did I state that fluoride has no dental benefits? It’s the safety aspect that scientists are concerned about.
Real scientists aren’t.
Then start a separate thread, because the debate in this one has to do with dental benefits, which some of your like-minded cohorts have denied.
As for the debate on safety, sure there’s a debate. But it’s small and the best evidence is typically on higher doses than we’re exposed to. Even the opinion pieces - not studies - you’ve linked indicate that.
The CDC, NIH, National Cancer Institute, and the ADA have found no credible risk from fluoride at the current recommended fluoridation levels.
Does that mean it’s safe at higher concentrations? Of course not, but that’s where what little debate exists and where you’re pointing. I don’t see any benefit to calling fluoridation a poison or saying there’s much of a debate when there are only hints at potential harm at fluoridation levels much higher than we currently experience.
If it helps you, think of it as a nutrient rather than a [cue portentous music…] MEDICATION.
Did you read the OP? Did you see the word “poison” in it?
Read for comprehension.
Pretty sure everyone is in agreement that too much of anything is a poison. So the question becomes whether Flouride as it is used currently is hazardous or not.