Honest to fuck, how are these people not recycled for compost? The argument is: “Keep Portland’s drinking water pure.” Really? You mean that stuff that sits in the uncovered reservoirs up in the hills; uncovered in violation of federal safe drinking water guidelines, where possums drown and raccoons wash their nasty asses and homeless people urinate? Those pure water sources? The same “pure” water that’s heavily chlorinated so you don’t contract hepatitis?
These people have got to be in the same brain trust as the anti-vax crowd. "I know, let’s ignore science because what do a bunch of educated people know about anything, and let’s listen to some woo-woo fringe lunatics about what’s best for our children, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And now we have to waste money to defeat this load of horseshit in the election cycle. Fuckin’ hell, already. :rolleyes:
A solution (that we use) for people who don’t like fluoride (like my family) is to get a fluoride-filtered drinking tap set up. Water is clean, fluoride is no longer in the water, problem solved.
Tell me about it. I live close to the Tabor reservoirs, and it cracks me up that people think those uncovered reservoirs are in any danger whatsoever of contaminating anything. When those two idiots went skinny dipping and had to pay to drain it, there were employees on record saying that there’s no way in hell they could have done any damage at all. There’s so much purification going on that a herd of mad cows could fall in there with no problem.
As for the flouride thing, I have learned to keep my mouth shut. I tried to explain to my more vocal friends that I had flouride in my drinking water growing up in St. Louis, and I am not crazy. In fact, I’ve had something like one cavity in my entire life, which I got about five years ago, after I had been living in Portland. They just ignored me and started quoting statistics from the 30s that have already been thoroughly debunked.
Some days my FB wall looks like TimeCube. Flouride! Monsanto! Local distilleries! The cops! Arts tax! Nature’s Needs! Raaawr! Sigh.
I have a cousin who is a walking ad for water fluoridation, she is a CTer, supporter of the Branch Davidians and hasn’t had flouride in 15 or so years. Her mouth is a nasty scraggle of broken rotted teeth. Should I send a picture?
We lost fluoride in our water in Calgary a couple of years ago - the junk science morons won (my theory about why is because there are too many junk science morons on the city council).
On the bright side (for public health if not public sanity), people’s dental health should be fine as long as they use a fluoridated toothpaste.
On the other hand, it’s a lot easier to make sure your kids’ teeth are safe if drinking water does it instead of relying on them to brush their teeth on their own (or bathe on their own or whatever). Little kids can be disgusting sometimes.
My uncle John was a leader in the move to have Windsor, ON cancel fluoridation.
I can say without hesitation that even before that, my uncle John was one of the most stupid people I have ever known who did not have a diagnosed mental disability. He will believe essentially anything he finds on the Internet.
That’s who’s opposing fluoridation, folks; the dumbest person in my family, which is not a family of geniuses to start with.
Fluoridated toothpaste and fluoride treatments at the dentist are great, if you can afford it for a passel of kids in a poor family. Fluoridated water exists so that everybody can have at least some semblance of dental health, as most everyone who lives in a city has access to city tap water, either at home or from public sources. Rotten teeth eventually mean ER visits, which we all get to pay for.
Er not exactly, she is trying to live off the grid, in Houston, TX. She also worked for Ron Paul, which I doubt they appreciated because she always gets detained at TSA checkpoints and so does everyone with her. Probably you should not scream “our Government commits murder” all day, everyday on FB.
I have nothing to add other than express my amazement that so many supposedly intelligent people continue to buy in to the anti-flouride woo. But it’s a chemical, a chemical I tells ya! I’ll be glad when the vote is over and these people quit knocking on my door.
I tried once to tell one of those ‘it’s a chemical!’ people that everything she ate, drank, or breathed was a chemical. She told me she couldn’t believe how stupid I was to think that.
Actually they are complements. Center for Disease Control: Both drinking water and toothpaste provide important and complementary benefits. The drinking water provides long low-level protection, but the fluoride in toothpaste is at a high enough concentration that it has additional properties. Whether in water or toothpaste, fluoride works in two main ways: by slowing the activity of bacteria that cause decay, and by combining with the enamel on the surface of the teeth to make it stronger and more resistant to decay. Fluoride in the water, although at a lower concentration than in toothpaste, maintains a constant low level of fluoride in the dental plaque and saliva all day. Toothpaste provides a high level of fluoride, but only for 1-2 hours after brushing, so the water exposure during the remainder of the day takes over after that. I typically don’t brush my teeth 5 times a day.