I just had a flashback from 40 years ago - wasn’t this factoid mentioned in the movie The Stepford Wives? I haven’t seen that movie since then, but I can still picture where the women were standing when it was said.
No idea. I thought I read about the lithium levels in the annual report from the water utility. But I don’t see it listed in their most recent report. Maybe it was in the local news or something.
There’s some negatives associated with it. Too much folic acid (the additive in enriched foods) is associated with some negative health impacts. It can make it hard to detect B12 deficiencies that are causing other serious health issues. It can interfere with a cancer treatment drug and a couple anti-epileptic medications. Having too much can also increase the risk of colorectal cancer. (US NIH fact sheet as a cite)
…and the thing I searched for that I had remembered seeing a while back. Too much folate is bad during pregnancy too. Very high levels of folate in pregnant women are associated with higher autism risk for their children. (Cite.)http://https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20160511/too-much-folic-acid-in-pregnancy-tied-to-raised-autism-risk-in-study
Like many things that are good for us, more isn’t necessarily better.
What about iodine? I seem to recall some worry with the increasing popularity of fancy un-iodized salts (sea salt, etc.) that iodine deficiency would become an issue again.
Oral contraceptives.
I believe there are studies to show that it IS cost-effective, from the perspective of the whole society.
While it costs more than if every parent every day gave a fluoride pill to every kid, and every kid swallowed them, in reality, that option is never going to happen. And it is the lower-class, poorest, least-educated parents (& their already disadvantaged kids) who would be least likely to do this consistently – and those are the least likely to have regular dental care. Until it becomes a serious enough issue to require medical intervention (usually via hospital ER rooms of government medical programs). And it’s much more costly to treat at that time/.
(You could also argue that such kids are more likely to end up in prison, where taxpayers will pay for their dental treatment; and it would cost more due to their lack of fluoride treatment as kids.)
So overall, it’s said that fluoride treatment in water is cost-effective for society, even if a lot of the water is wasted on adults who don’t need it, or on non-drinking use (showers, tubs, toilets, dishwashers, washing machines, etc. – that’s most of our public water use).
Hmm, i don’t remember typing that, must have been dehydrated, had lots of water to drink today and clearly it’s a false claim.
Hah, we’re already stealthily sterilizing people via vaccines.
Other stuff being added to our water by the New World Order: aluminum, barium, cadmium, strontium 90, viruses, “chaff” and “metallo-estrogens”. It’s a devilishly effective depopulation conspiracy, which is why world population keeps rising.
I believe, hopefully not naively, that OP is making a funny and paraphrasing General Ripper’s eloquent explanation of why you never see a Commie drinking water.
If another additive is deemed beneficial, one has to ask if it’s reasonable to distribute via the water system. Are things like lithium, folate, and iodine stable enough to make it through the distribution pipes to end users without breaking down? What if they precipitate out and create sludge or scale? Would any of these things be incompatible with one another, or the fluoride, chlorine, or orthophosphate that’s already in the water, causing chemical reactions, decomposition, or precipitation? Might some chemicals, or combination of chemicals, be damaging to the pipes themselves, which would be exacerbated where it sits for a long time, like in fire sprinklers? Would they introduce a bad taste or odor, cause staining of fixtures and clothes, or be bad for watering plants? Could they be toxic to pets, or cause skin irritation from bathing? There’s a lot of factors at play.
Killjoy.
What about adding Brawndo, it’s what plants crave!!!
A bunch of that ends up in water anyway. Not every bit of every drug people take is broken down by the body; some passes through unchanged and ends up in the sewers. Unfortunately, waste water treatment plants usually don’t break them down so they end up in wherever the treated water is disgorged by the plants (usually downriver or into the ocean). And there they may cause environmental problems. Contraceptives, by the way, seem to be especially bad for fish.
So my answer to the OP is: Nothing.
I came in to say lithium.
I actually wonder if we aren’t all suffering from mild lithium deficiencies in modern day, given the seeming growth of depression as the years go on.
Of course, that could just be differences in people seeking psychological help and differences between what qualified before and today. But we could sample blood levels and see if we’re mostly deficient.
Anecdote is not data. Lithium studies use, as I recall, use data across hundreds or thousands of towns. If you just compare two or three, then other variables can take over. The effect of lithium is just one small component of the world we live in.
What are you talking about? Lithium is not an essential mineral – in fact, the beneficial effects from taking Li[sub]2[/sub]CO[sub]3[/sub] are primarily due to the fact that the lithium ions supplant sodium ions along the carrier axons, changing their transmission rates (slowing shit down, as I recall). Adding it in trace to water could be a net positive for everyone affected, but it would not help address some kind of deficiency.
Do we want our shit slowing down? :dubious:
Several cities around here have stopped fluoridation, which I think is a bad idea. I think they argue toothpaste is a sufficient source.
I think grape flavour, antidepressants, antibiotics, Soylent green, appetite suppressants, distemper shots, carbonation, laughing gas, vitamins, birth control, metformin and powdered vegetables are all terrible ideas which nonetheless merit serious consideration. If it isn’t already in there.
Mercury, though. We are definitely not getting enough mercury.
Just because something is not an essential mineral (i.e. one where we keel over and die a horrible death) doesn’t mean that you can’t be deficient and the current science would seem to be leading that direction:
I believe that they only revise the big books of official illnesses and ailments like once a decade, so we could still have to wait a while, if the science is strong enough to support it and the topic gets notice for debate, but I think it’s likely that it will be added in a revision or two.
Obviously, I may be wrong, but the science has been replicated now in rats, in Japan, the US, Greece (if I remember correctly), and somewhere in Scandinavia (if I remember correctly) and the rat studies show markable health effects over generations and psychological effects during maturity. That all seems pretty compelling.
And it would make sense that if we missed the implications of lithium deficiency that there might not be sufficient guarantees in place to make sure that the population is getting enough, and so we would start to see issues, studies would run, and reveal that issues are forming in locations where there are insufficient sources.
Iodine is sometimes used to disinfect water supplies in emergencies, but the flap about iodized salt was because iodine happens to have a narrow margin between the required amount you should get, and the level at which too much is detrimental. Adding it routinely to the water, which some people will consume in huge quantities compared to other people, is probably not a good idea. It was added to salt because goiters from iodine deficiency were fairly common, as there isn’t a huge list of foods that contain iodine (eggs do, at least, which helps). At that, if people are really getting to much iodine from iodized salt, it’s because a lot of people eat WAY too much salt. Address that, rather than deiodizing the salt.