Talk:Water fluoridation

I believe this is wrong...

"Water fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply"

So if I add fluoride to a 5 gallon jug of water for my private consumption, it would not be considered water fluoridation?

I propose eliminating "public" from the sentence.Gesellman (talk) 03:27, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

In the usual sense, water fluoridation means the addition of fluoride to public water supply because, although theoretically possible, no other entity is engaged in fluoridating water. In an effort to make definitions understandable to the majority of the readers, we inevitably make small sacrifices in precision. One could quibble about "controlled" since water could be fluoridated in an uncontrolled manner. One could quibble about the "addition of fluoride" since chemists can add reagents other than fluoride salts to release fluoride, etc. So to restrict the definition to any fluoridation of water would give undue weight to esoteric meanings (see WP:UNDUE, which means that the proposed change risks giving too much weight to a niche interpretation, misleading readers). At least from my perspective. --Smokefoot (talk) 03:57, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Nice article, small crit

Nice article. I appreciate how it covers a controversial subject and gives appropriate weight (not much) to the kookier anit-F stuff.

Small crit: I felt like the sentence about females looking prettier and earning more money when fluoridated was a little too much. In another part of this article, it discusses poor quality or sketchiness of some research. And that thing about the females is a working paper (just a draft, really, a pdf on the net) not a published journal report. Plus it seems like a bit of a one off and prone to a lot of confounding factors.

TCO (Reviews needed) 03:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I have watchlisted (but not kept up with entirely) this article since its main author departed Wikipedia. As far as I can tell, Eubulides switched out the original papers because he liked to use freely accessed sources. It doesn't appear that text should be deleted without accessing the original sources he used-- unfortunately, he's no longer around to ask, and I don't have journal access. I would worry about any text that has crept in since Eubulides departed, but he was very strong on sourcing, so text in the article before his departure is less suspect. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

It's no big deal to me, really. I'm just dropping the comment for others to consider. FYI, it was a working paper before also, not a journal report. And probably the way to do it right is to cite the journal and a separate link to the free working paper version with parens "draft" or "working paper version" in the event that there is a free draft, but not a pdf of the final version. In any case, I think the overall article does a great job of handling this touchy subject and coming down (appropriately) saying what the scientific consensus is and that the anti-F stuff is deprecated in the literature. I just felt this one report on the pro F side was a little "much" and sketchy on its own and not needed (kinda particular). It is too bad, E is not here, but I would make the same comment to him. It's just minor, constructive feedback on the talk page.TCO (Reviews needed) 17:13, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

The published paper is:

• Glied S, Neidell M. The Economic Value of Teeth. J. Human Resources March 1, 2010 vol. 45 no. 2 468-496.

Having quickly read the draft paper and this review that mentions it I think we should drop it. The authors are looking at historical data that they admit would probably not recur (due to fluoride being available from other sources too). This is a primary research paper, so not our best choice of source, though we could use the review I linked. However, that review repeats what the paper admits, that they were really researching the effect of oral health on labour market outcomes, not fluoridation. They simply chose that as a marker they could test. Lastly, our article uses the ambiguous phrase "earned significantly more" for a figure of 2-4%. That may be statistically significant, but isn't financially all that significant. Colin°^Talk 19:36, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for digging it up, Colin ... ok, based on that, I agree, and since that makes three of us, I'll go remove it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:39, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

IQ add by IP

Seems like the IQ stuff should go in a different section. I don't think (IANAD) that those journals linked are anti-F literature. Seems like they are decent journals.

Seems like they are talking more about the effect of actual damage from regions where there is too much fluoride (parts of China). Or perhaps that info should just be cut or put in some other article (not really about water fluoridation, but about exposure, much of it from coal burning).

TCO (Reviews needed) 22:59, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that this information places WP:UNDUE weight on a perverse situation barely related to the ppm levels used in public waters. Separately, I had also thought about adding papers on the pervasiveness of fluoride in sea water, but considerations of WP:UNDUE weight held me back. Also I did not want to start a list of where fluoride occurs in water fluoridation.

The standards for WP:MEDRS are pretty stringent. I would check the citation and make sure that it is at least a reputable, big time journal vs the usual creepy stuff that the most virulent anti-fluoride groups usually rely on.

Should you decide to proceed, a more appropriate place is Fluoride toxicity#Chronic toxicity, where the fundamental problem for those poisoned is high fluoride from ground water. It's pretty serious problem globally, akin to the issue of arsenic contamination of groundwater.

Other editors might have useful views, so I would wait and see the community response to your idea.--Smokefoot (talk) 23:16, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that is the place for it. I don't know for sure those are decent journals, but there were two and one was a review. I think I will try it there. I lack the global knowledge to tell weight, but...well...had a review. I think it is worth a shot. I am on the pro-F side, don't worry.TCO (Reviews needed) 23:25, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I am not particularly pro-F or anti-F, and given the fluoridation of toothpaste and other things, it is kind of moot point I think cause we all have our fix. Back to the IQ thing, my guess is that any elemental deficiency or excess will cause an IQ problem and a host of others. Arsenic is apparently healthful in tiny doses, and, famously, selenium is an essential element, but a little too much is lethal. These are the nuanced complications of reality that the anti-fluoride groups just refuse to deal with. BTW, water fluoridation is viewed about 30000 times each month.--Smokefoot (talk) 23:43, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

What we have to watch for here is that we cite reliable secondary sources that are discussing water fluoridation: the controlled addition of floride to the water. The moment we start citing sources (and primary ones at that) that just discuss fluoride in water or fluoride and health in general, then we are taking the WP:OR step that we consider those facts to be relevant to water fluoridation. As Smokefoot says, we have other articles that discuss these other aspects (and I should note that they by and large are not watchlisted or cared for like this article so beware). Colin°^Talk 08:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Violent agreement.TCO (Reviews needed) 17:01, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

IQ add by Cottegedream

Regarding this edit, just want to reiterate that correlation studies are good for nothing other than suggesting that more research is necessary. Correlation studies suggest that storks deliver babies N^oformation ^Talk 00:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Concur with the caution and the suggestion that we not cite the paper on IQ. --Smokefoot (talk) 01:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

No adverse effects?

Water quality is something I've paid considerable attention to over the past 22 years. I want to raise question about the notion that fluoride in drinking water has no adverse effects except potentially leading to dental fluorosis. It is published in PubMed that fluoride accumulates in the pineal gland. According to this article is accumulates more readily in the pineal than in bone and teeth. Numerous other PubMed articles indicate effects of fluoride toxicity. Most (perhaps all) of these studies are using significantly higher levels of fluoride than the EPA recommended limit for drinking water, although many have the same or similar levels to fluoridated table salt (another issue, for another Wiki page on Salt Fluoridation). For instance, it was shown that sodium fluoride (at 200ppm) decreases the activity of important antioxidants, resulting in myocardial damage in rats . Just because they study was done at 200ppm, we can't conclude that lower dosages don't also have a negative impact on such antioxidant activity. Here is a study confirming the issue of fluoride increasing the uptake of lead in people exposed to both http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20188782. There are also links between fluoride intake and thyroid dysfunction . Again, most of these studies work with higher than what is likely from ingesting water with a maximum of 2ppm fluoride. Yet, it is faulty science to therefore conclude that at lower levels fluoridation of water is harmless or has no adverse effects.

While searching for the above studies, I came across this page: fluoridealert (dot) org / fluoride-facts.aspx (I see this link has been blocked, but for this disussion, I wish to refer editors to the material I am mentioning).

I have gone through the references cited by that article. Whilst some of the conclusions drawn by the author based on the references cited could be considered questionable (i.e. the studies are inconclusive at the levels commonly added to drinking water), I have to ask: Are the authors of this Wiki page dismissing all the points made in that article and all the cited references?

Please advise. Jonathan E. (talk) 16:33, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Any points made at fluoridealert and in the literature it cites will have been discussed in other reliable secondary sources and either confirmed or dismissed there. Fluoridelert is an activist site and thus not useful for our purposes of a neutral encyclopedia. There is extensive 3rd-party literature to draw on instead. As for it being "faulty science" to draw the conclusion that there is no relation between toxic effects seen in gross doses and levels present in fluoridated water, that is your own presumption, one not shared by the scientific community, so it is that community you should seek to convince, not Wikipedia. Franamax (talk) 16:44, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I am not a fan of this sentence in the article - By comparison, brushing with a nonfluoride toothpaste has little effect on cavities.[49] The link doesn't work either. It makes it sound like brushing your teeth with non-flouride toothpaste is worthless and that is wrong. I don't have any proof, but flouride in toothpastes is sort of new. They didn't have flouride in them when I was a teenager or young adult. My mother brushed her teeth with baking soda her whole life and her teeth were fine. Mylittlezach (talk) 23:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)