Flouridation of water

Titan

Golden Member
Oct 15, 1999
1,819
0
0
I don't want to sound like general ripper here, but I'm wondering how much people know about flouridation fo water. My grandfather was a biochemist whom I never met, he died when my dad was 18. In the 50's when flouridation was starting my dad says he used to rant and carry on about how bad this is. I'm not trying to make this a political issue, but I'm wondering what the facts are. I've done some research on google.

The story that was sold to the american people was that flouride prevents tooth decay and is healthy for you. It is true that with a chemical reaction, flouride ions bond to the teeth and make it harder. However, in the past 50 years, tooth decay rates in the US have been the same as countries that don't flouridate their water.

And many countries don't allow tampering with water supplies at all unless the goal is to make the water cleaner and safer to drink. The stuff that starts to sound crazy and interesting is reasons why countries won't allow flouridation of water. Supposedly, the Dutch conducted tests with baby chics and found that the ones fed non flouridated water would not sit in your hand, and the ones that were fed it sat complacently in your hand. Now I am no conspiracy theorist, I just want to know the facts. And if the Dutch experiements are true, then there may be a scary conspiracy truth lurking in the shadows.

On to my highly technical question. I'm not ready to put on my tin foil hat, but you can find links to expensive products online that supposedly make the water better to drink by giving it better "energy." It looks like these things just swirl the water around, and do not use any kind of chemical treatment. Supposedly this gets rid of "bad charge" in the ions in the water. I'm curious if anyone really know about this stuff and can explain to me if it is a bunch of hooey.

Or can anyone tell me how de-ionized water is made? I also know that drinking de-ionized water would be a very bad idea as it would use your body to ionize the water.

Cheers!
 

pm

Elite Member Mobile Devices
Jan 25, 2000
7,419
22
81
Water fluoridation is supported by the World Health Organization the American Dental Association, the American Medical Association, the US Surgeon General, and the Center for Disease Control. Fluoridation of community water supplies is widely done in the US, Canada, and Australia and others such as Ireland. It is commonly discussed that the rest of the world does not flouridate their water supplies and their cavity rates are comparable to the US and Canada, but what is not generally revealed is that fluoride is provided in other forms in these countries.

In Europe and Mexico and Latin America, New Zealand and many other smaller countries, the typical way to provide flouride to areas that do not have naturally occuring fluoride in the water supply is by adding it to salt. This is similar to the way that iodine has been added to salt in the US (iodinized salt) since early 1920's. The impact on cavities since fluoridation was introduced through either the water supply, through salt, or through other methods has been well documented in research literature and I can't imagine that anyone can seriously argue that flouride does not help prevent cavities. I would recommend that you read up on the ADA's page on fluoridation here. There is quite a lot of misinformation on the internet and in the non-mainstream press about water fluoridation.

I can understand people being concerned about the safety of the water supply and I can understand a general distrust in adding any external additive to the water supply - even one that occurs naturally in many areas of the world. There are also reasonable concerns about the costs of fluoridation and whether it is necessary in these days of toothpaste and higher levels of dental hygiene awareness. But the vast majority of world is receiving fluoride either from water (either naturally, or added externally), from salt (added), or from dental products (tooth paste, mouthwash, etc.) and I have never understood concerns about the safety of fluoride. I often wonder if salt were fluoridated in the US as it is elsewhere if the subject would still be so controversial. Searching on google on water fluoridation shows that there is a fair amount of controversy over the practice. Searching for "salt fluoridation" turns up little more than research on the subject. I wonder why.

For what it's worth, I had to sit through several hours of public discussion on the subject of water fluoridation during public hearings on the matter while waiting for the agenda to shift to the subject that I wanted to hear: improvements and extensions to a bicycle path in my neighborhood.

As far as adding energy to water... you could add chemical energy (some chemical added), kinetic energy (stir it with a spoon), potential energy (raise the glass/bottle higher off the ground), and probably some other types like nuclear energy (add in some heavy water), but I don't think this is what you are asking. Specifically what kind of energy do you mean? Like it gives the person who drinks it an energy boost (like sugar? caffeine?).

Deionized water is usually made from one of three techniques: chemically by adding a chemical that bonds with the ions that you want to remove, using reverse-osmosis where high pressure water is pushed through a semi-porous membrane leaving the ions behind on the other side, and distillation where water is essentially passed through a still much like you would do with alcohol. I have never heard that deionized water is harmful to drink. It's essentially fairly pure water. I can't see how that could harm someone.

Lastly, I'd be interested in links to the research paper in Holland on chicks and flouridated water. I would be interested in reading how the experiment was performed.
 

PrinceXizor

Platinum Member
Oct 4, 2002
2,188
99
91
Am I the only one who is somewhat amused that in a country where practically EVERYTHING is legal, that flouridated water is an issue?

P-X
 

sgtroyer

Member
Feb 14, 2000
94
0
0
hi pm

Someone was telling me about the risks involved in drinking deionized water a few weeks ago. I don't buy it, but you can draw your own conclusions. It had to do, I think, with cells collapsing because of osmosis. Suppose you drink enough pure water so that the ionic concentration of the water outside of cells goes down significantly. There are salts and other ions inside of the cells which can't easily travel through the cell membrane. Osmosis would cause water to enter the cells to equalize the concentrations, thus rupturing the cells. Sounds pretty hokey to me, one of those theories with just enough science to be plausible, but not nearly enough to be true. Seems like you'd need to drink a heck of a lot of the stuff, too.
 

Particle Man

Member
Oct 9, 1999
25
0
0
The real issue is equilibrium of salts in your body when drinking de-ionize (de-i) water. Without the natural salts found in drinking water, the equilibrium of salts will change, therefore causing a problem within the cells. I don't think that the cells will rupture, unless the individual cells are immersed in purified water for prolonged time. The human body is a wonderous bio-unit and it is able to handle many types of problems without going terminal. The problem de-i water is that the human body needs certain salts to be replenished, and de-i water will not do it. You will end up urinating out many of these salts over time, causing an inbalance in your body. I don't think you will die because of it, however you can get sick due to the lack of certain salts. In other words, drink some gator-aid and your system should get back to normal.

This is why it is not really good to drink de-i water all of the time.
-PM
 

Shalmanese

Platinum Member
Sep 29, 2000
2,157
0
0
Fluroine and all the other hokum is pure psuedoscience. As for de-ionized water, the total amount of salts and impurities in normal drinking water is so minimal that removing them is not going to do anything measurable o your body. I dont know why you would want to drink it though as it would be pretty damn expensive and give you no health benifits.