Personally I won't lose a lot of sleep over this (I can afford proper dental care for my kids), but the anti-fluoride arguments always struck me as rather weak.
- The health effects claims are pretty much bogus. I've gone through the scientific literature as well as the major regulatory reviews; there is no credible evidence of harmful effects other than fluorisis at levels used in Calgary drinking water. Most of the studies quoted by anti-fluoride activists as showing harmful effects use concentrations higher than Calgary's as the "low fluoride control group."
- The claims of no benefit likewise don't hold up to scrutiny. Anti-fluoride sites use some pretty dubious comparisons when they try to demonstrate no benefit.
- Maybe there's some grounds to the "ethical" argument, but not very strong in my opinion. Optimizing the concentration of a mineral that's already present (at concentrations of 0.1 to 0.4 ppm in the Bow River, compared to 0.7 ppm as the target in drinking water) is a lot different than adding a drug. I don't see it as any different than adding iodide to salt, vitamin D to milk or folic acid to flour - they're all cost-effective ways of providing a net health benefit to the population.
- The "industrial waste" argument is just plain silly. The fluoride compounds added disassociate in water, and a fluoride ion is a fluoride ion regardless of where it comes from. Whether it was originally sodium fluoride or calcium fluoride makes absolutely no difference.
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