Oh god I'm not getting into this one, again, but I do love the conspiracy angle on the mercury fillings.

I don't think people know how much MONEY the dentists would make, and we are talking capital letter money if there was a real health risk. For a few years all they would need to do is replace the old ones with composite and tadda lots of money to be made.

The lack of mercury in a lot of dental offices these days has nothing to do with health and everything to do with market.

• People are paranoid due to a lot of screwed up information, so they don't want the mercury fillings.
  
• The composite ones look better.

In terms of longevity the mercury ones are still superior, but in the free market you do what people want, or in places like Germany because its against the law but they don't even allow nickel to be used there which means no steel, based on very weak and mostly rare potentials for allergic reactions, something I've never seen in practice. Ironically I HAVE seen allergies to the composites people are using instead of amalgam fillings.

I was wrong about fluoride before. The evidence about it being dangerous is pretty poor. I would like to see more data on it, but the stuff that Liq found a while back was more than convincing.

I love tea too much to quit fluoride anyway.

I definetly believe the estrogen in all the plastic food containers we eat out of is a *HUGE* almost unknown problem.

Warm showers

Really what does it matter in the grand scheme of a lifespan? Either way does it add or take away 10 quality years? Whats another element from the periodic table when traces of various drugs are being found as well. As per ADA; its safe just dont give your infants tap water. Yeah . . .

As I have before mentioned m teeth were truly fucked up by years of soda drinking and abuse. I just had them fixed and was concerned about the mercury.

No that you have appeased my fears but you do show why the mercury is used and I appreciate that.

Well if it were ME (and it will be soon, I have a broken filling) I'd get the composite ones but thats 100% vanity. Amalgam fillings, even the best, are not very attractive. The older kind were actually better because they were less hard and would 'flow' into cracks but those were even uglier.

Oh no, I got the composite on all but one back tooth. Again, I appreciated the info.

Fluoride is NOT a periodic element
 

I like the way you say another element in the periodic table. That is a common mistake. Fluoride is NOT an element in a periodic table but any compound that includes fluorine (which is the element people confuse it with). Teflon, the magic coating that makes non-stick surfaces is a floride just to show how diverse florides are.

The most common additives to drinking water are H2SiF6 and Na2SiF6. Those are what we refer to as fluorides. Originaly it was NaF (sodium floride) which means that older studies about floride in drinking water refers to NaF and not the currently used compounds.

As for toxicity NaF has a known case where 4g was enough to be deadly. Na2SiF6, however, is much more toxic and requires only 0.2g for the same effect.

I don't really care what the dentists say since they can't seem to make up their minds or provide experimental data showing the benefits of florides in drinking water. You cannot say that introducing floride into a population's drinking water provides experimental data since there are far too many uncontrollable variables for the data to be conclusive.

So without sound experiemental data showing the benefits of florides in drinking water who's great idea was it to introduce these counpounds which can be deadly into everyone's drinking water? What government would allow this to happen without studying the long term effects? What government would make it an obligation to add this to the drinking water?

Go read the links I provided earlier and then come back.

Why do you like it? I dont claim to be an expert in the nonclementure of chemsitry. After I dropped orgranic chemstry in college, I didnt pursue any further study of the subject. I sometimes dont detail my statements enough, but there generally isnt much of a call to get into specifics unless its changing the nature of what Im saying. I didnt think this was. Another intellectual casualty of google.


http://www.mii.org/periodic/LifeElement.html#f

"Fluorine (F)

"Fluorine is an element that the body uses to strengthen bones and teeth. This element differs from the other elements that the body needs because we get most of it from the water that we drink, not from the food that we eat. The form of fluorine that normally exists in nature, fluoride, is actually added to most drinking water supplies. In areas where fluoride is added to the drinking water, children get up to 70% fewer dental cavities than in areas where the drinking water is low in fluoride. As you may have noticed, it is also added to most brands of toothpaste for its ability to fight cavities.

But this important element is also valuable because it helps the body strengthen the bones in your body. Fluoride is the most important trace element affecting bones and teeth. In fact, fluoride is the only element known to single-handedly stimulate bone growth. Fluoride, along with large quantities of calcium, is a large part of what makes your bones strong. When the body does not receive enough fluoride, bones start to loose calcium, and then become weak and brittle. Fortunately, it is easy for us to get enough fluorine because of the fact that it is added to our drinking water. Other good sources of this key element include seafood, teas and toothpaste."

I did read the links you provided (the first link by the way is ridiculous). All I see, however, is the conclusion that ever since water fluoridation has been introduced as a policy, dental hygiene has improved based on data collected from populations. This is debatable but not the issue that I am most concerned about.

What concerns me is a lack of studies about the overall health risks or benefits of fluoride. I did find a Chinese study claiming lower IQs in areas with fluoridated water ( link : http://www.fluoride-journal.com/00-33-2/332-74.pdf ). There are also a few studies claiming that fluoride causes cancer and the weakening of bones (see wikipedia article for links). I did not find any studies about fluoride being safe in the long term.

The only argument which I have seen in favor of the safety of fluoride is that there is no long term health risks are statements that this is a natural occurring phenomenon and hence must be safe. This proves in no way that this procedure does not have adverse health affects, it only shows that these affects if they exists are not severe enough to cause the water to be considered unsafe. It also generalises the many different compounds which are considered fluorides and disregards the fact that while some of these compounds may be safe, most probably are not.

Now I am not claiming that fluoride is not safe or that it is; I would be stupid to do so with what little evidence I have. All I am saying is that there is a potential for it to be unsafe, that there are not enough studies that prove its long term safety let alone its short term safety and that even without knowing for a fact that it is safe, that is was introduced into our population's drinking water.

I like it because its a common mistake which I made myself before looking at a periodic table to make sure. Fluorine != floride. Fluorides contain fluorine but they are not interchangable. So fluoride is a family of compounds, fluorine is an element. This is important because the fluoride family contains so many compounds that saying they are safe is impossible since they are so different from each other.

There are 358 journal references at the end of the ADA link I provided.

unfortunately the article is locked to cut and paste and I'm not going to go to great effort to reproduce them. I will give a few numbers of long term studies.

295
257
231

Those are just from a very incomplete and very very quick scan. I think your issue is you don't have the information and sadly, google doesn't know all.

There was a potential to be unsafe, this isn't 1950, we have the long term data, its safe.

I briefly scanned these studies and they seem to be from credible sources. These do not, however, discredit the study I previously posted about lowering IQs. They also do not mention specifically which fluoride compound or compounds where tested and found safe.

http://www.pr-inside.com/first-ever-...id-r596428.htm

Well fuck, there you have it.

Old news.....

I gotta catch a plane.

Short version, there are parts of the country where NATURAL flouride levels are too high, the EPA had a standard for it like just about everything else in the water supply, the report said the standard should be lower. It has nothing to do with public fluoridation because those levels are far far lower.

This took me 5 minutes on google to find, if you found this will you should be able to find responses and not compel me to waste my time answering old claims.

I read somewhere that fluoride in drinking water tended to, on average, compel folks to piss in cornflakes. Is that true?