Avoid Fluoride in Toothpaste and Water

Since I've spent a lot of time researching, I've come to the conclusion that fluoride in drinking water and toothpaste is completely unnecessary.

Generally promoters of water fluoridation will tell you that fluoride is a natural substance found in the Earth's crust and that people who live in areas where the water contains higher levels of natural fluoridation have less cavities in their teeth. The fluoride which they are referring to is called calcium fluoride. The fluoride which is added to drinking water and toothpaste is most commonly sodium fluoride. Calcium fluoride is far safer for human consumption than sodium fluoride is because calcium fluoride is almost insoluble, meaning the body can't absorb it anywhere near as quickly as sodium fluoride.

There are health risks associated with using sodium fluoride. Excess fluoride can be deadly if enough is ingested at the same time. A tube of toothpaste seems to contain about 2200ppm(parts per million) sodium fluoride. It is estimated that there is enough sodium fluoride in a tube of toothpaste to kill a child, and injure even an adult. At the level of fluoride added to water, 1ppm, it would be very difficult to get a fatal dose of fluoride, and you'd have to drink so much that ingesting too much water would be a far greater concern. Short term effects from drinking fluoridated water is definitely not an issue but long term effects can occur.

Promoters of water fluoridation who are reading this would instantly start thinking, “but 1ppm sodium fluoride in drinking water isn't proven to be harmful, even long term”. Drinking fluoridated water itself would not be too likely to cause more than a minor negative effect long term, but drinking fluoridated water and using fluoridated toothpaste(the worst of the two probably being the toothpaste, unless you rinse your mouth very carefully) together would give you much higher than a safe amount of fluoride.

Given this constant usage of fluoride, dental fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis can develop. Dental fluorosis is mostly found in young children and can cause a severe problem. In mild cases, teeth can get small white spots on them but in more advanced cases teeth get brown spots on them and start to get pitted. Skeletal fluorosis can develop over time and cause bones and joints to become sore. Fluoridated water alone will not be likely to give you these problems but, like mentioned earlier, combining water fluoridation with toothpaste that has fluoride in it, especially if you do what the dentist says and spit but don't rinse to leave toothpaste on your teeth, you are probably consuming more fluoride than what is safe.

Sodium fluoride added to water is also mass medicating the population. Most people don't even know what fluoride is, other than that the dentist tells them its good for them. So most people can't make the conscious decision about using fluoride, because the dentist has already told them it is okay so they aren't convinced they need to do any further research. It is just like if they decided a small amount of the population experiences headaches regularly so they dissolve headache tablets in to the drinking water in an effort to “reduce headaches by up to 30%”. Now clearly it's just public medication, and if you aren't experiencing headaches and you don't want to take medication for something you don't have, you have to go to the inconvenience of supplying yourself with your own water.

It is often believed that ingesting fluoride is good for your teeth. This has never been proven. The only proven benefit of fluoride is topical use(direct contact with teeth) which poisons bacteria(though it also poisons everything else, which is a negative) but that only works where 15% of tooth decay occurs. A slight reduction in 15% of your tooth cavities. I see that as being less than 1% overall reduction considering hardly any of the fluoride in the water you drink actually would stay on your teeth, most would end up down your throat.

Sodium fluoride comes from the waste product of producing superphosphate fertiliser. This was then dumped, but caused too much pollution and problems with the environment that it wasn't allowed to be dumped. That is no conspiracy theory, though I agree that it is a conspiracy theory that it was only dumped in the water as a means of disposal. Remember, labelling something “Conspiracy Theory” does not make it complete nonsense and the disposal of sodium fluoride may have influenced dumping it in the public water supplies in a way which people thought was beneficial.

If you are a supporter of water fluoridation, you may take a carefully picked statistic to prove that water fluoridation is indeed a positive. You might think that tooth decay rates have gone down since the addition of water fluoridation. They have. Not because of the fluoride of course, because countries and areas where there is no water fluoridation have the same decreased decay rate as countries which have water fluoridation, which directly conflicts with statistics that show fluoride as effective. Something like 98% of Europe has banned water fluoridation claiming it is neither safe or effective. Japan banned water fluoridation decades ago.

The number of non fluoride supporters is growing in number rapidly, and not long from now fluoride in water and toothpaste will be a thing of the past. Awareness is increasing as more people will turn against it. Make the decision and stop using fluoride in toothpaste, and avoid fluoridated water if possible.