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achughes  ·  4228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Bad Skeptic: Why I’m voting for fluoridation in Portland today.

My biggest question is "where does all of this stop?". Sure fluoride can be taken out of the water in a bid to get the water with less chemicals in it, but there is still chlorine added to the water, which I would argue is a more harmful chemical than fluoride. While fluoride it good in small amounts chlorine isn't and I would be much happier with water that is clean, but without any chlorine in it. So where is the protest of chlorine?

And then once we take all of the chemicals out of the water supply where are we going to get our water from? While you could drink water from a stream it is definitely not cleaner than the water you get out of your tap. Even filtered there are still a number of pathogens in the water. And now we are back to adding chlorine to the water, and it isn't any "cleaner" than before. So what is clean, natural water to you? Where do we draw the line between ingesting chemicals that may or may not make the water any cleaner than before?

And finally my stance: It is guaranteed that we are all going to die someday and on a day to day basis I do thousands of things that are more dangerous than ingesting a little bit of fluoride every time I drink water, so I think there is very little impact on the quality of my life and well-being by putting fluoride in the water. As a kid I we were on well water and I got fluoride tablets to compensate. I can positively say the difference between well water and city water has had no impact on my life 23 years later.