944
Fluoride in drinking water has no effect on IQ or brain function, long-term study shows
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
944 points (99.4% liked)
News
37314 readers
1714 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
When crunchy lefties were first spouting off about this, they at least had an explanation. It was a nonsense explanation rooted in woo-woo pseudoscience and mysticism, but it was at least an explanation. Also, most people were inoculated against that kind of bullshit, we knew they were slightly crazy and wrong, and it was a view that was relatively harmless and allowed to exist. Most places it was "go ahead, you do you - drink your fluoride-free water and let your teeth rot, but you have to source your water yourself - this municipality fluoridates for the public good, it's backed by science and dental experts, etc."
These new crazy people, most of them don't even have an explanation. (some of them are actually the same people, just moved down the alt-right pipeline after a couple decades of propaganda). If you were to ask them why they think fluoride is bad you could get responses ranging from blank stares to actual physical attacks. Transmission of conspiracy theories is so supercharged in this environment - all you have to do is jump on a bandwagon, and your buddies in the same club as you will give you the approval you desperately need just for wearing that opinion on your sleeve - no critical thought required, just base monkey instinct. This is such an irresistible way of belonging to some group and getting that special feeling that it's becoming a real problem for most of us.
A small minority of these folks are (small L) libertarians or anti-authoritarians who believe in bodily sovereignty. That's a rational thought process that I can actually sympathize with, so they get a minimum amount of points for having a comprehensible, defensible position. They just shouldn't be able to force their choice on everyone else. (That would seem to contradict their own philosophy anyway). The public good of fluoridation, backed by science and experts, should vastly outweigh even that position. As before with the crunchy hippies, fine, it's your right to choose what goes into your body - along with that comes the responsibility to take care of that for yourself, in line with your own stated ideals.
FWIW, the anti-fluoride thing started off when the John Birch Society, a right-wing hate group, started pushing it decades ago.
Not to any meaningful degree in the US. It was the John Birch Society and KKK here.
They both certainly existed, though the latter was somewhat underground in the 1950s.
It's easy to find documentation of their positions on fluoridation; it's not so common to find evidence of environmental groups opposing it when there was a clear public health benefit.
You've never met a conspiracy theory you didn't want to deep throat, have you, sweaty?
I always laugh when people misspell sweetie. You think you're being clever, but you've completely botched your insult.
You're assuming they meant to say sweetie. Calling someone sweaty can be an insult too.
I didn't misspell anything, spud.
And you definitely haven't met a conspiracy theory you didn't want to dry hump.
What was lefty uber-liberal hippieism got co-opted during covid by right wingers and fascist science deniers.
they are all the same people.
they just have different origin stories for their crazy beliefs.
It's a base human drive, that is far more powerful than critical thought. The only reason we sort of got around this was we had built institutions and had collective identities... and a lot of that is crumbling away the past few decades.
So people are reverting to forming their own little tribes around some niche set of beliefs to make them feel empowered. As most of them no longer feel apart of their larger tribe.
Anecdotally, I left a volunteer org I'd been a part of for ten years because this brainrot had taken it over. The new members wanted our org to some super special club for cool people only, instead of being just open to anyone and my emphasis on it being open and accessible made me persona non grata. BECAUSE HOW COULD I NOT WANT TO FEEL SPECIAL AND SUPERIOR. oh, and they also started saying they should be paid for volunteer work... because felt they 'deserved' all that money we were getting from donations from the public...
I am recovering from being raised by ultra crunchy parents. I had no vaccinations until I was already an adult. I have a unique vantage point into both sides of this issue and the thing of it is that yes maybe they are dumb, but the fear comes from a very real, even logical, place. Anything pushed on you by the American government should give anyone pause, because when was the last time the government spent gobs of money in the name of public health? Massive infrastructure spending in order to keep Americans from spending less on healthcare and increase their quality of life? Yeah that does not sound real. Why would the same government that has been dismantling public education and food/medication regulation spend a single red cent to make Americans' teeth better? It makes no logical sense, so it is easy to see why generations of Americans that have been screwed over by their government at every turn would be skeptical of anything put in the water supply "for their benefit." This is about a loss of trust in lawmakers, and all they've done to perpetuate it.
As an aside, though, I have watched a ton of people traverse the crunchy leftist to MAGA pipeline and it still bewilders me. "I don't trust the government, but I trust the sleezy car salesman I have vehemently loathed for decades." I can only blame lead poisoning for that one.
The decision to fluoridate is with the municipality afaik, but there are probably federal guidelines. Some places have never fluoridated, and if you want it you need to use tablets. There are also loads of people on well water where that's supported by the local geology - it's super common in my area. Well water may or may not contain naturally-occurring fluoride, and usually not at the level of a municipal source.
But that makes it even more amazing IMO, that a consensus was reached and implemented in a decentralized fashion in most places, to the point where it's normalized. The only other collective action I can recall, which might surpass it in scope and impressiveness, also backed by scientific insight, was the Montreal Protocol.