If you are on city water in North America, chances are very good that your water is fluoridated.
While it was, and still is, hailed as a great boon to public health, ingested fluoridated water doesn’t have any proven health benefits.
The American Dental Association now advise to avoid using fluoride.
This post tells us that all benefits are to do with the outside of the tooth enamel, and the benefits can be realized by having your annual fluoride rinse at the dentist rather than drinking fluoridated water.
99% of Europe has banned fluoride in their water.
I personally choose to do without the rinse because it makes my stomach do see-saws.
In addition, if you are feeding a baby formula, you should be doing it with non-fluoridated water (read, spendy spring water) so as to avoid flouride overdose in your infant.
If you’re starting to get up in arms about this flouride business and be all like its the greatest thing ever, ask yourself how rural residents get by without the stuff in their water. They do. Quite regularly. Well water is not fluoridated, neither is lake water. And chances are those folks are doing quite fine, both dentally and otherwise.
So how can you avoid fluoride?
Drink spring water and avoid extra doses of the stuff in your toothpaste. I use Green Beaver toothpaste without flouride, one of the only brands I’ve been able to find without the stuff.
And don’t rely on your Brita to take out the stuff. It wasn’t made for that, as this note from the company attests:
“The ion exchange resin used in BRITA filters is not designed to remove negatively charged substances like fluoride. However, the activated carbon in the BRITA filters absorbs so effectively that it may remove a trace amount of fluoride throughout the life of the filter. Unfortunately, we can’t provide you with any suggestions for removing significant percentages of fluoride; none of our products are designed to do this. ” – BRITA customer service rep
While fluoride certainly won’t kill you, it’s not exactly meant to be ingested either. That alone makes it worth avoiding as far as I’m concerned.
