Is the following statement supported by epidemiological evidence or toxicological data? sodium fluoride is so toxic that there is enough in a tube of toothpaste to kill a small child A recent news article (actually, a submitted opinion article, which is often treated like “news”) says “sodium fluoride is so toxic that there is enough in a tube of toothpaste to kill a small child”. Is this a valid statement of risk? How can we […]
Blog Archive
The Reverse Logic of Fluoridation Opponents
I’d like to think that fluoridation opponents are merely wrong or mistaken, but here is an example of the reverse logic and obviously irrelevant claims that they use to support an argument (and they apparently consider this to be one of their better ones). It seems unlikely that someone would see the math behind these claims and make the backwards interpretation they do. Yet this article is being copied around various places, with strongly worded […]
Fooling with Numbers: The Anti-Fluoridation Campaign
What would you say if someone told you that you are putting your family at risk of almost certain death because a known highly toxic poison comes out of the exhaust pipe of your car, and that riding in the car will reduce children’s intelligence because there is lead in the car battery? You’d say the concentration is very low, and the evidence of deadly toxicity comes from studies with much higher concentrations, so it […]
We Believe Different Things Entirely
Martin VanPopta says on the Pro-Fluoride Lethbridge facebook page: Oh Maggie, surely you must understand we believe different things entirely. I believe you are wrong, and that I am right. I am not patronizing you. I think Martin is on to something here. My estimation in looking through FB pages and the pages of the Lethbridge Herald, is that the differences are fundamentally not about whether water fluoridation represents mass poisoning and forced mass medication, […]
Draft Manual for Preventing Adverse Effects from Evidence
From time to time people make big discoveries while surfing the web. For example, I have stumbled upon the provocative ideas that global warming is not real (or at least is not related to human activities in any important way), vaccination causes autism, the world is only 6,000 years old, condensation trails from aircraft are really a method to manipulate weather patterns, and that people are adding fluoride to drinking water in order to poison […]