overview for zenParsnip

As bans spread, fluoride in drinking water divides communities across the US in c/[email protected]

[–] zenParsnip 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The missing ingredient in the US is a lack of public health infrastructure that universally covers poor people. Obama's healthcare reform didn't even cover every poor person in the country. But if we had that, adding in a fluoridation regime would be trivial. "Fluoridating tapwater is the cheapest way to get it to poor people" is only true because so many poor people in the US have no healthcare, period, so you have to set up all the infrastructure from scratch. Dumping it in the city water is cheaper than setting up real public health infra, but only before you factor in every other benefit of having public health infrastructure and all the cost savings across all of society caused by having public health infrastructure.

Neoliberals in the US love it because it's one of those "smart" solutions that requires absolutely no national-level infrastructure, you just need companies with fluoride waste on one side, and municipalities willing to buy some on the other. You don't have to make our society better, and what's more, you can castigate opponents for hating poor people when really you're the one preferring dumping a single chemical in the water to address a single type of dental problem instead of supporting actual public dental health infra in this country.

Also, dumping it in the water sort of obviates one of the more important aspects of administering compounds like fluoride, which is dose control. Water fluoridation increases the rate of fluoride toxicity because drinking water is not the only source of fluoride in people's diets. Improperly administered fluoridation schemes have killed hundreds of people in the past. More recent research has also indicated that there are heath risks associated with accumulation of fluoride in soft tissues leading to damage heart muscle, kidneys, liver, and brain which had not been documented back in the 19-fucking-40's when this dipshit policy was first invented. all claims in this paragraph from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9920376/

We fluoridate the water so we don't have to actually help poor people with their health in this country, and apparently so liberals don't need to keep up with health research conducted since the 1940's.

Israel's defence against Iran attack overnight 'likely cost over $1bn' in c/[email protected]

[–] zenParsnip 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

It's a reference to antiquity. A shekel was a unit of weight and later a unit of currency in the ancient Near East.