I am really curious about this, and want to learn more about this.
What is the value of this information, remembering that you are an adult, trace elements are hard to remove from water, and non-tap water is way more expensive than tap water?
If it actually affects my brain in a negative way, I would really like to know about it, so VOI is high.
In order to determine the VOI, you need a path from the information to a change in action, with a probability that you’ll act differently and an expected value if you do. Both of these are small; the evidence seems to indicate that fluoride is okay, and even if fluoride does affect your brain negatively, the effect size would have to be very small to have escaped detection, and it would have to be weighed against the additional expense of drinking bottled water. (And yes, very-minor brain damage and money are fungible, since you money can buy books and classes and free time and intelligence-enhancing drugs.)
A quick Google search suggests that reverse osmosis will take fluoride levels down by an order of magnitude, and although under-sink reverse osmosis filter output is indeed “way more expensive” than tap water, the difference is negligible as long as you only use the filtered stuff for drinking, while still bathing, cleaning, landscaping etc. with unfiltered.
This all assumes you actually want to remove fluoride from your water, though; I still haven’t seen any decent evidence suggesting you would.
You would have to do more than that; for example, you would have to avoid any toothpastes, obviously, but less obviously you would have to completely cut out tea and some other plants which naturally contain high levels of fluoride. (Tea would be a real sacrifice for me.)
I suspect the largest market is for very young children. My son’s pediatrician recommended we brush his teeth, but all the children’s toothpaste I’ve bought has been non-flourinated. I assume that this is based on some sort of medical advice to the manufacturers, but I’ve never actually checked.
At a guess, it’s a precaution: very young children may eat it down as a kind of candy. (Don’t all flouridated toothpastes come with warnings against swallowing?)
What is the value of this information, remembering that you are an adult, trace elements are hard to remove from water, and non-tap water is way more expensive than tap water?
Some of us have kids.
If it actually affects my brain in a negative way, I would really like to know about it, so VOI is high.
In order to determine the VOI, you need a path from the information to a change in action, with a probability that you’ll act differently and an expected value if you do. Both of these are small; the evidence seems to indicate that fluoride is okay, and even if fluoride does affect your brain negatively, the effect size would have to be very small to have escaped detection, and it would have to be weighed against the additional expense of drinking bottled water. (And yes, very-minor brain damage and money are fungible, since you money can buy books and classes and free time and intelligence-enhancing drugs.)
Most people in the Bay Area rationalist community are not financially limited on classes, books, and intelligence-enhancing drugs.
I’ve never met someone who told me they didn’t take modafinil because they couldn’t afford it.
A quick Google search suggests that reverse osmosis will take fluoride levels down by an order of magnitude, and although under-sink reverse osmosis filter output is indeed “way more expensive” than tap water, the difference is negligible as long as you only use the filtered stuff for drinking, while still bathing, cleaning, landscaping etc. with unfiltered.
This all assumes you actually want to remove fluoride from your water, though; I still haven’t seen any decent evidence suggesting you would.
You would have to do more than that; for example, you would have to avoid any toothpastes, obviously, but less obviously you would have to completely cut out tea and some other plants which naturally contain high levels of fluoride. (Tea would be a real sacrifice for me.)
There exists non-flourinated toothpaste.
Ah. I wondered whether it was a big enough market to support a non-flouridated toothpaste, but I didn’t have enough energy to look it up. (Head cold.)
I suspect the largest market is for very young children. My son’s pediatrician recommended we brush his teeth, but all the children’s toothpaste I’ve bought has been non-flourinated. I assume that this is based on some sort of medical advice to the manufacturers, but I’ve never actually checked.
At a guess, it’s a precaution: very young children may eat it down as a kind of candy. (Don’t all flouridated toothpastes come with warnings against swallowing?)
Not just the very young—my 5 year old son was consuming toothpaste at such a rate that we have had to cut off his formerly unfettered access to it.
No amount of telling him ‘eating a tubeful every few days is probably unhealthy’ had any effect—he just loves the stuff.