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Ahh yes tooth paste n brushing is good..Today I believe we receive plenty of fluoride daily with out drinking it, when i talked with my local water plant about fluoride in our water' the woman who operates the plant said it's such a small amount, 1 ppm so no fear.. then i said its a unregulated drug'' she said no it's 1 ppm..so i said im 210lbs and i drink 48oz of tap water daily, and my wife is 115lbs and drinks 2 liters daily.. so again how is the dose regulated...she said o crap and she has to little ones..we chatted for over an hour. she was the winner of plant operator of the year last year as well..
. but what is dental fluorosis... why drink fluoride, that a body's bones absorbs over your life time.. I have talked to my dentist about fluoride in our drinking water, she said it's a good thing.. I asked how do you know?? she said she was told at dental school it's a good thing..O ok... lOl .... enjoy...all good cause ''They say its all good...each do their own..
BTW, there is another type of filter system that has not been mentioned yet, but which is excellent... .5 mil ceramic filters, which can convert disease carrying ditch water and convert it into safe drinking water. The typical "Fine" filter people use stops particles 5 mil and larger, which is fine grit. This is 10 times finer, which stops bacteria and viruses. I use a small dome filter that costs about $25 and is good for 6 months. It's excellent for disaster planning supplies, because with the addition of two containers, such as 5 gallon plastic buckets, one can obtain safe drinking water even if the main water supply is compromised or stops working. There are also larger ceramic "candle" filters which can be used for whole house filtering. They are higher maintenance than the 5 mil type, because they stop so much more than a "Fine," but where there is any chance of contamination... such as with wells and rainwater catchment systems... they are my filter of choice.
These are very popular on survivalist websites. Berkey, one of the largest, spends a great deal of money on web advertising and they have many loyal but ignorant followers. But neither Berkey nor the others work since they can't stop small virus from passing through. A .5 micron hole is a big hole in the viral world. They're now banned from sale in California. It's necessary to boil or chemically treat drinking water to remove disease producing viruses. Only distillation removes everything.
These are very popular on survivalist websites. Berkey, one of the largest, spends a great deal of money on web advertising and they have many loyal but ignorant followers. But neither Berkey nor the others work since they can't stop small virus from passing through. A .5 micron hole is a big hole in the viral world.
Perhaps I misstated the kinds of disease organisms that are stopped by the ceramic filters, but in fact that have been very successfully used in disaster relief in Haiti and Indonesia and India, where "feces infected ditch water" has been made safe to drink by running it through these filters in a simple gravity fed drip system. Oh, and the filter size has now been improved to .2 micron.
Sorry, this is an example of how health related info gets twisted out of shape by misinterpretation and repetition on the internet. What happened was that California passed a law requiring water treatment equipment to be certified as meeting certain standards, such as being lead-free. They also required disclosure of certain manufacturing information that can be considered proprietary. Berkey, a leading filter company, chose not to reveal that info, nor to go to the expense and trouble of seeking that certification just to be able to sell their products in one state. Therefore they removed their products from distribution in California. It was a business decision by the company, not a government ban.
I live in a prairie town, and when I first moved here 42 years ago the water was horrible. Horrible! Cream would curdle when stirred into your coffee cup. T-shirts turned orange from washing them. House exteriors were orange the first 4-5 feet above ground level from sprinkler systems getting water on them. An old-timer pointed out to me that one could easily pick out the town's natives because the older ones all had orange teeth!
We installed a water softener and a whole-house filter. The softener removed the harshest minerals and the filter removed the iron. Water was much better but still left a lot to be desired. A few years later the town voted for a bond issue to raise $120 million to tap into the Madison Water Formation about 70 miles from town. This is sweet tasting water but very hard, so it's mixed with water from other well sources to produce fairly decent water. A couple years ago we passed another bond issue to double the water from the Madison -- an identical parallel line and more wells. This one was $260 million.
We still soften our water, but the filters I used to use don't do much these days. I installed them for my darkroom years ago (before digital) but they (one for hot, one for cold) never picked up enough gunk to turn colors over years of use. I used to have to change the whole-house filter weekly.
So it's softened tap water for us. It could be better, but I've had a lot of bottled water that tasted worse.
I have an inline water filter in the water line that supplies my fridge with water. I change it twice per year. I drink filtered water at work too. I only drink water from the tap when the power is out.
The tap water in my area tastes terrible so yes, I filter it using a cartridge filter in my refrigerator which I change twice a year. The resulting filtered water and ice cubes are SO much better with it.
At work, we get bottled water delivered to us once or twice a week.
.1 micron and .02 micron Sawyer filters - new technology
I just ran across this info on Sawyer filters and wanted to share it, in case it is of interest to anyone else...
While most of the folks on this thread are filtering city water or well water, and filtering to remove bad taste and/or to remove chlorine, arsenic, flouride, etc., my interest is a bit different, focused on removing possible biological contamination in two distinct scenarios: 1) disaster preparedness, and 2) rainwater catchment.
For the last couple of years the .5 mil - .2 mil ceramic filter technique I mentioned earlier has been my go-to standard for both because of its ease of use, relatively low cost ($25 for dome filter, $50-60 for candle filter, both good for 6 months of use), and long shelf life (several years in sealed packages).
Disadvantages are that ceramic filters: A) require frequent cleaning (every two weeks) to maintain good water flow, B) the thin ceramic material is breakable if mishandled, C) the activated charcoal packing loses effectiveness over time, and D) the .2 mil pore size, while good for blocking bacterial contamination and disease causing protozoa like giardia, is not fine enough to remove possible viral contamination.
Thanks to this thread I took a fresh look, and discovered a new technology being sold by Sawyer since the last time I researched the subject... it harnesses the hollow-tube technology used in dialysis treatment to produce a water filter that, to me, represents improvements in several important ways ... A) it is available in .1 mil "Biological" filter size for "normal" use, as well as a .02 mil "Viral" filter size for the most challenging applications. B) it does not have the fragility of the ceramic filters, and requires cleaning only 1/20 as often, with a simple backflush, and C) the increased cost is more than offset by the nearly infinite service life ( one million gallons of water ! !)
There are already a number of Sawyer portable water purification systems on the market specifically for camping and backpacking, like a Sawyer Squeeze system that weighs only 3 oz., through retailers like REI. But I'm personally interested in are the PointONE Biological kit, which turns a 5 gallon bucket (or a working tap) into a drip water purification system, with up to 540 gallon a day capacity, with a .1 micron filter for under $65, perfect for disaster preparedness supplies... I have friends in New Jersey whose power was off after Sandy for a week and a half, and whose tap water was unsafe for two weeks. This system would have handled that emergency. Best of all, you can just put it away with your other supplies without worrying about shelf life.
Then at the bottom, three products using the Point Zero TWO Viral filter: a portable system for camping and disaster relief, a bucket system like the SP181 but with enhanced filtering for about 2X the money, and a pre-plumbed whole house package with built in back-flush capability at the yowza! price of $850.
And yet, for the rainwater catchment application I mentioned earlier this just might (I have to do a bit more research to be sure) be a less expensive alternative to the Ultraviolet Light or Ozone Generator sterilization units commonly in use today for captured rainwater, or for well and spring water in areas with groundwater contamination.
In Hawai'i, especially on the Big Island where my place is, 2/3 of the homes are outside the reach of country water systems, and wells are often impractical or polluted, so the two remaining choices are to have water hauled to your tank (about $200 for 4,000 gallons), or catch the rainwater falling on the roof and treat it, to whatever degree you can afford. Some go the cheapo route, with swimming pool filters to catch the volcanic ash and laundry bleach added to the tank to (hopefully) kill any bugs. Others want more certainty, and add a UV or Ozone sterilization unit.
But these last two methods require expensive equipment ($1K to $ManyK), and the expense of regular parts and maintenance ($100/year minimum), and they also use a lot of electricity, which is about 3X as expensive in Hawai'i as it is on the mainland. Which is why a lot of people go the cheapo route, even though it carries more potential risk, especially since leptospirosis infects half the mongooses and rats on the island, and they run around on the rooftops and their urine can infect the water... and what's worse, you don't even need to drink it... it can enter your body through tiny scrapes or abrasions while you're in the shower, or washing dishes. So most people WANT a good filter system, but many feel they can't afford one.
But this Sawyer whole house system, which has no ongoing cost to maintain, and uses no power, seems like it could be an effective step up from the cheapo approach, and much safer, without spending a fortune. It will be interesting to see what my friends around the Puna district think of this information.
I drink Nestle bottled water because I like the taste; I use unfiltered well water for everything else.
I must mention that the best coffee I've ever had was made with very hard, high iron water; the coffee was straight Mocha. When I lived in Colorado I was able to get it from one particular spring where I could fill my jugs. When I lived in Illinois it came from the tap.
Ahhh, that's the one brand that I can't stand the taste of. LOL.
I grew up drinking tap water. It was artesian well water, and we were spoiled. Very good water. Now I live in a different part of the state and it's reservoir water, and I know this company also gets some water out of a desalination plant. Doesn't taste the same. But I still drink it when I'm home. I also buy bottled.
Best water I ever tasted is from the spring behind my sister's house in the Poconos.
I once saw an interview with a man who was turning 100 years old. He was asked what was the most astonishing thing he had witnessed in his lifetime. His answer was ,"that people actually pay to buy bottles of water".
I've always drunk tap water, no matter where I have lived, both city and well water, and those of you who don't are perhaps a bit too suggestible.
It's not something I worry about, either. I buy bottled water for the convenience to carry a bottle of water with me to work. We do have those filtered water coolers at work, but I have about a 90-minute commute, and I like to have my own water with me, especially in hot weather. I refill them a few times though.
I don't know why you would want to deprive your children of flouride. If you were old enough, you would remember what it is like to have your children have 6-8 cavities every 6 months. This is what it was like before flouride was put in water.
there have been cities that removed fluoride and the number of cavities remained the same...
Quote:
Originally Posted by PinkBunny
I buy bottled water. I don't want to be drinking that nasty fluoride and whatever else is in there...estrogen. lol
I would rather play it safe. Anyways, what some people do not consider is that the water at its source might be clean, but how about those pipes? For all you know they're too old.
most bottled water has it as well...fiji, and a few others do not...
also folks, most filters you get at lowes, home depot, walmart, the brita's, pure, etc don't filter fluoride
Quote:
Originally Posted by OpenD
Just to inject a little factual information into this thread, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has this to say about community fluoridation of water...
And to counter some of the misinformation previously posted...
The ENTIRE warning on toothpaste states "If MORE than is used in toothbrushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away " (emphasis mine) and it appears on both regular and fluoride toothpastes. In other words, if you accidentally swallowed the toothpaste you just brushed with it's ok, but if your toddler eats a whole tube of toothpaste they could have a stomach upset, or possibly worse, so get medical advice.
Many communities in the southwest have naturally occurring fluoride in their water, which is how the anti-cavity properties of fluoride was first discovered, by a dentist in Denver.
The fluoride added to community water supplies is not toxic waste. This disproved claim was started as part of conspiracy theories that claimed all kinds of changes were being made to our food and water so that we will all be turned into mindless robots... a fanciful tale that doesn't check out in reality.
The same can be said about all the other wild claims against fluoridation... they have no credible science behind them, and they are pushed by scaremongers who either have a book to sell you, or who have a conspiracy agenda to push.
Meanwhile the FDA and the CDC, after extensive research, not only have proved that the fluoridation of community water as safe and effective, but consider it one of the top achievements in Public Health of the last century, because of the dramatic reduction in cavities, and thus the dramatic improvement in dental health the treatment produces. And all at a cost of only about $1 per year per person.
so the gov't CDC/FDA is telling you its good for you eh? have they ever been wrong? have they ever okayed something and then come back and removed it from the public? even the last Harvard study said more research was necessary...also in that same study, there were cities that had less than the 4mg/L, which is lower than the US allowance, and those cities still saw lowered IQ levels in children... and there were no studies on children from 0-3 in that study, nor fetus studies... and if you research fluoride fetus study, there was a study that showed an accumulation of fluoride in fetus w/cities w/fluoride as opposed to cities w/out fluoride....so before you misinform people, don't just listen to others that misinform and spread that false info around....
Quote:
Originally Posted by OpenD
Indeed, it doesn't hurt to do the research. And if you research this in reliable sources you'll find that the claim that fluoride is "toxic waste" is not true, and that this is part of the misinformation packet that was invented by the people who created the anti-fluoridation movement.
Furthermore, if you dig far enough, you'll find the disturbing fact that the anti-fluoridation movement was started as part of an anti-Semitic campaign to discredit mainstream medicine and dentistry as being controlled by a "Jewish conspiracy." Six decades later the message has been cleaned up to make it more palatable to the general public, but the "big lie" approach... tell a lie enough times and people begin to believe it... has definitely worked in this case. Now people pass around these invented stories as if they were true, when they are not.
Add to that a certain portion of the public irrationally distrusts science, and latches onto half-truths and rumors and labels them gospel. As an example, years ago in early Alzheimers research it was discovered that some Alzheimers patients had concentrations of aluminum in their brains, so immediately people got paranoid about cooking with aluminum pans, using baking powders containing aluminum salts, etc. Years later dietary aluminum was cleared of blame... a good thing, since it's one of the commonest elements and is in nearly everything... when they were able to establish that Alzheimers causes aluminum concentration, rather than the other way around. And yet some people still talk as if aluminum foil is hazardous to your health, etc. Once it has been repeated enough times, misinformation just never seems to go away.
sodium fluoride is a by product of some aluminum type of manufacturing...and has been sold in the US from China...its well documented that some cities had issues with that by product, but I forget what the issue was... you seem to be pretty passionate about getting people to feel ok with putting toxins in their bodies, and the bodies of their loved ones... its a toxin...its being put in our water, to ingest, not too swish around for 30 seconds, but to ingest over and over and over....EVEN if it was a vitamin, I wouldn't want it put in my kids drinking water, but its not a vitamin, its a toxin, and you're absolutely wrong in trying to convince people its not... not sure what your agenda is, but its pretty obvious you're trying to manipulate people into thinking this is ok..
sorry for the rant folks, just reading some replies got to me.... I just found the following video, but just watched a few minutes and was good so far...if you have a doubt, either way, and you have kids or loved ones, just take some time out to check out this vid..its not mine, and again, its pretty new and I just found it about an hour ago...
IMO this is a serious issue for children, developing minds, infants, pregnant mothers... not only are we all ingesting this stuff, but we shower in it, we cook with it, our vegetables are grown/watered with it (although I have seen studies on fluoride in vegetables), also cows, chickens, etc are ingesting the same stuff...so IMO there is a significant accumulation of fluoride...several cities/nations across the world are banning this... if you have kids or loved ones that are young, please take some time out to inform yourself a little more on the subject..
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.1 micron and .02 micron Sawyer filters - new technology
So most people WANT a good filter system, but many feel they can't afford one. 
