Biweekly Discussion - Are "They" Poisoning Our Water?

We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City, just across the street from Washington Square Park. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.

Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.

The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 2 blocks west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east & 1 block north. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.

ARE "THEY" POISONING OUR WATER?

UNDERSTANDING WATER-BORNE TOXINS & DISTINGUISHING "CHEMOPHOBIA" & POLITICALLY MOTIVATED REASONING FROM EVIDENCE-BASED CONCERNS

INTRODUCTION:

In this meetup, we'll discuss various concerns people have about toxins in in the water supply, and try to sort the evidence-based concerns from a knee-jerk fear of chemicals (a.k.a. "chemophobia") and "moral panics" whipped up by irresponsible journalists and pundits & politicians trying to advance a political agenda. We'll also cover some conspiracy theories about elaborate coverups with bribed officials & whistleblowers threatened into silence, as well as allegations that some of these incidents weren't merely the result of industrial malpractice & lax government oversight but rather were involved intentional poisoning of the water supply for various nefarious reasons.

HOW THE WATER FLUORIDATION CONSPIRACY THEORIES RESEMBLE & DIFFER FROM DEBATES OVER WATER POLLUTION:

Initially, I considered covering the perennial fears & conspiracy theories about water fluoridation that have circulated since shortly after it began in the 1940s. I think the fears about fluoride have been so thoroughly debunked over the last half century that there's no reason to cover it in-depth. However, it's useful to review the basic facts about fluoride's health effects, as well as how & why the fears about water fluoridation spread during the Second Red Scare of the late 1940s-early 1950s and then died down but never really went away, continuing to simmer even after the end of the Cold War.

Dave Sorenson offers a debunking of most of the prominent false claims about the dangers of water fluoridation at the Skeptic Project blog:
http://skepticproject.com/articles/health/fluoride/

Wikipedia gives a pretty decent overview of the history of the water fluoridation controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_controversy#History

It appears the controversy over water fluoridation was driven by 2 factors:

(1) Chemophobia - i.e. Knee-Jerk Fear of & Opposition to Synthetic Chemicals: water fluoridation was partly hampered by the reputation of fluoride compounds as insect poisons and early literature which tended to use terms such as "fluoride toxicity" and "low grade chronic fluoride poisoning" to describe teeth mottling from consumption of 6 mg/L, a level of consumption not expected to occur under controlled fluoridation levels of 1-2 mg/L.

(2) Politically Motivated Reasoning: the debate over water fluoridation was due to legal wrangling over whether water fluoride was a "medicine" and debates over the ethics of mass intervention in the water supply. In the political atmosphere of the "Second Red Scare" (c.1947-1960), this debate was distorted by ardent anti-communists to make water fluoridation - along with mandatory vaccinations - look like an aspect of "creeping socialism" and "another aspect of President Truman's drive to socialize medicine." While there's some validity to the ethical concerns raised by any sort of mass intervention like water fluoridation, there's also an element of "special pleading" here because we don't see similar opposition to water chlorination or the iodine added to salt, vitamin D added to milk, iron added to cereal, etc.

Early opposition to water fluoridation came mostly from groups on the political right, such as the John Birch Society which asserted the existence of "a Communist plot to deplete the brainpower and sap the strength of a generation of American children". Dr. Charles Bett, a prominent anti-fluoridationist, charged that fluoridation was "better than using the atom bomb because the atom bomb has to be made, has to be transported to the place it is to be set off, while poisonous fluorine has been placed right beside the water supplies by the Americans themselves ready to be dumped into the water mains whenever a Communist desires!" This controversy had a direct impact on local programs during the 1950s and 1960s, where local referendums on introducing fluoridation were defeated in over a thousand communities. It was not until as late as the 1990s that fluoridated water was consumed by the majority of the population of the United States.

However, by the 1990s, there was a rise in left-wing political opposition to water fluoridation. The jumpstart to modern left-wing opposition to fluoridation can be traced to an alarmist article, "Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalist Ploy" in the Fall 1992 issue of Covert Action Quarterly which claimed that fluoridation was devised in the 1940s chiefly as a way for the aluminum industry to dispose of toxic fluoride wastes. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader came out against fluoridation, and shortly after groups like the Sierra Club claimed that there are "valid concerns" about the "potential adverse impact of fluoridation on the environment, wildlife, and human health." Water fluoridation became lumped in with earlier environmentalist campaigns against trace amounts of synthetic chemicals. Ronald Bailey gave a short history of this shift in an article at Reason Magazine back in 2001:
https://reason.com/2001/12/05/impurifying-our-precious-bodil

The major difference between the water fluoridation debates and the more recent concerns we'll discuss about toxins in the water are that water fluoridation is an overt & intentional part of a public health initiative, whereas the presence of industrial waste chemicals in the water supply or the leaching of chemicals from our pipes or containers into the water is presumably accidental. However, like the water fluoridation, we'll see how "chemophobia" & the distortion of ethical concerns by political debates makes it harder to come to a rational & informed opinion on the dangers of various chemicals like lead, hormones, endocrine disruptors, and ostensible carcinogens in our water supply.

To avoid "chemophobia", we need to keep 5 basic chemistry facts in mind:

1. Everything is made of chemicals.
2. The dose makes the poison.
3. There is no difference between “natural” and “synthetic” versions of a chemical.
4. “Natural” chemicals are not automatically good and “artificial” chemicals are not automatically bad.
5. A chemical’s properties are determined by the other chemicals that it is bound to.
   For more elaboration on these 5 points, see this post at The Logic of Science blog:
   https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/05/27/5-simple-chemistry-facts-that-everyone-should-understand-before-talking-about-science/

To avoid politically motivated reasoning, it helps to become familiar with what the Yale psychologist Daniel Kahan calls the "cultural cognition of risk". The cultural cognition hypothesis holds that individuals are motivated by a variety of psychological processes to form beliefs about putatively dangerous activities that match their cultural evaluations of them. Persons who subscribe to relatively individualistic values (i.e. libertarians & business conservatives) tend to value commerce & industry and are inclined to disbelieve that such activities pose serious environmental risks. However, they tend to be more suspicious of government interventions since this appears to override their autonomy. Persons who subscribe to relatively egalitarian & communitarian values (i.e. liberal-progressives, socialists & environmentalists), in contrast, readily credit claims of environmental risks from commerce & industry, which is consistent with their moral suspicion of commerce & industry as sources of inequality & excessive self-seeking. However, they tend to be somewhat less suspicious of government interventions, since they tend to see government as a countervailing force necessary to regulate industry & provide for the public good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cognition#Theory_and_evidence

Luckily, Kahan has found that "science curiosity" can partly alleviate politically motivated reasoning, and it doesn't require a high degree of scientific education merely an open-mindedness towards new ideas and an interest in seeking out information that contradicts one's group’s beliefs. For more on this, check out Brian Resnick's article summarizing the basics of Kahan's research on science curiosity:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/1/14392290/partisan-bias-dan-kahan-curiosity