Ever heard of having just enough rope to hang yourself? That's what happens with a lot of scientific arguments, just like you implied with your stem cell analogy.
Fluoride in ground water comes from fluoride crystal deposits--it's F+ ion. Fluoridated water has F+ ion as well, IIRC... I may be wrong there. The way it gets there, however, is by adding either a fluoride salt (NaF)...
Yes. Basically. Fluoride is an anion (F-), and your "fluoride crystals" are fluoride salts. Fluoride (the ion) must have a counter ion with it; very simple forms would be NaF (sodium fluoride) or HF (hydrofluoric acid).
or complex fluorochemicals, some of which are actually acids.
Define "complex," and why do we care if they are acids? The water won't be acidic when it reaches your tap.
This is toxic industrial waste with hazmat handling restrictions.
This statement adds nothing to your argument. There are plenty of beneficial compounds that are toxic at high concentrations and regulated as hazards. Furthermore, there are plenty of beneficial compounds that are byproducts of other processes. You're thinking of Hexafluorosilicic acid, and you're talking about it like it's dihydrogen monoxide--you know, the dangerous toxic waste that kills millions yearly and was used by Hitler and Stalin.
Yeah, you want fluoride in your water. You want it in trace amounts, though; and you want F+ ion, not all the other garbage that gets dumped in your water to get F+ ion into it artificially.
The amount added to drinking water is a trace amount, and may be less than many natural waters have. If the concentrations are the same, what's the problem?
Furthermore, in the case of the two examples you gave, the "other garbage" (also in trace amounts) is sodium or silica, both of which you unquestionably consume in much greater quantities daily.
Yes, that's right, silica. According to wikipedia, in water at neutral pH, Hexafluorosilicic acid decomposes into silica, and the F- ions that kids crave:
SiF6^2- + 2 H2O => 6 F- + SiO2 + 4 H+
Silica, by the way, is the active ingredient in sand.
If they artificially produced F+ ion by stripping it out of toxic waste, you'd get something vastly different
No, no you wouldn't, because you can't just strip out the fluoride. That's not how chemistry works. You could spend money to convert it into another fluoride compound (like NaF), but the safety of the consumer would be exactly the same either way, as long as it was pure. In fact, it's probably better that they don't use NaF, because we get plenty of Na on our french fries.
--and the argument would be entirely stupid.
No comment.
Instead, the argument is between people shouting "FLUORIDE" while the reality is between Fluoride and Toxic Fluoride Compounds.
It's really a shame that you have no idea what you're talking about, because there is actually a huge issue at stake that is just over the horizon from your argument, and that is the growing use of fluorinated carbon compounds. These are persistent, carcinogenic, endocrine disrupting, bioaccumulating, and every other dangerous word you can think of.
If you want to talk about that, then I'm sure we'd agree that we don't want halocarbons of any kind used any more than absolutely necessary (are you listening to me, State of California?), but unfortunately you've been suckered by a bunch of pseudoscientific babble.
