Conspiracy Theories That'll Make You Question Everything

Mind-Controlling Water?

There aren't many nations in the world that put fluoride in their water. In fact, there are just about 25 countries that fluoridate their water supply. These countries include Panama, Guyana, the United States, Canada, Australia, and quite a few others. Fluoridation levels differ by country, along with the percentage of the population that it reachers. About 377,000,000 people drink fluoridated water, and that's only 5% of the world's population(and over half of them live in the United States). All water-fluoridating nations state the same reason for putting fluoride in their water supply; to help prevent tooth decay. However, there is no scientific evidence that these countries have any less tooth decay in their citizens than those in countries with non-fluoridated water, which has lead conspiracists to believe that there has to be a deeper reason as to why nations are spending time, money, and effort to fluoridate their water supplies.

Before we hop into the conspiracies, let's set some things straight. Fluoride is found in water at extremely minuscule amounts. In fact, it has been recommended to put 0.7 to 1.2 parts fluoride to 1 million parts water (or 0.7-1.2 milligrams of fluoride to 1 liter of water). Fluoridation is done in small amounts to try and avoid fluoride poisoning while still adding strength to teeth. However, just a pea-sized amount of toothpaste has 0.3 milligrams of fluoride. This means that if you brushed your teeth twice a day, your teeth would get roughly the same amount of exposure to fluoride that they would if you drank a liter of fluoridated water that day.

By any means, let us review the conspiracy. It has been theorized that different national governments are putting fluoride into their water supply as a subtle form of mind control. Nothing like fictitious movies, conspiracists believe that the small amount of fluoride in our water helps to subdue citizens and to lessen the amount of rebels. Many believe that fluoridating water affects something in the consumer's brains, making them more likely to obey, somewhat slaves to the government's command.

Whether fluoride is brainwashing us or not, there seems to be no reason for it to be in our water supply. Is fluoridated water just an attempt to lessen tooth decay? Or is it something more?