FLOURIDE : Is it in your water?

Today there is an article on CNN: Government recommends lowering fluoride levels in U.S. drinking water

There are many people questioning WHY flouride should be in our water at all, and why they can't just remove it altogether. I suppose lowering the levels are a start, but that's definitely not going to make people forget about the fact that its still there.

I'm not going to go on about the reasons it shouldn't be there, just check the comments after the article and you'll get the jist of it.

But it did get me thinking. We are in a new town and we don't drink our water right from the tap because it smells too 'chloriney' to me. But I figured I should find out about the flouride as well. A couple phone calls later, I'm very excited to learn that this town doesn't add ANY flouride to the water supply. Bonus! While the chlorine levels are higher than I'm comfortable with but we usually get our drinking water from across the yard at my in-laws double filtered fridge water. However, now knowing that there is no flouride, I think we'll also get ourselves a Brita filter pitcher for our own fridge. On the Brita website they claim among the things they filter, chlorine is one of them, but there is no mention of flouride so I wasn't rushing out to get one previously, now I will feel more confident using one because flouride isn't a big concern.

While I've been on the awareness wagon about flouride only for a short time, I do make sure that my son has flouride-free toothpaste. Its not your basic baking soda & water concoction but its the Tom's of Main children's toothpaste. To me, it looks like wood caulking, but it smells yummy (strawberry) and he generally sucks most of it off still anyways.

I would like to switch my own toothpaste to something flouride-free as well. I'm afraid of not liking the taste. I really hate the taste of ALL toothpastes really so I hate the thought of too much trial and error because the natural toothpastes are pretty pricey. Would there be anything wrong with using the same toothpaste as my son? I guess I need to look into that. I have super sensitive teeth so I've been a sensodyne user for years. Perhaps I need to find some more natural ways of dealing with sensitive teeth first.  Always something new to research!