Monday, January 4, 2010

What's in the water?

Yes, the clip is hilarious. I remember watching this movie for the first time years ago and thinking that General Ripper was one heck of a crazy nut job. However, now I do have to ask myself if maybe he wasn't on to something. In our society where absolutely nothing is free either we have all been getting free dental health care through our drinking water for years or we are unknowingly paying for this wonderful non-voluntary service to help prevent tooth decay. So I called up my local water treatment plant and talked to a man there about it. He told me that all of the local water in our town is provided by deep wells and that yes they do add fluoride to it along with a few other chemicals such as chlorine. I told him I had never seen any charges for fluoridation on my water bill. He assured me that the costs were probably passed along to me with the water bill. I felt relieved. I did have to ask for the record just what the purpose of the fluoride was and he did tell me it was due to "national recommendations" to prevent tooth decay. What a wonderful service and how thoughtful of our government to look out for us like that. I also asked what chemical manufacturer our town purchased it's fluoride supply from. "SAL chemical."

So I checked out the Sal Chemical website. Man, what a list of products they manufacture down there in the shadows off the mountain-top, mine-blasted, hills of Weirton, WV. I really hope this chemical company isn't just a reseller for by-products of the Taconite and Coal mining industry down there. This is sort of off-the subject but Mountaintop mining and the environmental devastation it causes are a major hazard to the health of the water and the people that live in Appalachia. Did you hear about how a billion gallons of coal slurry got dumped into the tributaries of the Tennessee River (the drinking water source for Chattanooga and other communities downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky) last Christmas? Probably not. Our media doesn't find corporations or government agencies (in this case the TVA) poisoning our drinking water very newsworthy.

Anyway, I didn't see fluoride on the list though so I had to call them up too. So, I spoke to a lady at SAL Chemical and asked if they produced fluoride for municipalities. She asked who I was and why I wanted to know so I told her I was from where I am from and was new at the job at the treatment plant and needed to reorder. She looked it up in her computer and told me we normally purchase Hydrofluosilicic Acid 23%. I did see this in their product list. Google this stuff. Just the stuff you want to be drinking. Here's the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet). I particularly like this part:


EMERGENCY OVERVIEW: DANGER! CORROSIVE. Causes severe burns to eyes, skin, and respiratory tract. Harmful or fatal if swallowed. Harmful if inhaled. Contact with water may generate toxic, irritating and corrosive gases.

WTF!?!? "Fatal if swallowed"? "Contact with water may generate toxic gases"? Good Lord! This is what they are dumping in our water? So all the good people of my town (AND MOST LIKELY YOURS) that consume water every day are drinking this poison? I know that this stuff is diluted down to the point (1 ppm) that you can barely taste it but it is still the same chemical. Over the course of a year how much tap water/flouride do we consume? I'm sure the bottled water is just as bad. I doubt it is much more than tap water sold in bottles.

I'm not gonna get into any global population control conspiracies here. I wouldn't want to sound like a crazy nut job or anything. I'm just saying it's about time we all took a hard look at what chemicals the government is recommending our cities put into our drinking water. Here are some of the known negative side-effects of flouridation at 1ppm. Would we even know if they changed it up once in a while by maybe bumping it up to 2ppm on accident or modified what they dump in there on occasion? Ever wonder why the water tastes different in one town from another? It's all just water right?

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