What's your poison?

I know I'm a big whack job but just hear me out for a second. Which do you think the government would prefer of these two choices?

A. Find cures for deseases such as Cancer and help enforce and regulate policies that will help prolong the life-spans of ordinary Americans that have paid into Social Security and Medicare so that they can collect those benefits from the government for a longer period of time after retirement.

B. Not look too hard for those cures and allow all kinds of life-shortening, chemicals and poisons in our food and drugs in order to avoid paying out as much of that Social Security and Medicare.

Do you think the health insurance industry would prefer that we live long, healthy lives or short, healthy lives? I'm just guessing but I would bet that on average, shorter lives are less expensive than longer lives.

I'm speculating again but I'm thinking that most industry probably has little use for people after they move into their twilight years and are no longer the wage earners and big consumers they once were. Once people start collecting checks rather than earning them I would imagine that government and industry would see them as a burden.

So is it so crazy to think that the government is allowing or helping maintain our lifespans at a manageable level by poisoning our air, water, food, and drugs? Remember hurricane Katrina? That told me right then and there how much our government is out to save it's people. You can't seriously think that if those people drowning were in the Hamptons or Silicon Valley they would have recieved the same delayed and shoddy treatment as the lower-income, residents of New Orleans' ninth ward.

I'm trying to count how many poisons I have ingested today or fed to my family:
1. Flouride in the water I drank. check (did you know that if a company accidently dumped this stuff in the water they could technically be arrested but if your city doesn't dump it in the water they could technically be arrested?)
2. Aspartame in my can of diet Coke. check
3. High fructose corn syrup in just about everything we ate. check (Have you ever looked at a school lunch menu?)
4. Sodium nitrate in the bologna sandwich. check
5. I didn't take or feed my kids any medicines today so I know we missed out on a whole bunch of cool chemicals there.
6. Growth hormones and antibiotics in the milk I gave my daughter. check (oh, the guilt...I should be arrested for abuse and could be if I lived in Europe)
7. Cyanide, Ammonia, Carbon Monoxide & over 500 others in the cigar I smoked. check

Dammit! I haven't had my MSG or hydrogenated oils yet. Okay. I'm getting depressed now. I think I'll go smoke another cigar, drive on the icy roads and talk on my cell phone on my way to get a flu vaccine. jk- I would never get a flu vaccine.

Seriously, maybe it's time to go organic, stop eating meat and stop smoking.

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?