I think you all missed my point. the social benefits of both fluorine and chlorine in drinking water are enourmous compared with the costs of not doing so - let me be clear oin this - the benefits of chlorine are very low levels of disentry and diahorea, not to mention cholera, etc., the benefits of fluorine are greatly increased lifetime due to good teeth. simlarly, the benefits of vaccination are clear.
so what is not clear is that chlorine is the best in terms of least side effects. this boils down to money and govt. behaviour. What I find astonishing is that people 1) don't trust govt. to work for their benefit (by "trust" I mean "insist on", by "their" I do not mean individual, but societal as a whole) and 2) are so scared of minor side effects they miss the big effect. Ofcourse, I don't know what teh AStates are like, but here in general, there is a realisation of a fine line between universal banefit and individual inconvenience. to those who have bad reactions to chlorine or chloramine, I sympathise. This is something that needs to be dealt with, but not by scare tacktics and ignorance such as that wrt alumina is toothpaste (which is by far the worst crock I have come across in recent times). we have had in Melbourne (and the rest of Australia) our bi-decadal run in with legionella. I was periferally involved through a co who dealt with the post -outbreak risk management and amelioration (but on other projects). like a lot of things, industrial accidents have a half life - which relates to the time it takes for the issue to disappear off the landscape and become forgotten. The other one here is bush fires. the time between large outbreaks is just long enough for people and especially budget pressured depts. and govt.s to neglect. anyway, the point is a lot of places have started retrofitting ozone units to replace chlorine units. same rules go for air con cooling as water treatment I would imagine, only more extreme because of corosion and closed cycle issues. basically it breaks down like this. the problem is systemic. the company (Co) who owns the building is not the co who builds it. they subcontract the fitting of the air con at the last staes of building (i.e. when the profit and overtime have leached from teh budget) so the cheapest unit is installed. the co who then run the building for the owners subcontract the maintainence, who sub contract teh air con service - by this stage there is just enough money for a guy to come once a month and dump in a hand full of chemicals. Same goes I imagine for privatised water. knowing you will never have to pay the downstream costs of chosing a cheaper unit is guarenteed to lead to trouble... On Tue, 13 May 2003 11:16 am, paul van den bergen wrote: > fluoride in toothpaste, etc. > Flouride like most chemicals is toxic in excess amounts. the amounts in > drinking water and tooth paste are very very low and usually buffered so > that they remain low. > > but consider for a moment another poison we add to drinking water... > Chemically similar to Fluorine (and similarly toxic), we add it in much > larger quantities, especially in large public areas where children are the > most susceptable to it's effects - which include sore eyes and throats, > most of which go unreported to medical authorities.. yet we never hear > anything against Chlorine.... why? (yes, I don't expect or want an > answer... I was being ironic.) -- Dr Paul van den Bergen Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures caia.swin.edu.au [EMAIL PROTECTED] IM:bulwynkl2002 "And some run up hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stones to pieces wi' hammers, like so many road makers run daft. They say it is to see how the world was made." Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronan's Well 1824 ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Lj3uPC/Me7FAA/uetFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
