[PLUG-TALK] Portland Water Fluoridation Goes National

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 21 May 2013, Russell Johnson wrote:

> But we bring dihydrogen-monoxide into our homes on a continuous basis.

   Complete with fluoride! :-)

   You know that a pair of radio DJ's were fired from their Miami jobs when
they told listeners there was dihydrogen monoxide coming out of their
faucets and many people panicked. Calls to the police and county offices
were excessive. And, I'll bet, those folks vote every election.

   On the question of fluorine/fluoride, my undergraduate physical chem prof.
did his research on hydrofluoric acid (incredibly nasty stuff). One summer
his lab at Boston U. had an HF explosion that put him in the hospital for a
couple of weeks.

   Excessive flouride is (at least, was) released in large quantities from
the smoke stacks at the JR Simplot fertilizer and FMC elemental phosphorus
plants just outside Pocatello, ID. Much of the fluoride settled on the range
north of the highway, were absorbed by grasses and turned cattle bone
brittle. However, the concentrations involved were many orders of magnitude
greater than is found in municiple potable water supplies.

Rich