Are You Drinking the Water? What's Fluoride?

[chlamor]

Drink a glass of water, soda, juice or beer and you will probably be consuming a potent drug formerly prescribed to depress the thyroid gland. No laughing matter considering the consequences an underactive thyroid gland can have on one's health. You will have consumed a notorious air pollutant captures in the wet-scrubbing systems used by industries to clean their emissions. The drug? Hydrogen fluoride, often added to the water supply as a tooth-decay preventive.

Few people know that the hazardous waste from the chemical fertilizer industry is the source of the fluoride chemicals used to fluoridate water. As one of the phosphate industry's trade journals aptly puts it:

The fluorine compounds liberated during the acidulation of phosphate rock are now regarded as a menace and the industry is now obliged to suppress emissions-containing vapors to within very low limits in most parts of the world. As with any pollution control operation, it is highly desirable for the operator of the fluorine scrubber to find a use or market for the recovered fluorine to help defray at least partially the cost of the operation.

Although marketing the recovered fluorine may be a nice deal for Cargill Fertilizer and the chemical fertilizer industry, the public water supply is not an appropriate vehicle for hazardous waste management.

http://www.pure-food.com/fluoride_in_water.htm