Sounds rational but........
Should We Worry About What's in Our Tap Water?
CAMPAIGNER Robin Watkins wrote to us with a comment relating to our Go Green campaign: "I have campaigned for a number of years to ban the addition of a chemical called hexafluorosilicic acid to the drinking water of Newcastle.
"This is a by-product of the fertiliser industry used in the adding of fluoride to the water as the element fluorine does not exist on its own, but attaches to other chemicals. "Hexafluorosilicic acid is one of the most toxic substances known to man. As an acid it leaches lead from the old water pipes, which then enters in to human beings and both chemicals will then enter, eventually, our rivers."
The question to the Green Doc, from me, Amy Hunt, Chronicle environment reporter, is: "What is he on about and is he right?" Our Go Green Doctor, Prof Paul Younger, replies: "The addition of fluoride to drinking water is one of those old chestnuts that continues to arouse passions. We add quite a few chemicals to public drinking water, all of them for health reasons. "If you've ever lived (as I have) in cities where drinking water is not chlorinated, for instance, and seen the death toll among infants and the elderly caused by drinking infected water, you'd soon realise that the occasional faint whiff of chlorine really is a minor inconvenience, rather than a violation of your rights or 'mass medication'.
"As someone who spent the first decade of my career working on provision of safe water supplies to people both here in the UK and in some of the world's poorest places, it is clear to me that it is highly advantageous to drink water which has around one part fluoride per million parts water: much less than this and tooth decay goes up, significantly more than this and other health problems such as brittle bones develop. The 'one part per million' (1ppm) standard has been adopted in many parts of the world as the result of lots of independent studies.
"In our region, the move to flu-oridation commenced in the wake of the Second World War, after a dentist in Keswick noticed that evacuee kids from Sunderland had far less tooth decay than Newcastle kids from similar social backgrounds. The reason for this is that the groundwater used for public supply in Sunderland naturally contains about 1ppm fluoride, whereas the river water used for supply in Newcastle had hardly any fluoride. Fluoridation of public drinking water in Newcastle has now been carried out safely for 30 years, and dental health is now similar in the two cities.
"The point that Robin raises about the toxicity of the chemical, which is dissolved in water to achieve 1ppm fluoride, really addresses another issue: can we safely transport, store and use chemicals which are toxic in their concentrated form? The short answer is yes. We safely transport, store and use such chemicals all the time, and many of them would be just as capable of killing you (if you drank them neat) as hexafluorosilicic acid (which is simply the concentrated liquid used as a convenient carrier for fluoride).
"Think of the domestic bleach in your kitchen cupboard, used regularly to clean toilets and sinks. But if we took a swig from the bottle, we'd die a painful death. We're not mad so we don't. We've gradually found ways of making sure horrible accidents don't happen either, such as using bottles that don't smash if dropped and fitting them with lids that young children cannot remove. It's the same with water processing chemicals like hexafluorosilicic acid or chlorine gas (it killed our ancestors in the trenches of the First World War; now it saves us all from drinking infected water).
"We've all seen tanker lorries on the motorways with their warning labels. These are part of a very elaborate system of precautions which the rescue services have in place to make sure we can transport potentially hazardous substances without causing harm to anyone or to the environment. If we had to carry all processing chemicals in such dilute forms that anyone could drink them neat from the tankers, we would need to increase tanker journeys by a factor of thousands, with all the congestion and carbon dioxide emissions that would entail.
"So instead we transport concentrated chemicals and dilute to safe concentrations at the point of use. Just like we do with orange squash, for instance.
"Once fluoride is dissolved in tap water down to 1ppm, it is no longer a concentrated acid and does not cause lead to leach from pipes. It does save us all from extra trips to the dentists."
Prof Younger, professor of energy and environment at Newcastle University, has joined our year-long environmental campaign to guide Chronicle readers in their efforts to go green.
He and his team at Newcastle's Science City are leading the North East's drive to produce clean, green energy for the future.
He and his colleagues have agreed to answer any questions you, our readers, have about how to reduce your energy use, waste and carbon footprint and any other questions you may have on environmental issues.
Not sure whether changing to energy-saving light bulbs will really make a difference? Wondering why your council doesn't recycle plastic? Send us your questions to go.green@ncjmedia.co.uk or write to Dr Green, c/o Amy Hunt, Evening Chronicle, Groat Market, Newcastle NE11ED.
(c) 2007 Evening Chronicle - Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Evening Chronicle - Newcastle-upon-Tyne
CAMPAIGNER Robin Watkins wrote to us with a comment relating to our Go Green campaign: "I have campaigned for a number of years to ban the addition of a chemical called hexafluorosilicic acid to the drinking water of Newcastle.
"This is a by-product of the fertiliser industry used in the adding of fluoride to the water as the element fluorine does not exist on its own, but attaches to other chemicals. "Hexafluorosilicic acid is one of the most toxic substances known to man. As an acid it leaches lead from the old water pipes, which then enters in to human beings and both chemicals will then enter, eventually, our rivers."
The question to the Green Doc, from me, Amy Hunt, Chronicle environment reporter, is: "What is he on about and is he right?" Our Go Green Doctor, Prof Paul Younger, replies: "The addition of fluoride to drinking water is one of those old chestnuts that continues to arouse passions. We add quite a few chemicals to public drinking water, all of them for health reasons. "If you've ever lived (as I have) in cities where drinking water is not chlorinated, for instance, and seen the death toll among infants and the elderly caused by drinking infected water, you'd soon realise that the occasional faint whiff of chlorine really is a minor inconvenience, rather than a violation of your rights or 'mass medication'.
"As someone who spent the first decade of my career working on provision of safe water supplies to people both here in the UK and in some of the world's poorest places, it is clear to me that it is highly advantageous to drink water which has around one part fluoride per million parts water: much less than this and tooth decay goes up, significantly more than this and other health problems such as brittle bones develop. The 'one part per million' (1ppm) standard has been adopted in many parts of the world as the result of lots of independent studies.
"In our region, the move to flu-oridation commenced in the wake of the Second World War, after a dentist in Keswick noticed that evacuee kids from Sunderland had far less tooth decay than Newcastle kids from similar social backgrounds. The reason for this is that the groundwater used for public supply in Sunderland naturally contains about 1ppm fluoride, whereas the river water used for supply in Newcastle had hardly any fluoride. Fluoridation of public drinking water in Newcastle has now been carried out safely for 30 years, and dental health is now similar in the two cities.
"The point that Robin raises about the toxicity of the chemical, which is dissolved in water to achieve 1ppm fluoride, really addresses another issue: can we safely transport, store and use chemicals which are toxic in their concentrated form? The short answer is yes. We safely transport, store and use such chemicals all the time, and many of them would be just as capable of killing you (if you drank them neat) as hexafluorosilicic acid (which is simply the concentrated liquid used as a convenient carrier for fluoride).
"Think of the domestic bleach in your kitchen cupboard, used regularly to clean toilets and sinks. But if we took a swig from the bottle, we'd die a painful death. We're not mad so we don't. We've gradually found ways of making sure horrible accidents don't happen either, such as using bottles that don't smash if dropped and fitting them with lids that young children cannot remove. It's the same with water processing chemicals like hexafluorosilicic acid or chlorine gas (it killed our ancestors in the trenches of the First World War; now it saves us all from drinking infected water).
"We've all seen tanker lorries on the motorways with their warning labels. These are part of a very elaborate system of precautions which the rescue services have in place to make sure we can transport potentially hazardous substances without causing harm to anyone or to the environment. If we had to carry all processing chemicals in such dilute forms that anyone could drink them neat from the tankers, we would need to increase tanker journeys by a factor of thousands, with all the congestion and carbon dioxide emissions that would entail.
"So instead we transport concentrated chemicals and dilute to safe concentrations at the point of use. Just like we do with orange squash, for instance.
"Once fluoride is dissolved in tap water down to 1ppm, it is no longer a concentrated acid and does not cause lead to leach from pipes. It does save us all from extra trips to the dentists."
Prof Younger, professor of energy and environment at Newcastle University, has joined our year-long environmental campaign to guide Chronicle readers in their efforts to go green.
He and his team at Newcastle's Science City are leading the North East's drive to produce clean, green energy for the future.
He and his colleagues have agreed to answer any questions you, our readers, have about how to reduce your energy use, waste and carbon footprint and any other questions you may have on environmental issues.
Not sure whether changing to energy-saving light bulbs will really make a difference? Wondering why your council doesn't recycle plastic? Send us your questions to go.green@ncjmedia.co.uk or write to Dr Green, c/o Amy Hunt, Evening Chronicle, Groat Market, Newcastle NE11ED.
(c) 2007 Evening Chronicle - Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Evening Chronicle - Newcastle-upon-Tyne
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